Palaszczuk hopes for brutal vote that drove LNP from office

If ever there was an accidental premier, it could well be Annastacia Palaszczuk.

Annastacia Palaszczuk on election night 2015. Picture: Adam Head

It’s worth remembering where Annastacia Palaszczuk came from before contemplating how she plans to win the November 25 state election in Queensland.

Full credit to the Labor Premier. She’s a fighter whose tenacity and fortitude was sorely tested in those dog days for the ALP after the 2012 election reduced it to a rump of seven MPs in a parliament of 89.

Ms Palaszczuk, 48, was the most senior ministerial survivor when voters lowered the boom on nearly 14 years of Labor government under Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh. Campbell Newman’s record majority seemed set to deliver the Liberal National Party a lengthy stretch in power, with Tim Nicholls pulling the financial levers as treasurer.

But the wheels came off the Newman project just as Ms Palaszczuk found her feet as opposition leader. She out-campaigned the LNP premier in 2015, who lost his seat, and won the race to stitch together a minority government when both major parties fell short of an outright majority. If ever there was an accidental premier, it could well be Ms Palaszczuk.

Her record in office has been patchy. Where Mr Newman charged at reform, slashing public service numbers and pursuing a cumbersome mechanism to lease state assets to free up funds for debt reduction — the term privatisation is too hot in Queensland for either side to touch — Ms Palaszczuk has been caution personified.

She points to strong economic growth of 3.9 per cent and falling unemployment as benchmarks of her government’s performance. But state debt is set to hit $80 billion by 2021; Ms Palaszczuk has slowed the rate at which it is ­accumulating, but the debt burden remains a drag on the budget.

The public service, meanwhile, has ballooned by more than 16,000 full-time-equivalent places since 2015, surpassing the number shown the door by Mr Newman.

Ms Palaszczuk insists the new jobs are mostly in frontline roles such as police, teachers and ambulance officers, needed to restore services that she accuses the LNP of trashing. The opposition rejects this, saying it’s another example of how the Labor government is in the pocket of unions.

The daughter of a minister in the Beattie government, Henry Palaszczuk, whose seat she took over, and granddaughter of a ­Polish migrant, Ms Palaszczuk’s approach is low-key and consultative, a departure from the combative MO more typical of Queensland premiers.

An arts-law graduate from Queensland University, she also holds a master of arts degree from the University of London and a diploma of legal practice from the Australian National University. She trod the well-worn path of the apparatchik, working her way up through a succession of Labor ministerial offices before entering state parliament in 2008. Twice-divorced, she is childless and shares her home life in Brisbane with a live-in partner. Queensland voters seem to have warmed to Ms Palaszczuk’s unassuming style, in soothing contrast to the abrasive Mr Newman. The opinion polls reinforce the view that she is the best thing going for an otherwise lacklustre government.

Mr Nicholls’ problem is that he has not taken more bark off Labor heading into the election the Premier called yesterday, after months of will-she, won’t-she speculation. The latest Newspoll for The Australian gives Labor 52 per cent of the vote after preferences, four points clear of the LNP; Ms Palaszczuk heads Mr Nicolls as preferred premier 43-33 per cent.

One explanation lies in Mr Newman’s astonishing fall from grace: Mr Nicholls was his right-hand man, and Labor is not about to let the voters forget it, hoping they haven’t put away the baseball bat they took to the LNP at the last election. Still, Mr Nicholls evident lack of cut-through is puzzling. As treasurer, he was an effective communicator who presented as being comfortably across his brief — which is more than can be said of his successor, Labor’s Curtis Pitt.

A solicitor, he earned his law degree at the Queensland University of Technology and cut his teeth in politics as a Brisbane city councillor before switching to state parliament for the then Queensland Liberals in 2006.

Married with three children, he represents the well-heeled electorate of Clayfield in Brisbane’s leafy inner-north. Mr Nicholls, 52, did not contest the leadership after the LNP’s shock 2015 defeat; his time came in May 2016 when the Liberal Nationals turned on veteran Lawrence Springborg because of his static polling.

With his Treasury experience, Mr Nicholls was supposed to be better able to take the fight to Labor where it mattered most, the economy. Perhaps he has been saving his powder for this campaign.

The worry for the LNP is that the ground shifted when Pauline Hanson re-emerged at the federal election in July last year. Mr Springborg, a former Queensland Nationals leader who hails from a farming background, might well have played better with country and regional voters than the ­urbane Mr Nicholls. And that’s a telling consideration in this election. One Nation will hurt both major parties outside metropolitan Brisbane, where the key swing seats are up for grabs.

Mr Nicholls must prevail here, and Annastacia Palaszczuk knows it. Gympie, Maryborough, Bundaberg, Gladstone, Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville and Cairns have featured heavily in both leaders’ travel during the long build-up to the campaign.

Labor won the 2015 state election in regional Queensland — and those same calculations will apply this time around.