Queensland election: I’m not going off on a tangent to remove a sign, says David Crisafulli
If David Crisafulli becomes Queensland’s 41st premier after the October 26 state election, the Cbus sign atop government HQ at 1 William Street will stay.
If David Crisafulli becomes Queensland’s 41st premier after the October 26 state election, the Cbus sign atop government HQ at 1 William Street will stay.
Never mind that it stands for just about everything in politics the Liberal National Party and its fresh-faced leader oppose.
The crowning green-and-blue logo of the construction industry’s cashed-up superannuation fund is a provocative assertion of where power has resided for 30 of the past 35 years in the Sunshine State – with the Labor Party and its industrial base.
The nation’s most notorious union, the CFMEU, among those calling the shots on the Cbus board, loves the sign’s commanding presence on the Brisbane skyline, crowning the so-called “Tower of Power” that was commissioned by then premier Campbell Newman when he ran the show for the LNP from 2012-15 and Mr Crisafulli was a rookie MP and cabinet minister.
The LNP faithful hate it. But Mr Crisafulli insists unwinding the controversial Labor government deal to sell Cbus the building’s naming rights is not on his to-do list in the likely event the LNP returns to power next month.
The single-minded ex-journalist told The Weekend Australian that his party had in the past made the mistake of being distracted from the core state government mission of service delivery, and it wouldn’t happen again on his watch. His priorities were legislation to crackdown on youth crime, an overhaul of the troubled public health system, boosting housing affordability and cost-of-living relief.
“I don’t think Queenslanders would be surprised to hear that my first priority is the Making Queensland Safer Laws, not the removing of building signs,” Mr Crisafulli said, referring to a suite of controversial measures to impose “adult time for adult crime” on juvenile offenders.
“My priority is the things I’m campaigning on.”
The surge in home invasions, car theft and assaults unleashed by the youth crime wave has emerged as a vote-turning issue for the 26-day election campaign to formally kick off this coming Tuesday.
The LNP enters the race 10 points ahead of the third-term Labor government in the latest Newspoll for The Australian, the vote splitting its way 55-45 per cent after preferences, and Mr Crisafulli has opened a decisive lead over Steven Miles on the key measure of better premier. This equates to a swing to the LNP of 8.2 per cent on the 2020 state election result which, if uniform, would secure for a Crisafulli government 55 of the 93 seats in state parliament.
Sweet vindication for the 45-year-old father of two who lost his seat in Townsville in 2015 and moved his family to the LNP stronghold of the Gold Coast to rebuild his political career.
In a revealing interview, Mr Crisafulli said he had learned from the mistakes made by the Newman government after it blew one of the biggest victories in Australian political history and was rejected by voters after a single, volatile term. Annastacia Palaszczuk went on to win two more elections for Labor, improving the government’s parliamentary position each time, before handing over to Mr Miles last December amid a plunge in the party’s poll numbers.
Mr Crisafulli vividly remembers the “humbling experience” of losing a job he loved as local government minister in the 2015 boilover. “That was difficult. So was walking the floor of the department,” he said.
“I went and said thank you to the public servants who were very good to me … and that was a humbling experience. I am certain I’m a better member of parliament as a result of that loss. I’m certainly a better human being.”
Under fire from Labor for pursuing a detail-light “small target” strategy, Mr Crisafulli made no apology for presenting key elements of policy in broad terms.
Per his position on the Cbus sign above 1 William St, Queenslanders know more about what he won’t do if his side wins only its second state election since 1986 than exactly how he would exercise power as premier.
Mr Crisafulli rejected criticism that he was dudding the voters.
“I know the government says that, but I’ll tell you what that’s code for,” he said. “For me, we’ve been disciplined and united and haven’t made mistakes, and they’ve been at war with themselves, positioning who should be the leader and undermining themselves, and not being able to run a government effectively.
“That’s all that is … that’s all they’ve got.”
Mr Newman, however, took issue with the game plan, telling The Weekend Australian: “I don’t agree with his small-target strategy. I feel that people are thirsting for a very clear vision, they want definitive statements on what an incoming government will do.
“I think there is the potential to win as significant a victory as we did in 2012 but, at this stage, it’s not going to happen without that clear agenda, that vision for the state,” he said. “The other thing that is different about 2012 is people really detested (former Labor premier) Anna Bligh and there is not, in anything I’m seeing, that feeling about Steven Miles.”
The state’s 38th premier is free to speak his mind after quitting the LNP over differences that came to a head at the height of the Covid lockdowns in 2021.
Calling for the Cbus sign on 1 William St to go, Mr Newman said: “I think that it is appropriate that it be labelled by the people who are actually really paying the bills and that’s the people of Queensland. So the state of Queensland certainly should be recognised on the building.”
Mr Newman’s LNP government in 2012 awarded Cbus the contract to develop the riverfront precinct, which houses more than 5000 public servants and ministerial offices, and granted the superannuation fund a 99-year lease over the site. The 1970s-era executive building replaced by the 45-storey 1 William St had carried the state emblem under both conservative and Labor governments.
Since it opened in 2016, rent on 1 William Street has skyrocketed from $48.8m to $74.5m a year. Under standard commercial practice, the Queensland government held the building’s naming rights as the anchor tenant.
A Queensland government spokesman said the decision was made to sell the signage rights to “provide an income to offset the costs for government to use the building”. “It was the LNP who sold off public land and commissioned Cbus to build 1 William Street, a decision Queenslanders are still paying for,” he said.
Neither the Queensland government nor Cbus would provide on-record details of the tender process or its cost.
A Cbus spokeswoman said the company was “appointed by the previous government to develop this building, which is a great example of how Cbus’ investment model creates jobs for locals, delivers world-class infrastructure in our cities while generating strong returns for members”.
The election campaign promises to be a study in contrasts between Mr Miles, 46, a former union official and political adviser who styles himself as the “daggy dad” from suburban Mango Hill on Brisbane’s outer northside, and dapper Mr Crisafulli, the grandson of Italian migrants raised on a sugarcane farm outside smalltown Ingham in north Queensland.
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