After handing down her government’s ninth budget last week,driven by a and filled with for residents,Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told a Labor Party fundraising lunch people could feel “it”.
Labor and the LNP are now firmly focused on an election still relatively well down the road.Matt Dennien
The “golden age of opportunity we are all facing” leading into the 2032 Olympics,that is,wrapped up in the government’s,pipeline of hospital builds or upgrades,and put at “risk” by the LNP.
Speaking to another Brisbane conference centre room of important suited types downing alternate-drop chicken or steak on Monday,Treasurer Cameron Dick described the state as an “ideas factory”.
Ministers plan to sell the government’s carefully crafted vision even further afield,even as the LNP Opposition warns of more “chaos and crisis”.
Surveys carried out forBrisbane Times by Resolve Strategic since April 2021 show that among the often slim minority who felt the outlook for the state would change in the next year or so,an increasing majority (32 per cent from January to April) felt things were going to get worse.
On a personal level,“get worse” is even closing in on the “no change” crowd.
The government’s budget and messaging around it appears pitched at part of this mood. There’s even more funding to improve to people’s concerns or ideas.
This has been the subject of and a recent to address problems on the,health and fronts,and the sometimes contradictory pressures stemming from experts,some sections of the community,and the LNP opposition.
But budgets are also a time for the opposition to spell out their own message and vision. Opposition leader David Crisafulli made his own budget-related pitch to voters.
In the almost hour-long address to parliament,the Gold Coast-based MP made a handful of new announcements or commitments in Labor’s problem areas should voters decide to hand his party the keys in just over 16 months.
Some are already committed to by the government,have been recommended by government-led committees or are largely symbolic. Another was a three-step plan to “empower the public sector like never before” by moving away from the use of consultants.
A shift called for in last year’s review of government integrity and accountability itself but quickly seized upon by Labor for its
Crisafulli’s pitch also contained some other key phrases.
Eleven times he used the “chaos and crisis” label his party is now to the Palaszczuk government,in an attempt to paint issues facing Queenslanders as the fault of the Premier alone and not – in many cases – a more complex and politically inconvenient puzzle of national and even global factors,or in which the LNP also played a role.
He then finished trying to temper the tone. “Hope over fear,” Crisafulli declared a government led by him would provide. A platitude likely welcome to most but,so far,undercut by his party.
With Labor and the LNP now firmly focused on an election still relatively well down the road,both are trying to hit the reset button on their public problem areas early – fearing what happens if it doesn’t stick,but hoping it just might.
ICYMI
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