How this woman has shown again that she is a whizz at kitchen table politics
Cameron Dick’s 2023 Budget has set the election clock ticking. Dennis Atkins counts the rabbits in Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s hat and asks who the real bunnies might be in October next year.
Big spending, major projects, local community protection, health spending up across the board, targeted cost of living relief funnelled through energy costs, all delivered with some of the sweetest lyrics to a state’s finances in the modern era.
This collection sums up the headline takes from Cameron Dick’s budget.
Dick, who set his own achievement bar a tad high with an allusion to John F Kennedy a few years ago, has this year exceeded expectations by making the most of a river of revenue that would cause Jim Chalmers to blush.
Tax growth mainly from property and mining – with the real hard work provided by the state’s extractive resource sector – fund additional spending and make historic repayments of public debt.
It is an unashamedly political document with the potential to bring Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk back from the political dead – a funeral which was prematurely presumed as it was.
Like everything in politics, this budget should be viewed in context and perspective.
It comes 16 and a half months out from the next election which is a few lifetimes away using the measuring stick of former British prime minister Harold “a week is a long time in politics” Wilson.
All manner of things on the upside and downside can happen between now and then. We can only assume Palaszczuk and LNP leader David Crisafulli will survive – there are no guarantees in this most uncertain of pastimes.
You might like
Second, Palaszczuk’s political position is not as dire as some carnival barkers around town might pretend.
Yes, she has had a hard few years since her 2020 against-the-odds win and her popularity has suffered but it has not fallen to the levels that correctly foresaw the demise of Labor’s Anna Bligh in 2012 and the LNP’s Campbell Newman three short years later.
Palaszczuk’s government has remained competitive throughout this time and while it might have sat on the wrong side of 50/50 in at least one recent poll that’s still within the margin of error and leaves victory within grasp and easy vision.
The premier might be blinkered as to the real danger some of her problems present – that she’s regarded as out of touch with the everyday concerns of Queenslanders and she’s stopped listening to that constituency she shaped and nurtured through the pandemic – she retains the ability to summon up what’s needed when it arises.
She should never be underestimated, as those she has vanquished should know by now.
The content of this budget demonstrates she, her ministerial colleagues and the private and public service staff built up in recent years do know what the problems are and have been thinking hard about how to deal with them in what are the most wicked of times.
The folders in the collective in tray are cost of living, health and crime. Everything else might as well be posters on the side of public buses.
Cost of living is wicked because it is exogenous and hostage to decisions made in world capitals and global board rooms. There’s not much the Queensland Cabinet can do about war in Europe, famine in East Africa, the China-Taiwan Gordian knot or the trajectory of artificial generative intelligence.
We can all feel much safer in that knowledge by the way, even if not all of those ministers share the required self-awareness.
The road traveled by the government – built on generous energy cost rebates which feature a general payment of $550 for all households and extend to more than $1000 for concession holders – is the easiest and electorally safest.
Stay informed, daily
Using the billions in additional coal royalties to pay for big electricity bill relief is kitchen table politics at its most basic.
It’s simple: throw as much money as possible at as many people as you can and hope enough of them will remember where the cash came from and remain grateful.
The argument about whether it’s inflationary is not really going to trickle down to the level of the front bar, the footy club or cafe where the Reserve Bank and the federal government are ahead in the queue of blame.
Spending on health is just as wicked and has a down to up side ratio that resembles a casino only this time the house almost always loses.
People go to the hospital when they’re in need – some ailment has come without welcome or an accident has made an equally unwanted appearance. Most of the time nothing anyone does is enough and results are below expectation.
This is fed by the burden of health cost inflation always running one and a quarter to one and a half ahead of the official cost of living index. Find a winner in all that and call them the Opposition.
Palaszczuk’s government has done enough in this budget to keep most significant health sector players satisfied although there are workforce issues that are no easier to solve than the Taiwan Straits problem referred to earlier.
If the so far impressive new minister Shannon Fentiman keeps the problem-ridden portfolio ahead of collapse under the weight of crises and incompetence, the government might survive that fusillade of bad news and political heat.
The Budget contains enough cash for health to deal with what might emerge.
Crime is perhaps the most intractable and hardest to deal with problem in policy and political terms. Labor’s greatest premier of the modern era, Wayne Goss, used to say handling crime was like shaking hands with a bowl of spaghetti – always messy with no satisfaction.
Labor has decided in the budget to low ball expectations which is probably smart. There is a chance community reaction to what is done about crime is oversold in political terms – people shouldn’t forget the LNP was supposed to have swept the field in Townsville and Cairns because of crime in 2020. Not a seat changed hands.
Beyond all this is how the LNP will respond.
Crisafulli has established just one thing: he complains about everything but can’t be remembered for anything. He has to turn that around.
This Budget makes the job harder and, on the question of renewable energy and the transition away from fossil fuels generally, he can be wedged tightly.
Palaszczuk has shown her hat. There’s some rabbits in there and they have plenty of green stuff for sustenance. If they stay alive into October next year her opponents in the LNP could be the bunnies.
