Crisafulli matches Labor spending spree but needs alternative vision

Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli delivers his budget reply at Parliament House in Brisbane on Thursday. Picture: Dan Peled / NewsWire

David Crisafulli will match Labor’s big-spending agendabut has offered little more to voters other than a promise to do things differently.

The Queensland Liberal Nat­ional Party leader used his budget reply speech to blunt any pre-election attacks about cuts and ignored Treasurer Cameron Dick’s pleas to forget the past nine years.

A large slice of Crisafulli’s hour-long speech on Thursday was carved out for a forensic and excoriating history lesson on Labor’s near-decade in power and allegations of its failures to ­address rising crime rates, a ­deepening housing crisis and a public hospital system struggling to cope.

“After 10 years of this Labor government, have the crises in housing, cost of living, health and youth crime got better or worse?” Crisafulli posed.

It’s a powerful thought that will play on the minds of voters when they head to the ballot box on ­October 26.

But the obvious question ­follows: what would the LNP do differently?

In policy terms, Crisafulli has failed to give voters an alternative vision beyond a promise of “calm and methodical” leadership.

He backed Labor’s budget, emission reduction targets and Indigenous treaty laws (though later backflipped on that).

Even on the four crises Crisafulli has been hammering for years, there is not much meat on the bones in terms of policy.

His fix for the health crisis is to roll out real-time hospital data within 100 days of the election – a welcome move for transparency but one that won’t do much to increase bed capacity to alleviate pressure on overwhelmed emergency departments.

On crime, Crisafulli has promised to open the Children’s Court and remove detention “as a last resort” for young offenders – but Labor already caved to LNP pressure earlier this year and overhauled the controversial sen­tencing principle.

Efforts were made in the ­budget reply speech to detail how the LNP planned to boost Queensland’s lagging home ­ownership levels – through an ­equity scheme and cuts to stamp duty.

But the real point of difference offered up in Thursday’s budget reply was the decision to reject the controversial Pioneer-­Burdekin pumped hydro project at the centre of Labor’s renewable energy plan.

The project – initially estimated to cost $12bn to build, a figure that Crisafulli calls a “fantasy” – has no approvals and is still being subjected to viability tests.

After voting to pass Labor’s legislative target, he had better come up with a detailed plan to cut emissions and deliver power. Otherwise it is all hot air.