Opinion: This ‘meh’ election campaign is exactly what the LNP wants

We are approaching the halfway mark of the state election campaign, but unless you’re a political tragic you would hardly have noticed, writes Cameron Milner.

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli is avoiding the real issues at any cost. Picture: Liam Kidston

The passionless nature of the Queensland state election so far has been a deliberate strategy of the LNP, with David Crisafulli absolutely determined to copy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s small-target success in the 2022 federal poll.

And credit where it is due. The Opposition Leader has been ultra-disciplined (although that’s pretty easy when you don’t have anything to actually say).

However he is failing to understand that Queenslanders traditionally reward strong leadership and bold visions. Think Peter Beattie with Smart State or Annastacia Palaszczuk locking our borders and keeping Queenslanders safe from Covid-19.

Being a small target is not the Queensland way. I get that it can win you an election if the incumbent is on the nose, but as we see on a daily basis federally, it lays the worst possible groundwork for governing going forward.

We face hard decisions ahead as a state, regardless of who forms government after October 26.

We have huge issues like having enough housing supply, funding and building critical infrastructure, even before we somehow afford the massive Olympics expenditure that is going to be necessary no matter what the leaders are saying.

Queensland raises more in taxes than ever before and has more debt than ever before. It is an unsustainable path.

Yet the politics of fiscal constraint, asset sales or sacking public servants who are surplus to requirements are all politically off the table.

Premier Steven Miles. Picture: Adam Head

This is a direct function of small-target politics, and of Labor being under no pressure from the LNP courtesy of their “us too” Budget endorsements.

The focus of voters meanwhile lie elsewhere – for them it is all about cost of living first, second and third. And as this is the only issue on voters’ minds, it is little wonder politicians of all persuasions follow rather than lead.

There’s simply no electoral reward for discussing the uncomfortable truth that as a society we are living beyond our means in the midst of the personal recession that has left many struggling to just cover the next grocery bill.

This election could’ve been an opportunity for voters to decide on our Olympics expenditure, and to give a mandate for a real plan on it.

Instead, we have one guy supporting a 40-year-old Commonwealth Games venue with no transport links, and the other guys apparently wanting to keep the dramatically undersized Gabba with just a lick of paint. Neither option is going to work.

We should be having more of a public debate about how the CFMEU managed to blow pay rates through the roof so that traffic controllers get paid $250,000 a year, and why it costs Queensland billions more to build the same road, bridge or hospital as anywhere else in Australia. The BPIC policy simply has to go.

Treasurer Cameron Dick. Picture: Adam Head

We have the largest public service on record, but the actual services we receive as Queenslanders are now some of the worst in Australia. Ever more seem to do even less for the rest of us.

These and so many other debates are in the too-hard basket.

Queenslanders will have to wait for an incoming Crisafulli government to have this conversation, but they too are haunted by the ghost of Campbell Newman – who blew the state’s biggest ever winning margin after just 30 months in office.

Queenslanders have seen the impact of slash-and-burn government, but for all of our sake we do need to have a mature conversation after October 27 about how we balance the books and more sustainably manage the Budget without resorting to taxing success, as Treasurer Cameron Dick has done through his unprecedented increases to coal royalties.

But for the next 16 days, no politician will want to spook the horses.

The LNP would rather voters die of boredom between now and hitting the polling booth, because speaking about the economic reality will just open the door for Labor to run the mother of all fear campaigns and startle voters into reluctantly keeping Labor in office for another term.

As it is, we are now approaching the halfway mark of the Queensland state election campaign, and unless you are a political tragic you would hardly have noticed.

Only political tragics would know there’s an election campaign happening. Picture: Dan Peled/NCA NewsWire

Queensland voters still don’t seem awake to the campaign proper or are just too busy with cost of living pressures to particularly care.

Actual voting opens next Monday and Labor and the LNP will hold their formal campaign launches across the weekend in anticipation of trying to breathe some life and vigour into the campaign.

Steven Miles and David Crisafulli are both committed politicians, both are no doubt working long hours and out there meeting voters, but you just get the sense that voters have already made up their minds.

Voters have resolved without malice or anger that it is time for a change and no matter what they hear or see they’ve assessed that the LNP aren’t that much of a risk and probably deserve a turn.

This certainly isn’t like 2012, when a deeply unpopular Premier Anna Bligh was playing Thelma with her foot stuck to the floor, careening towards an electoral cliff.

It isn’t even 1995, when Labor’s Wayne Goss faced Queenslanders sitting on their verandas with baseball bats waiting to thump Paul Keating at the ballot box.

This isn’t the emphatic rejection of the Albanese Voice to Parliament, where Queenslanders started a revolution that changed the rest of the nation when Queenslanders didn’t just say no, they said hell no.

Nah, this election for Labor is the “meh” election. And that’s just how the LNP wants it.

Cameron Milner is a former Queensland ALP state secretary

Originally published as Opinion: This ‘meh’ election campaign is exactly what the LNP wants