Queensland election: Labor’s pre-poll crime drive ‘a convenient coincidence’

A major police operation targeting recidivist property offenders in must-win electorates in Townsville has been labelled a ‘convenient coincidence’ by anti-crime advocates.

LNP candidate for Mundingburra Glenn Doyle. Picture: Cameron Laird

A major police operation targeting recidivist property offenders in must-win electorates in Townsville, announced two weeks out from the start of the election campaign, has been labelled a “convenient coincidence” by anti-crime advocates in the city.

Operation Sierra Silhouette was announced on September 15 in a press release by Police Minister Mark Ryan and Labor MPs Aaron Harper and Scott Stewart, which also spruiked the government’s attempts to fix the crime issue that has dogged the region in recent years.

Mr Ryan and Queensland police have denied the election had any effect on the timing of the operation, which closed on Tuesday with a press release announcing 102 adults and 23 juveniles had been charged with 478 offences.

“I think it’s a convenient coincidence,” said Jeff Adams from the One Community One Standard group set up to lobby government action on crime in north Queensland. “This has got to be at the forefront of the election campaign. Crime up here keeps getting worse, and the vigilantes are getting worse.”

Just as it proved crucial in last year’s federal election, Townsville, where Premier Annastacia Palas­zczuk flew into on Wednesday, is shaping up as a key battleground in the Queensland campaign.

The federal seat of Herbert was the nation’s most marginal seat in 2019, while in this year’s state contest the seat of Townsville takes that title with a razor-thin margin of 0.38 per cent. Labor lost Herbert to the LNP in 2019 and that party will fancy its chances of a similar victory on October 31.

The battle for Townsville and its adjacent electorates of Thuringowa (4.1 per cent) and Mundingburra (1.1 per cent) proved crucial for Ms Palaszczuk’s victory in 2015, when the three LNP-held seats swung to Labor.

The LNP has focused on the city’s chronic crime issue to win votes, preselecting serving police Inspector Glenn Doyle and Crime Stoppers chair Natalie Marr alongside John Hathaway, who held the seat for the LNP until 2015. To the south, in the seat of Burdekin, the LNP MP is another former policeman, Dale Last.

Mr Doyle said voters would “see through” the timing of the police operation “at five minutes to midnight” before the election.

He said it was no coincidence LNP candidates in the region had been influenced by frustrations in trying to stem crime in the city and Labor’s perceived “weak” stance on crime. “It was a frustration on a daily basis that I felt and that I felt from talking to my fellow officers,” he said. “There seemed to be a number of fixes that we could look at to address things but nothing was happening.

“Instead of enforcing the law, I wanted to get into a position where I could change the law.”

The LNP vows to overhaul the youth justice system within 100 days if it wins the poll by toughening bail and mand­atory detention.

Griffith University political expert Paul Williams said winning in Townsville was crucial. “It’s very difficult to govern without those three seats,” Dr Williams said. “It’s like the can­ary in the coalmine — if voters aren’t happy there, they’re not happy elsewhere. If working-class, regional Queensland spits the dummy, those sorts of seats are vulnerable.”

In September, Labor committed to providing 2025 police throughout Queensland, 150 of them in the northern district.

Thuringowa MP Aaron Harper said the government’s “five-point plan” was yielding results. “We will continue to work hard on the frontline in arresting ­people who do the wrong thing while tackling the issue at its core by trying to break the cycle as no amount of crime is acceptable.”

Townsville MP Scott Stewart said the government had delivered 104 police officers for Townsville since 2015.