Queensland election: polls back Labor’s jobs push

Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Labor government has the trust of more Queenslanders to deliver jobs, a key vote-decider in Saturday week’s state election.

 

Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Labor government has the trust of more Queenslanders to deliver jobs, a key vote-decider in Saturday week’s state election and the focus of both major parties’ campaigns.

The Australian’s latest Newspoll shows that 43 per cent of voters believe Ms Palaszczuk and the ALP will be more effective on jobs against 29 per cent for the Liberal National Party under Deb Frecklington.

The finding confirms Labor’s frontrunning position at the midpoint of the election campaign, where it leads the LNP 52-48 on the two-party preferred vote.

Both sides have played up their job creation plans to lift Queensland out of the COVID recession over the expanded four-year term of the next state parliament.

Newspoll shows that the regional voters being aggressively wooed by the LNP are sticking with Ms Palaszczuk on jobs, with 43 per cent saying the Premier would be best-placed to increase employment. Ms Frecklington and her party have 31 per cent support from the regions to deliver jobs, slightly up on the statewide result.

The economic impact of the pandemic hit hardest outside Brisbane, especially in the tourism hubs of the Gold Coast and Cairns.

The Gold Coast lost 5 per cent of its workforce between March and September this year. Cairns had employment drop by 4.6 per cent, while on the Sunshine Coast it was down 4.3 per cent.

Another big shedder of jobs is Brisbane’s CBD where employment dropped by 4.7 per cent between March and September, largely in the food services industry.

This reflected a slump in cafe and restaurant trade, even though Brisbane escaped the lengthy restrictions on movement that have brought Melbourne to a standstill.

Between March and September, the number of people working in the accommodation and food sectors — which is largely tourism — dropped by 11 per cent in Queensland and 17.2 per cent nationally.

That national figure is massively boosted by Victoria, where the number of people working in cafes and restaurants dropped by 31.1 per cent over the same period.

But as more and more areas lift their restrictions the number of people working in this sector is going up.

While the national fall in the number of people employed in accommodation and food services – largely cafes and restaurants – was large, a subsequent increase of 5.5 per cent from September 5 to 19 ­indicated that people who lost their jobs in this sector were returning to work.

The regions in Queensland least affected by the economic fallout of COVID-19 were central Queensland and the Darling Downs, dependent on mining and agriculture.

Unemployment figures released last week show that the state has the highest unemployment rate in the country, at 7.7 per cent, but the number of people who returned to work was greatest — 32,000 in the past month.

The main reason was that the participation rate in Queensland, 65.5 per cent, was higher than most other states, but more importantly, Queensland had the highest rise in participation rate of any state or territory in that month.

Economist Gene Tunny said that Queensland’s public sector had been stable through the pandemic and that had steadied the state’s job market, but he expected future employment growth to come from tourism as travel restrictions were lifted.

He said the headline unemployment figure was concerning, “but that rise in the participation rate shows that there is a renewed confidence in Queensland, where people are coming back into the workforce and looking to get into jobs again”.

LNP leader Deb Frecklington said that if her side won office, it would set an unemployment target of 5 per cent.

“Queensland is used to be being bottom of the unemployment table, but it is shocking that this state is still performing worse than Victoria where the economy is still in lockdown,” she said.