Labor’s negative message overpowers LNP

The election result was bad for Queensland, bad for Australia and a sobering result for the major parties and One Nation.

The election result on Saturday was bad for Queensland, bad for Australia and a sobering result for the major parties and One Nation.

I say that the result is bad for the community because it’s a further illustration that voters are totally disillusioned with what politicians and parties are offering.

People desperately want certain issues fixed but they know in their heart of hearts that they are only being served up superficial campaign slogans.

Naturally, therefore, they rejected the lack of leadership.

It appears likely the Premier has achieved a historic political victory and will gain a majority in her own right. As I feared at the outset, the formidable campaign machine of Queensland Labor has once again prevailed.

Yes, “a win is a win”, and the ALP has won, but not with any positive vision or sense of leadership. Labor won through a ruthless and effective negative campaign centred around Tim Nicholls’s role in Newman government cuts and the spectre of deals with One Nation.

The LNP is yet to develop any effective counter to this sort of campaigning.

It is, however, a perilous situation for both major parties when your primary vote has dropped and your opponents on the left and right are picking up the disaffected.

One Nation ran a spasmodic campaign punctuated with incidents such as the Fraser Anning defection reinforcing negative perceptions. On election day, senior people were telling members of the media that they were going to “win big”, with 15 seats coming their way. This lack of reality was on public display that night with Pauline Hanson refusing to acknowledge the actual scoreboard.

Just as Hanson was in denial on election night, so too were senior LNP and One Nation figures in denial about the opinion polls.

For the LNP, which conducted a whitewash of a review post-2015, it’s time to take a large dose of reality and face up to what really went wrong in this election.

My key thought on what has happened is that if you leave a vacuum then the other side will define you. Gough Whitlam’s government was wiped out in December 1975 but today is popularly seen as visionary and reformist. Why is that? Because the Labor Party never stopped talking about the positive things that had been done.

Sure, an apology needed to be made in the wake of the 2015 election but the apparent repudiation of everything achieved between 2012 and 2015 only enhanced Labor’s negative campaign.

Similarly, the small-target strategy adopted by Nicholls and his team meant the community didn’t know him and the ALP were able to define him in the way it wanted.

There are many things that the LNP will need to do to rebuild. Putting in place strong leadership, building a solid team with the necessary skills, rebuilding relationships with the business community and engaging with key stakeholders. It’s not complicated but it will involve hard work.

If the LNP is prepared to build the team, develop the policies and show some energy, passion and commitment, plus hold a poor Labor government to account, it will be competitive at the next election.

Campbell Newman was Liberal National Party premier of Queensland from 2012-15.