Paul Murray: Why the Queensland election could be sign of things to come for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

Queenslanders go to the polls next month and their decision will have ramifications for the not-so-distant WA and Federal elections. Like WA, Queensland is a resources-dependent State with plenty of cause to worry about the wealth-destroying actions of the Albanese Government, which is dragging down Labor’s vote everywhere. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is making one misstep after another, as he stumbles this week over the Government’s renewed interest in ending negative gearing shows, unable to shake off the dismal legacy of a year wasted on a failed referendum that he championed. The underlying issues are linked. It’s about trust. In Queensland, a Premier who dominated the State during the pandemic was shown the door by the unions and her replacement — demeaningly nicknamed Giggles — just doesn’t cut the mustard. Sound familiar? WA’s lauded COVID-era Premier walked away for a lucrative corporate life without being pushed, but his hapless replacement wasn’t even wanted by his own party faction. Roger Cook cobbled together enough union support — including from the now-reviled CFMEU — to fall over the line. And he’s been falling ever since. Cook’s in the same boat as Victoria’s Jacinta Allen, previously a loyal deputy to another dominant Labor premier, but who is also struggling while facing the same challenges their predecessors just waved away. Queensland’s Steven “Giggles” Miles will be the first of the pandemic deputies to face the music when that State goes to the polls on October 26. Cook is not that long after, March 8. Albanese gets to pick the date of his reckoning, likely sometime later next year. What Labor desperately wants to avoid is any rout in Queensland being seen as the start of a national trend. It would be a sign that the politics of fear that reigned during the pandemic and the insidious web that Federal Labor constructed around Liberal former prime minister Scott Morrison have been flushed out of the system. That would remove any cover for Labor’s failures on the cost-of-living crisis, the fight with the Reserve Bank on inflation, the huge increase in power prices caused by its energy transition policies and the unprecedented inflow of one million migrants over two years, supercharging the housing emergency. The latest Newspoll shows Queensland Labor is trailing the LNP Opposition 55-45. That would likely translate into the loss of about 20 seats, with Labor ending up with just 31 in the 93-seat single chamber parliament. So the poll could mark a significant shift in post-COVID sentiment that will further spook Labor strategists worried about the party’s declining national primary vote. They face the prospect of the Albanese Government losing seats in Queensland when it needs to win some to avoid minority government and the consequent policy demands of the Greens, combined with however many teal independents survive. The desperation was also clear to see in Albanese’s ridiculous whistle-stop visit to WA this week where a similar outcome firms. The Prime Minister arrived to celebrate little more than a concrete pour, courtesy of the taxpayer cash he has tipped into Labor’s $8 billion over-budget Metronet project, seemingly oblivious it might end up as an electoral liability, emblematic of misguided spending priorities. However, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has so far been unable to steer declining support for Albanese into an election-winning primary vote. Dutton would not be the first Liberal leader written off as unelectable to put Labor to the sword. John Howard, Tony Abbott — and Morrison. Dutton has held the marginal Brisbane seat of Dickson since 2001 — winning by only 217 votes in 2009 — but managed to build a solid personal following that has warded off some strong swings against the LNP. That suggests the more voters get to know him, at least Queenslanders, the better he does. His electoral game plan appears very similar to Abbott’s against Kevin Rudd in 2013, having seen off Julia Gillard as prime minister the year before and dispatching her “misogyny” speech, which was a precursor to the tactics Labor later used against Morrison. The playbook was to oppose everything and pick off the government on its weak points. Policy-wise, Abbott offered little other than “stop the boats” and the repeal of the carbon tax Gillard had promised not to introduce. Where Dutton has diverged is in the almost quixotic and unusually early promise to build nuclear power plants around the nation to underpin the shortfalls in promised renewable energy post-coal under Labor’s plans. While Dutton is frustrating many supporters of nuclear power by too slowly releasing details and costings, it suggests he thinks Albanese’s primary vote crisis will favour a late election. The last constitutionally allowable date is September 27, next year. So plenty of time? More importantly, Labor’s knee-jerk opposition to the nuclear plan and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s lack of credibility in his attacks and his bloviating about renewables are starting to run against the tide internationally. This week, 14 of the world’s biggest banks — including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi and Morgan Stanley — collectively pledged to fund the building of enough plants to treble the world’s output of nuclear power by 2050. That blows out of the water the claims by Albanese and Bowen that no one would fund new nuclear power plants. Nuclear currently provides 10 per cent of global electricity. The banks were backing a nuclear surge pledge by 22 countries at the CoP28 climate summit in Dubai last year, which included Labor’s usual socialist policy pin-up, Sweden, the homeland of Greta Thunberg. “It is time to take concrete action towards necessary expansion of nuclear energy,” Sweden’s Minister for Energy and Deputy Prime Minister, Ebba Busch, said this week. “The Swedish Government is exploring a proposed financing model which includes government-backed loans, contracts-for-difference and risk-sharing mechanisms. “The aim of the proposal is to significantly improve the conditions for nuclear new build in Sweden and with it, a more sustainable future.” Last month, a Swedish Government study proposed that state aid be given to companies for investments in new nuclear power generation. Legislation will soon allow it. Labor here refuses even to drop the legislated ban on nuclear power for clearly spurious grounds. Further undermining the Albanese Government’s position is that America’s so-called Big Tech now sees nuclear as the most logical way of providing the massive amounts of carbon-free power it needs for the AI revolution. And that has led Microsoft to do a deal to reopen a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant so it can buy energy for the next two decades, having invested heavily in a partnership with ChatGPT’s OpenAI. The irony is extreme. Three Mile Island is one of the bogeys used by anti-nuclear dopes like Bowen on the basis of an accident there 45 years ago. So yesterday. If Dutton and his energy spokesman Ted O’Brien can’t fashion a cogent campaign from those repudiations of Labor’s nuclear stance, then they have no chance in the fight ahead. Similarly, Labor’s dalliance with negative gearing this week suggests they learnt nothing from Bill Shorten’s loss of the unloseable election in 2019. Why would Jim Chalmers want to drag Albanese down this policy dead end other than to appease the Greens who have demanded the government “wind back” negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts in return for passing its housing fund legislation? That’s a preview of the dangers of the Greens tail wagging the Labor dog. Meanwhile, Albanese continues to attack the Greens as extremists, while ignoring the reality that he will depend on them to form a government — unless he loses outright. As a sign of things to come, the extremists put out a statement saying the news reports on negative gearing showed “Labor is cracking under pressure from the Greens.” Hubristic already. All of this is causing much handwringing among the ABC’s chattering classes. Auntie’s Canberra correspondent, Brett Worthington, reported online an email he received from a member of the public about her “disappointment with Albo”. “In the body of the email, she goes further, writing about a sense of despair at the prospect of Dutton for Prime Minister,” he wrote. “She’s not alone. In a different state and among another generation, two fellow Labor-voting women concede they’re disheartened with the state of affairs. “Their unrealistic hope is for Foreign Minister Penny Wong to shift from the Senate to the Lower House to take charge. “Then there’s the 30-something who concedes that ‘Albo is making it tough to like him’, after the PM made a pronoun joke that left few, if anyone, laughing.” Apparently the Opposition complained about the PM calling Dutton “he” instead of using his correct parliamentary title. Albanese responded: “Anything is possible on that side, I didn’t know he was a ‘they’, but anything is possible.” The Greens and the ABC were outraged. The line would probably win Albanese votes in Queensland. Who said satire is dead?

Paul Murray: Why the Queensland election could be sign of things to come for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

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