Queensland’s lawmaking activity slides to decades-long low

As Queenslanders return to work, action on the floor of state parliament is still a month off. And the government has hosed down routine opposition calls for MPs to return early – this time over youth justice.

Acting premier Steven Miles told reporters on Wednesday the recently announced measures needing new or tweaked laws would probably be drafted and consulted on only by the time parliament was set to resume anyway.

Queensland MPs voting on the Palaszczuk government’s voluntary assisted dying bill in 2021.Credit: Matt Dennien

“If [Opposition Leader] David Crisafulli had felt so strongly about this, why didn’t he introduce a private members bill last year or the year before?” Miles said, referencing the lack of legislation brought forward by the LNP.

But parliamentary data shows the number of bills introduced by both sides of government had almost halved since 2009, with MPs also sitting for about 100 fewer hours last year compared with the most recent peak in 2010.

While parliament did not escape the disruption wreaked by COVID-19, the data shows a downward trend had begun since at least a decade before the pandemic.

University of Queensland political historian Chris Salisbury said that even considering the standard dips in activity during election years, and jumps after changes of government, the decline in bills being passed had reached “historical low levels”.

Former Speaker and Labor MP John Mickel, who sat in parliament from 1998 to 2012, said he believed the shift could be attributed to a years-long “hollowing-out” of public service policymaking processes.

In Queensland, he said, this could be traced back to staff departures beginning under the Bligh government and escalated under the one-term Newman government of 2012-2015.

Thousands of senior public servants were sacked during that era and two back-to-back landslide elections forced a significant turnover of MPs on both sides of politics, sparking the creation of Labor-aligned think tank the TJ Ryan Foundation to “fill the void”.

Salisbury said given Palaszczuk government efforts to strengthen the public service, he expected this should be “back to ... what it was” before the Newman era, but conceded there may have been more profound effects.

He said that after eight years in power – the longest government since Peter Beattie’s almost 10-year run – the figures could also provide a reflection of recent accusations about a declining Labor policy agenda.

“I think there is a narrative about some reanimation of the policy drive of this government that is required,” Salisbury said.

Since coming to power in 2015, the state government has embarked on a slow roll-out of reforms in areas such as voluntary assisted dying and abortion, with more under way around the sex work industry and establishing a treaty with First Nations people.

There is also a list of complex governance and justice reform to be legislated.

Queensland differs greatly from other Australian jurisdictions, with only a single house to deal with bills and other business.

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