Lock up criminally minded children and teach them a firm lesson. Mind your cars, mind your keys. Chat about the Olympics and moan about whether stadia should be built or refurbished. Mumble about water, dams, and roads. Bridges for cassowaries that are not used by those magnificent yet inconsiderate birds. Marvel at members of parliament with duplicate names such as Grace Grace.

Clichés so clotted they would build the tower of Babel, including a nice touch by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: a presenter dressed in garish pink blending into the counting board and talking down to her audience.

Queensland did what it almost always does in elections: provoke, confute, and confuse the pundits. It remains, at heart, politically contradictory. As one of Australia’s most conservative states, it also produced one of the world’s first socialist governments, if only for a week, in 1899. With acid sharpness, a certain Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, scornful of a workers’ party that left capitalism fundamentally untouched, gave a summation of the Australian Labor Party and, inadvertently, its Queensland legacy in June 1913: “The Australian Labor Party does not even call itself a socialist party. Actually it is a liberal-bourgeois party, while the so-called Liberals in Australia are really conservatives.”

During this election cycle, the retrograde aspect of politics featured. Reducing the age of criminal responsibility in the face of a confected youth crime wave, crowned by the brittle Liberal National Party slogan “adult crime, adult time”. The possibility that abortion would be re-criminalised were it to be introduced as a private member’s bill. The feeling that the Labor government had run out of steam after nine years and was ready to be retired to the opposition benches.

As the count continued, Queensland again baffled. There was no slaughter of the incumbents at the ballot box. No massacre of the stale, or wholesale removal of dead wood. The trends even muddled the high priest psephologist of Australian elections, Antony Green.

The evening had those usual irritations in Australian politics. There were “categorical” assertions that any incoming government would not be shared with minor parties (this hatred is unique to the Westminster types in the Anglo-Australian world). Indeed, it gave the cognoscenti a chance to attack such minor parties as the Greens, whose strongholds were being eroded by Labor gains. “The Greens only want to attack the Labor Party,” came the assessment by one of the electoral wags, Kos Samaras.

False comparisons were teased and squeezed. What does the state of federal politics say about these results? Almost nothing – but every state election draws out false commentary like vultures to carrion. Why did the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, not make more visits to the sunshine state to give more visible support for Queensland Labor? Why, for that matter, did the federal opposition leader Peter Dutton not do the same?

As the evening wore on, it became clear that David Crisafulli of the LNP would be Queensland’s 41st premier. A sufficient number of Queenslanders had been frightened enough by the spectre of marauding youths breaking into homes and making off with the family silver.

Labor’s Steven Miles then made a concession speech that was nothing of the sort. He seemed delighted for a leader who had lost, proudly declaring that his counterpart had “ducked and weaved and tied himself into the tiniest, smallest target Queensland had ever seen.” This was something sweeter than victory. It was defeat flecked with celebratory bubbles. Samaras offered a different reading. “Labor is now losing elections via a different pathway. Loss of low-income electorates, some of which they have held for over a century.”

Miles’ non-concession speech was frowned upon. True, he had contained the flood, ensuring Labor remains a formidable opposition force. He clearly fancies his chances as a premier-in-waiting. But an absence of grace rarely augurs well for Australian politicians. Cockiness never goes unpunished. On Sky News Australia, Labor elder statesman and former spear carrier Graham Richardson called it “graceless” and “pathetic”, a true “boofheaded performance”. Queensland LNP Senator James McGrath described it as “ugly, ugly politics.”

To his credit, Crisafulli returned the serve with lethal grace. He thanked his opponent in both his previous role as deputy premier and as premier. He spoke to his opponent’s family and empathised with Labor’s electoral losses. “To think that a son of a factory worker could be the 40th premier of this state tells you everything you need to know about how great Queensland is.”

A great Australian tradition then played out – that is, if you were watching the ABC. Rather than leaving it to the officially designated electoral commission to call the results as a matter of law, the journalists deferred to High Priest Green with sycophantic predictability.

A nice note to finish up on, one that always happens when journalists need to invent a story before the fact. “Cameron Dick, would you like to be leader?” came the fatuous question from David Speers to Queensland’s now ex-treasurer. “I will let this wash through,” came the reply. In the wash, he did speak about the importance of honour and service – a sure sign that Dick is ready for a challenge.

https://johnmenadue.com/the-queensland-contradiction-reflections-on-a-state-election/

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