Jim Chalmers is federal Labor’s most senior Queensland figure.
Few on his side of the aisle understand the unique political currents of the north better than the Treasurer.
Which is why his description of the LNP’s victory on Saturday is worth noting.
“Decisive,” Chalmers declared on Monday morning.
The remark — as well as his message of congratulations to new Queensland Premier David Crisafulli and his incoming Treasurer David Janetzki — was unsolicited and significant.
Some inside federal Labor are not fooling themselves that the Queensland state result is anything other than deeply worrying for Anthony Albanese.
Chalmer’s remark counters the lazy narrative that took hold in the first hours of Saturday’s election count that Labor did better than anticipated.
Too many still have the view that Crisafulli’s win was “narrow” or a case of the LNP desperately falling across the line.
The treasurer has effectively called that out as arrant nonsense.
Votes are still being counted but call it for what it appears to be: a comprehensive thumping of the Miles government.
Crisafulli is on track to secure a statewide swing of more than 7 per cent, giving the LNP an estimated two-party preferred vote of 54.1 per cent over Labor’s 45.9 per cent.
Labor says Saturday’s result is positive because it could have been so much worse.
Outside Brisbane, it’s hard to see how.
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Some of the swings in Queensland are historic
In TPP terms, Crisafulli appears to have matched Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s 1986 high watermark, a victory so complete it allowed the National Party for the only time in history to govern in its own right.
It’s true that Labor held back the tide in the state capital, helped by a backlash against the Greens and seemingly the abortion issue that sent progressive voters back to the ALP.
But elsewhere, with only a few notable exceptions, the story was one of LNP ascendancy.
Some of the swings are truly historic.
Labor lost once rusted-on seats in places like Maryborough, Mackay and Rockhampton, in some cases for the first time in more than a century.
The union-heavy seat of Gladstone, which Labor held safely, recorded a 14.1 per cent swing against the government.
And further north, around Cairns, Cook fell to the LNP with a 12 per cent swing; Mulgrave is headed the same way with a near 15 per cent swing.
The bellwether seat of Barron River is back in LNP hands after a 7.3 per cent swing.
The conventional political wisdom is that Albanese needs to pick up seats in Queensland at the next election to offset likely losses in other parts of the country.
Labor holds just five of the state’s 30 federal seats.
With 21 seats, the LNP’s federal dominance of the state has long been assumed to have reached its zenith. From here it’s all downhill, goes the logic.
But Saturday’s result means that may be wrong.
LNP sources told the ABC they were feeling more confident now about retaining Leichhardt, which sprawls across the northern cape, when Warren Entsch retires. Labor has long had the federal seat in its sights.
Likewise with Flynn, Labor’s perennial central Queensland hope.
Around Brisbane itself, the sharp swing away from the Greens has reignited expectations the LNP could find a pathway to regain its former blue-blood crown jewel of Ryan, based around the affluent western suburbs.
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Next year’s federal election is far from determined
Clearly the LNP enjoyed a tailwind from an “it’s time” factor. Labor has dominated the state for nearly three decades. Eventually voters want a change.
But the size of the swing suggests Labor is also struggling to retain lower-income voters worried about crime and cost-of-living stress.
The abortion issue appears to have sapped some of Crisafulli’s momentum in the final week or so, but it’s not clear that it cost the LNP many votes.
Parties don’t enjoy the kind of double-digital swings the LNP recorded in the regions if the incoming premier had lost vast blocks of voters, as would be the case if abortion was the primary vote driver.
If anything, the issue may have helped push voters only concerned about reproductive rights back to Labor from the Greens in Brisbane.
Treasurer Chalmers, who always keeps an eye on the biggest prize in federal politics, appears awake to these shifting tides.
What lessons the Albanese government takes from the outcome, and how it responds, are critical.
For one thing, Queensland shows that throwing money at cynical voters is no guarantee the love will be reciprocated.
Miles showered the state’s voters with the most generous energy rebates in the country and pledged economically dubious promises like opening government-owned petrol stations.
For voters struggling with mortgages or surging rents, such measures may well be seen as political gimmicks that do little to address the underlying economic drivers of inflation.
Chalmers said he did not want to telegraph to the opposition the lessons Labor is taking from Queensland.
But he did drop a few early clues, saying governments were “always best when they go in for the whole place; the regions, the suburbs, and the cities”.
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Already there are calls for federal Labor to develop cut-through promises such as Miles’s 50 cent public transport policy.
Chalmers appeared eager to manage down expectations on that front, a sign perhaps that the Treasurer knows voters want more substantial measures over short-term tricks.
The coming federal election “was never going to be — from our side — a free-for-all of public spending,” Chalmers said.
“It wasn’t going to be before Saturday’s outcome and it’s not going to be after Saturday’s outcome.”
Federal Labor still has time to adjust its strategy. Historically, voters are reluctant to turf out first-term governments.
Albanese’s team will hope Queenslanders become friendlier to Labor and put away their baseball bats, to resurrect the late Wayne Goss imagery. The LNP might yet become overconfident.
Next year’s federal election — and yes, it will be next year after Saturday’s result all but extinguishes any remnant possibility of a pre-Christmas poll — is far from determined.
