Of course Premier is entitled to a break: Here’s some holiday reading for when she has a spare moment
It was an overseas holiday in Hawaii that started Scott Morrison’s precipitous fall from power. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s three-week break is a very different matter – but could end up with the same outcome if she’s not careful, writes Madonna King
Annastacia Palaszczuk’s overseas holiday is not Scott Morrison’s 2019 Hawaii jaunt, in the middle of a national bushfire crisis.
The Premier deserves a holiday, and no-one should begrudge her that. The former prime minister also fled the country without telling us; the premier has been upfront about spending the next two weeks away from work. And she’s entitled to keep the location private.
But the vicious and overwhelming voter vitriol in response to her planned absence points to the uphill battle she faces in 2023, as an increasing number of those who put her into power are now desperate to remove her.
Can she, and Labor, win back the trust of voters after the string of policy flops – not least juvenile crime – that have characterised the past two years?
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New Year and holidays both present a good time to reflect on the challenges ahead, and here are 10 that Annastacia Palaszczuk might ponder over the next fortnight, between my recommendations of Anatomy of a Scandal on Netflix and Prince Harry’s new tome Spare.
- Remember why she won government in the first place. She beat a politician who as seen as tricky and arrogant and dismissive of dissent; coincidentally some of the same adjectives now being used to describe her.
- She is benefitting from the State’s first four-year term. What has been achieved from that guaranteed extra year free of petty politicking?
- What are her government’s priorities among the reams of investigations she has launched and promised to implement. Is it domestic violence? Or youth justice? Is it police reform? Or public sector reform? What about energy reform? Water reform?
- The Olympics and Paralympics are a means, not an end. What will be the ongoing benefits to the state from staging them successfully?
- Does she really have the right teams in her Cabinet, in her office and heading her departments – or don’t they understand what’s required to master the complexities of modern government? Do they understand they work for the taxpayer? Who’s guiding them? And is she doing enough leading – or is it easier to be led??
- That has caused almost everything to become a political embarrassment and a fight with interest groups? That, rather than policy reform, now dominates daily debate. Isn’t this what happened to the Premier she drove out of office?
- While she’s enjoying a few weeks as a tourist, is she observing how Queensland stands up to its competitors. Is Qld’s tourism product good enough to compete as the world shakes off COVID and regains the travel bug?
- What does she think her role as one of the most experienced political leaders should be in the Commonwealth? Will she take a lead, for instance, in achieving success for the Voice campaign which most analysts already believe is doomed to fail in our home state?
- And whatever way she jumps on that, what can she as leader meaningfully do to accelerate closing the gap which accepts that Indigenous children will have shorter, less prosperous lives and more likely be victims of crime or perpetrators of crime?
- Finally, what’s her personal goal as Premier? Is it just longevity or is there a greater purpose she can describe.
Labor was elected to government in Queensland because voters wanted to get rid of an out-of-touch LNP Government that didn’t value consultation or understand the lives of those it served.
It’s now had eight years to implement its vision. The vicious response to Annastacia Palaszczuk’s legitimate New Year break is just feedback that voters, across the state, believe it’s time to work, not to shirk.
