Labor has a Queensland problem. Albanese needs to study Palaszczuk’s playbook
By David Crowe
Australia is about to lose one of its most successful but least acclaimed political leaders.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has spent nine years trouncing her rivals and showing her Labor allies how to win and hold wary voters, while leaders in the southern states usually gained more attention.
Artwork:Credit: Aresna Villanueva
Her record is formidable. She was the first woman to lead an Opposition into power at a state or federal level. She gained that victory in 2015 after her party had been reduced to just seven members in parliament. Then she won the next two elections.
Her success in Queensland is a template for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese if he wants to increase his majority at the end of his first term – because that is exactly what she did in a notoriously difficult state.
Palaszczuk does not reshape national policy with her departure. As she noted on Sunday, the faces at national cabinet have changed and a renewal is under way. The peak group is led by Albanese with premiers such as Jacinta Allan from Victoria, Chris Minns from NSW and Peter Malinauskas from South Australia.
There is a new team at the table and all of them have ascended to national cabinet in the past two years. Palaszczuk is the last of the old team to leave. Her resignation completes the transition from the leadership that took Australia through the pandemic – former prime minister Scott Morrison and former premiers like Daniel Andrews from Victoria and Gladys Berejiklian and Dominic Perrottet from NSW.
This means the current dynamic at national cabinet is unlikely to change. The big deal done last week, when Albanese gave the states about $25 billion to make progress on hospitals and disability, was due in part to pressure from Palaszczuk, but the other premiers are not shrinking violets when they want funds.
The big implications are all political. Palaszczuk hands the state to a successor, most likely deputy premier Steven Miles, who will struggle to hold power at the election in October. Labor is on the nose, Palaszczuk has lost popularity and Liberals are increasingly confident there is a mood for change.
Australians are worried about the cost of living, are marking down Albanese and could take out their frustrations at the next election. To borrow a phrase from another Queensland premier, Wayne Goss, voters might take out their baseball bats against the politicians who want their votes.
Federal Labor will be hoping Queenslanders wield those bats on their premier rather than their prime minister.
Albanese has to hold all the Labor seats in Western Australia – a tough prospect – and win ground in Queensland – not easy, either – if he is to have any hope of increasing the government’s very thin majority at the next election.
The arrival of a Liberal National Party government in Queensland could give Albanese something to campaign about in a federal contest in early 2025, especially if a conservative Queensland government makes unpopular decisions, as an earlier one did under former premier Campbell Newman.
Palaszczuk was just as parochial as other premiers during the pandemic. She closed the border to visitors from NSW, refused treatment to outsiders at Queensland hospitals and went her own way on lockdowns despite the notional agreements at national cabinet.
Berejiklian and Andrews made some of the strongest interventions, especially with the shutdowns in March 2020 when they forced Morrison to go further than he wanted. Palaszczuk did not make national headlines in the same way.
Yet she has outlasted her peers. Like Andrews, she will serve about nine years as premier. She kept winning because she had a common touch and knew the very different regions of her state. And she increased funding for services such as health and education after wiping out the Newman government in 2015.
“Her legacy is secure,” said one of her colleagues on Sunday. “She’s a Labor hero in Queensland.”
Albanese can only dream of gaining hero status up north. He could do worse than follow the Palaszczuk lesson in how to win Queensland.