Queensland election: Palaszczuk on northern safari as Nicholls pulls economy card

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will today launch an electoral assault on jobs-starved Townsville.

Annastacia Palaszczuk campaigns in Proserpine. Picture: AAP

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will today launch an electoral assault on jobs-starved Townsville, after struggling yesterday to defend her economic record and efforts to pay down the state’s nation-leading debt.

The Liberal National Party opposition yesterday thrust the economy onto the campaign agenda, promising to lift the payroll tax threshold to help small businesses, while Ms Palaszczuk vowed to bolster her bulging public service with thousands of extra nurses.

But Ms Palaszczuk stumbled yesterday when asked about her government’s failure to make a significant dent in the state’s escalating total debt levels, forecast to hit $81 billion by 2020-21 — most of it incurred by former Labor governments.

Despite repeatedly insisting she had used state-owned electricity company dividends to reduce the debt, Ms Palaszczuk could not say by how much she had reduced the state’s debt levels.

Asked for a dollar figure, Ms Palaszczuk said: “I’ll have to get that for you.” Later, her spokesman said $600m of the dividends from all government-owned corporations had been used to pay down debt. More had been used to restore frontline services, he said.

Ms Palaszczuk’s campaign was again derailed by anti-Adani protesters yesterday, prompting her to call for respect from the ­activists after revealing she had been shaken by an intrusion during a live television interview yesterday morning. “I didn’t know whether I was personally going to be tackled — I think we live in a democracy, and people should be respectful,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

Yesterday afternoon the minority Labor Premier flew to Townsville — home to the Indian conglomerate’s corporate headquarters — desperate to use Labor’s backing of Adani’s proposed Galilee coalmine to protect the ALP’s three marginal seats in the north Queensland city.

Under threat from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party are the seats of Townsville (held by Labor on a 5.7 per cent margin), Thuringowa (6.6 per cent) and Mundingburra (1.8 per cent). Support for the protest party is undimmed even in Thuringowa — where One Nation has yet to preselect a candidate and where it defeated Labor at its breakthrough Queensland election in 1998.

While Ms Palaszczuk headed straight for the regions after pulling the trigger on a snap election on Sunday, LNP Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls has remained in southeast Queensland and yesterday tried to re-establish his economic credentials with a payroll-tax pitch to small and medium-sized businesses.

Mr Nicholls promised to lift the payroll tax exemption threshold by $25,000 a year over 10 years.

In Whitsunday — a marginal seat held by the LNP by 0.6 per cent, and also won by One Nation in 1998 — Ms Palaszczuk vowed to spend $167m to hire 3500 nurses, midwives and nurse navigators across four years. The commitment would see the government add an extra 300 nurses to the 3200 needed simply to keep pace with demand by 2021.

The Premier has been criticised for hiring more than 16,000 extra full-time-equivalent public servants during her one term, but she insists the expansion is necessary to restore the 14,000 jobs slashed from the public service when Mr Nicholls was LNP treasurer in the former Newman government.

Under Ms Palaszczuk, the state’s bureaucracy has ballooned to a historic high, employing 217,578 full-time-equivalent staff.

The Premier — who secured minority government in the state’s hung parliament after the last election with the backing of independent Peter Wellington — this time said it was all or nothing, again ruling out governing with the support of One Nation.

“This is all or nothing. It’s either people are going to support what I stand for, or they won’t,” she said on ABC television yesterday.

“I’m prepared to put it all at risk.”

But Mr Nicholls has left the door open to such a deal, while ruling out a formal coalition or giving ministries to Senator Hanson’s Queensland party.

“There is no coalition, no shared ministry and there are no deals with One Nation,” Mr Nicholls said. “We don’t have any deals; in fact, it is abundantly clear One Nation don’t want any deals.”