Crisafulli hopes he’s shed the ‘new’ government tag. That has its own risk
Across a week of speeches, the first-term premier marked halftime in the election cycle with plenty of talk. Will voters continue to like what they hear – and see?
Crisafulli himself seemed to acknowledge that on Wednesday. Asked when his team would shed the “new” and just become the Queensland government, Crisafulli said: “well, I hope we did that today”.
New policy is where the carefully crafted moderate pre-election image, dutifully maintained with its “calm and methodical” tagline since, most threatens to come unstuck. (Newman, anyone?)
The view under that layer, seemingly peeling back with each month this year, looks a little different. Political speech has been criminalised, objecting to mining projects has been made harder, major planning and land use powers expanded, and the state’s bail regime tightened, despite warnings about adverse impacts on the rule of law, court system, and community safety.
Then there’s the foray into a serious rebalancing of the state’s industrial relations system after a bruising set of negotiations with major public service workforces that spilled over into industrial action in schools, railways, hospitals, youth detention centres and child safety offices.
