The new year set to reveal more about the new state government

Much has been written and said about the platform the LNP took to the recent state election which swept them to government in Queensland for the first time in a decade.

Ultimately, it was a pitch largely made to reassure the public, rather than outline any major long-term vision.

One made to reassure voters the team was neither the recent Labor government nor the prior Newman one, in key areas, while not going out on too long a limb for fear of it being sawn off and dropping them back into a fifth spell in opposition.

The LNP’s election pitch coalesced into three documents over the past year: The Right Priorities, The Right Plan, and its most detailed, The First 100 Days. What comes next will begin to show the path for the next four years.Credit: Joe Ruckli

A series of smaller targets and a handful of much bigger (in places, contentious) ones – particularly on crime – were laid out. Many of these were done, or are to be done, in the first 100 days.

That roadmap takes us to, roughly, February, when parliament returns from its summer break. What then for a government whose leader says it wants to be generational?

The past two months since the election have been about the LNP largely doing what it said it would do (and not doing what it said it wouldn’t), along with surfacing major project cost blowouts blamed on Labor.

The next six and 12 will be, in part, a continuation of this: the items not already ticked off the 100-day plan, plus early work on other election promises like getting a Productivity Commission running again to turn its powers to the building industry, or a public register for some sex offenders.

But it will also veer into an area largely beyond the campaign – or any: things the new government didn’t say it would or wouldn’t do.

Among this category we can count the “warts and all” mid-financial year budget update delayed from December, a second round of “Making Queensland Safer” laws tied to the sex offender register and yet to be detailed (but with likely elements hinted at).

A series of reviews and inquiries have also been set up to probe areas from domestic violence helplines to the 2032 Games plan, driving recommendations and action. A federal election due by May will also set the state and federal-relations landscape for this state parliamentary term.

Which brings us to the June budget. After waving through most of Labor’s last effort before it even landed, the LNP will now have to set about building its own set-piece economic and political document. One that will have to set an initial course for its full four-year term in power.

For the Labor opposition, its response to government actions beyond those accepted as part of the election mandate will also give the first major tests – and insights – of its four-year effort to win power back.

Fronting journalists on Thursday, in the first government media conference of 2025, Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie was asked a buzzer beater about any New Year’s resolutions he’d made.

“I could keep you here all day,” Bleijie offered in response, before settling for a purely political one.

“I hope that we can show that we will target the big issues that matter to Queensland over the next 12 months – health, housing, law and order, and the cost of living.

“And we’ll continue focusing on those four issues and those four priorities because those four issues were the issues that mattered to Queenslanders.”

Given the government pinned its election pitch on responding to those four “crises” (as they were previously labelled), Queenslanders will be waiting to see what else is on the table.

Heads up

• For the next six of those 12 months, I’ll be watching things likely a little less closely from home on parental leave with a now six-month old child. As newsworthy and professionally interesting as a new government might be, the chance to spend some serious time with our first little one wins my vote any day. (I’ll be back on deck before what’s promised to be a revamped budget estimates in late July.)

Catch up

• And speaking of the federal election: things are gearing up around our patch. The LNP have picked former Morrison government assistant minister Trevor Evans to recontest the Brisbane seat he lost to Steven Bates in the 2022 Greenslide. This time, the Coalition also faces heat from community-based independent campaigns with candidates on the ground in two Sunshine Coast-based seats (Fairfax and Fisher), on the Gold Coast (McPherson), and again in Toowoomba (Groom).