It’s hard to know what to fear more: seasonal wild weather that now increasingly kills people or the election season that threatens to make everything worse.
In Queensland, we’ve just had a long anticipated change of government and even though David Crisafulli seems to have perfected the look of someone who wouldn’t bite (unlike his national colleague Peter Dutton) beware.
He’s already promised to put children in jail, thereby pretty well guaranteeing to destroy their life prospects after the Northern Territory proudly/shamefully did the same. And before the week was out, there were the old mates in coal and gas baying for blood – they want the royalties and other taxes they pay to the state for extracting the people’s natural resources back in their own pockets.
Well, they’ve now got a willing listener.
This week, the recriminations and postmortems were underway. But also, a fearful reading of the tea leaves over the Pacific Ocean way to how the US election might go next week.
The biggest fear is that Donald Trump has already won, given the infectious mental disease that he’s unleashed on his own country and most other parts of the world.
On Thursday, pundits said there was already a well organised campaign to challenge the election result should Trump be declared to have lost the election. Brace yourself world.
Back in Oz, distance is still protecting us, but the baffles are peeling away as some of the local pollies, opposition leader Peter Dutton, in particular, gets addicted to the crack cocaine of not giving a damn about consequences.
He’s floated lies about the Voice, nuclear power and fixing the housing crisis by freezing the improvements in building standards.
And he’s only just warming up!
But that’s our view.
To see how other people are reading the outlook, we dropped in this week to a webinar held by GetUp! – a lefty/greenie crowd that we generally agree with.
First, we picked up a bit of general intel.
One was the news (for those of us south of the border) that Crisafulli started out as a member of the fourth estate (a close cousin of TFE, except our estate gathers all the estates in the French – Ancien régime into a single bundle but also adds the planet.)
And being a member of the fourth estate can be good or bad news, given some of its members can be masters of mass manipulation, evidenced by how many of them end up as media advisors to politicians and major corporations.
Another item to note is that Crisafulli told a former ABC reporter that he intends to lead a “centre right government” and refuses to align with the term “conservative government”. At the centre of his policies, he said, was a “100-day battle plan” that included:
- $1 billion to match the former Labor Miles government’s 50 cents public transport fare for the next four years
- stopping “budget blowouts” on public infrastructure
- abolishing stamp duty for all first home buyers in Queensland
- shared equity scheme that will (initially) be open to 1000 people who have a minimum 2 per cent deposit, with the government funding 30 per cent equity in new homes and 25 per cent in existing homes, up to $750,000
- a review of infrastructure for the Brisbane Games within one month of office
- address rental crisis by removing restrictions on first home buyers to rent out a room in the first year of ownership
- unlocking more land for housing through planning and discussion with local government
Energy and the transition
- commitment to deliver 75 per cent emission reduction by 2035, but opposed to Labor’s renewable energy target of 80 per cent by 2035
- refusal to adapt Dutton’s nuclear energy policy
- extending the life of coal plant past 2028 – thinking coal plant should “burn indefinitely” and said he would repeal renewables targets. The state’s current energy and jobs plan has all 8 coal fired power plants slated to be converted to clean energy hubs by 2035.
Other issues:
- cracking down on youth crime: advocating for adult jail time for youth crimes with mandatory minimum sentences for youth offenders and saying he will resign if crime numbers are not reduced. He’s allocated $15 million to the policy this financial year and $45 million a year for the next three years
- more nurses and doctors on local hospital boards
So, what did the assorted 50 or so lefty/greenies think in their meet up with GetUp!?
The debrief started with a mood check, with the climate justice campaign director for the group summarising the consensus this way:
“There’s a sense of heaviness, a sense of anxiety and worry about what this new government in Queensland means for the issues that we care about, that we work in, that we campaign around, and that matter to our communities
“[There is] some really hard fought progress that we now need to defend on the transition and on other things.
“Whether that’s around safety and wellbeing and investment in young people, whether that’s around climate change transitioning beyond coal and a just transition, or whether that is processes for treating and truth telling and progressing that are at risk from the commitments pre-election that the new premier David Crisafulli had made.”
GetUp chief executive Larissa Baldwin-Roberts said the election results were mirrored globally as “it was incredibly hard in this cost-of-living crisis” for the incumbent government to remain in power.
While Queensland had finally experienced its burst of progressive reforms after former Anastasia Palaszczuk stepped down as premier, that was not enough said Baldwin-Roberts.
“People are annoyed and frustrated” over the “different pieces of insecurities around”, which included jobs, the housing crisis, the aftermaths of COVID, and the referendum.”
Since COVID, the federal election, and the referendum, Australia was now moving into a “different space” – one that had been observed in other countries, such as the UK and the US, with growing disinformation, negative fear campaigning and a “broken” information space.
On a more positive note
One optimistic note was that the Queensland election result was not the “conservative government blowout” that many of the group expected, Baldwin-Roberts said, but the Greens losing most of the party’s seats during this election “was indicative around how the federal government is looking at Queensland.”
“Absolutely, those green-held seats really matter to Labor in the federal election, and they are going to come in hot for those seats.”
In her analysis of the election, the Labor government’s win of South Brisbane seats showed Labor that inner-city seats, millennials and those under 55 are willing to reward the party on its progressive policies.
“For a lot of people who are talking about the fact that climate isn’t on the agenda, I think we should be very hopeful for the things we care about that this wasn’t a wipeout [election].”
“We need to get better at how we counter [disinformation]. Where do you put your energy into to dispel disinformation? We did this incredible polling work across the state – constantly talking to voters, and one of the things that came out is that people really believe that the LNP government would privatise a bunch of our energy, and that would lead to cost-of-living increases.”
With Labor’s primary vote being incredibly low during the Queensland election, Baldwin-Robert said the group’s strategy for the federal election would be centred around talking to voters about their preferences – especially during the pre-polling period, which proved to be very popular during the election.
The real concern now seems to be that neither state nor federal LNP parties had any investment in net zero measures.
“We’ve got to get a campaign out there. We’ve got work to do,” Baldwin-Robert said. “There is a lot of green shoots…not just in inner-city suburbs, but also looking into the regions. There’s a lot of commentary around Labor and what kind of policy they put into suburbs and regional areas.”
As for the US election – we wish GetUp! Would be able to say similar things should the Republicans win. But that’s entirely wishful thinking.