At half-time in Queensland’s election campaign, Labor and the LNP have been thrown a curveball

The orange segments are being handed out as the siren sounds half-time in the Queensland election campaign. 

Both ALP and LNP teams have pretty well stuck to pre-match game plans — but there was an intruder on the pitch this week.

Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) launched an opportunistic move on the LNP’s right-wing defensive line.

Of course, it had been LNP members Jon Krause and Tony Perrett who put the ball in motion in recent weeks by suggesting publicly that Queensland’s current laws decriminalising abortion need to be repealed or revised.

Two distinct schools of thought have emerged on the impact of abortion in this election.

Mr Crisafulli’s determined refusal to open that can of worms this week frustrated reporters who suspect most conservative MPs, given the chance, would support a KAP bill to return abortion to the criminal code.

Conservative strategists are banking on their assessment that the issue isn’t a vote-changer for many Queenslanders.

Even so, the party moved quickly this week to ensure all MPs gave the uniform response that repealing abortion laws is “not part of our plan”.

Labor, however, thinks the reproductive rights issue could have a major impact on voting intentions.

Polling commissioned by the Queensland Council of Unions and conducted in August by Labor-aligned DemosAU found 75 per cent of Queenslanders agree that abortion should remain decriminalised.

The poll of 1,000 people found strongest support in regional Queensland (78 per cent), with 73 per cent of LNP voters polled also backing decriminalisation.

Even in the demographic where support was weakest — men aged 18 to 24 — 67 per cent thought abortion needed to stay out of the criminal code.

The ABC understands people in Labor focus groups this week have been offering similarly strong views.

Mr Crisafulli has said repeatedly he’s ruling it out. But those words mean little unless he also rules out a conscience vote on the topic in the next parliament.

Where are they going and why?

For the past two weeks, Labor leader Steven Miles has spent the majority of his time outside the south-east corner, in Labor-held seats they need to retain.

By contrast, the LNP knows it has momentum in the regions, particularly in the three seats around Townsville, in Cairns and even in Mackay, where the 6.7 per cent ALP margin may have already turned from red to blue.

Labor’s strategy thus far has been to dig in, aiming to hold onto seats such as Bundaberg, Mackay, Nicklin, Cairns and Caloundra, won on margins that now put them in play for the LNP.

On Monday, Mr Miles and Health Minister Shannon Fentiman donned hard hats to visit the site of the new Bundaberg Hospital — where construction is finally getting underway — then pressed the flesh at a riverside cafe.

Mr Crisafulli visited Bundaberg on day one of the campaign — it’s the state’s most marginal seat, won by Labor with a paltry nine votes.

The LNP needs to win at least 12 more seats to win government, so it’s been targeting many of the places where Labor’s hold is looking shaky.

This week, most of the focus has been on health.

Labor is spruiking earlier promises of 3,400 extra hospital beds and 2,000 more paramedics, if re-elected. It responded to LNP promises to reduce ambulance ramping by reiterating a goal to reduce it from 45 per cent to pre-COVID levels of about 28 per cent. 

But Ms Fentiman has given no timeline on that.

A returned Labor government would build seven new satellite hospitals, to be funded through borrowings. It would also expand emergency services at Mareeba Hospital.

The LNP has matched Labor’s satellite hospital commitment, as it did with 50-cent public transport fares, in a bid to neutralise any gain for the Miles government.

The LNP’s $590 million health plan promises to release hospital data in real time and end maternity bypass at Biloela and Cooktown.

Its $95 million health sciences academy pledge for Rockhampton would create a pathway for school students to become health practitioners. There’s another $50 million for two regional mental health centres for young people. 

Thus far, no word on where extra health workers could be sourced in the short to medium term, nor how an LNP government would pay for its promises.

More broadly, Mr Crisafulli has also vowed to increase the size of the public service and end the spend on external consultants.

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During last week’s leaders debate, Mr Miles counted $16.2 billion in unfunded LNP promises.

Mr Crisafulli insists their promises are fully costed, but the LNP is yet to release those costings.

He says the LNP would ditch Labor’s pumped hydro project in Central Queensland. 

But he’s applied peculiar fiscal logic to the point, arguing pumped hydro is unfunded by Labor, but that scrapping it somehow helps fund LNP commitments.

Is there a youth crime crisis?

Queensland Police Service crime statistics for 2023-24 show a 6.7 per cent fall in the rate of youth offences, compared with the previous year.

As police have said repeatedly, there is a small but hardcore group of repeat youth offenders that are making their presence sorely felt in places like Townsville, Rockhampton and the Gold Coast.

This week, the LNP revealed its “regional reset” scheme, promising nine early intervention residential programs for young people at risk of becoming youth offenders, to be spread across Queensland.

Mr Miles was quick to call this a return to Campbell Newman’s bootcamp program under the guise of a softer name.

Mr Crisafulli, meanwhile, continues to outline the scope of the LNP’s “gold standard early intervention” program and he’s vowed to quit within four years as premier if he can’t reduce victim of crime numbers.

Both sides still eyeing the prize

Redbridge polling communications director and former Liberal strategist Tony Barry thinks both the ALP and LNP will be happy to avoid engagement on Brisbane’s unresolved Olympic venue debate, as it doesn’t play well in the regions.

“I think the issue of the Olympic Games is the great club shit sandwich that Annastacia Palaszczuk has left her successors, because she threw down the credit card and bought something without thinking through how she was going to pay for it,” Mr Barry said.

“It’s very difficult to justify in the electorate spending such a huge amount of money when you’ve got people in regional hospitals who are waiting 18 months for elective surgery, replacement hips, living in incredible pain and discomfort.

“I mean, these are unacceptable things in modern Australia.”

While Labor is facing a threat in at least 10 seats, it claims to have a shot at winning LNP seats such as Moggill and Burleigh.

It believes there is a good chance it can take back the seat of Ipswich West and profit from “shifting dynamics” in the northern Gold Coast seat of Coomera.

There’s a fortnight to go and it’s a game of two halves — plenty of time for more curveballs.

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