‘Rebuild trust’: LNP leader lays out early poll pitch in budget reply

Queensland LNP leader David Crisafulli has expressed a desire to “rebuild trust in government” in his budget reply speech, announcing a handful of new measures in an early pitch to voters ahead of an election in October next year.

In an almost hour-long address to parliament, the opposition leader touched on pressure-points for the third-term Labor government including health, crime and housing while taking aim at consultants and attempting to shake off long-revisited ghosts of his last stint in power a decade ago.

David Crisafulli has announced a handful of new measures in an almost hour-long speech touching on pressure-points for the third-term Palaszczuk Labor government.Credit: Matt Dennien

“Queenslanders don’t trust the Palaszczuk government to fix the Queensland youth crime crisis, they don’t trust them to fix the Queensland housing crisis, they don’t trust them to fix the health crisis – it’s clear we must rebuild trust in government,” he said.

Crisafulli said an LNP government he led would have a three-step plan to deliver “Australia’s best public service” by redirecting money from the big four professional service firms – KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and EY – to “empower the public service like never before”.

He also announced the LNP would appoint a victim of crime to the Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council, develop a “contemporary Queensland Health Workforce Plan” and make real-time health data available within 100 days of the election.

The purchase of existing properties being lost as part of the National Rental Affordability Scheme wind-up with the state’s Housing Investment Fund would end, and the number of community housing dwellings would be grown annually.

A Victim’s Commissioner, recommended in the second Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce report last year but yet to be appointed, would be put in place within a month of the October 2024 vote if not already there.

Fees for replacing stolen state ID documents would also be scrapped – a measure recommended by a government-controlled parliamentary committee last month.

Crisafulli recalled that when he became opposition leader after the 2020 election, he said his job wasn’t just to hold the government accountable, but to “provide hope and opportunity by charting an alternate vision”.

But Thursday’s speech also saw him lean heavily into the “chaos and crisis” label recently applied in droves to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Labor team.

At one point, Crisafulli veered into commentary often boosted by some media that Palaszczuk had become caught up in the “glitz and glamour” of the job – prompting a call from Palaszczuk for him to withdraw the statement under parliamentary rules, which he did.

The opposition leader said the LNP would support the revenue and expenditure measures outlined in the government’s Tuesday budget, but fell short of the unequivocal support for its higher coal royalty tiers beyond that – a challenge made repeatedly this week.

Crisafulli had given detail of the “line in the sand” to be drawn by his party on the use of consultants on major projects and services to News Corp overnight, in a clear attempt to shake-off the ghosts of the one-term Newman government whose gutting of the public service a decade ago helped drive its downfall and provide scare-campaign fodder for Labor since.

This was down to calculations by the LNP that the government had spent $423 million on contracts with big four firms in the past five years, and comes amid recent scrutiny of their role in the state’s Coaldrake review last year and federal PwC scandal.

Even before Crisafulli stood to deliver his speech on Thursday, Labor government ministers seized on the announcement, with Deputy Premier Steven Miles suggesting the “overhaul” would “send shivers down the spine” of every state public servant.

Speaking immediately after, Miles labelled Crisafulli’s “dirty personal attack” on Palaszczuk “unbecoming” and criticised him for focusing on the negative.

“Queenslanders actually love our state, they want a government that talks up our state, not one that talks our state down,” Miles said.