When David Crisafulli speaks to the Liberal National party faithful, his message tends to become a blunt warning to members and MPs to keep any unsavoury, unelectable tendencies out of sight.
“We don’t exist for culture wars,” the Queensland premier – who marks a year in office on Sunday – told the party’s state council just after the 2024 election.
At the August state conference he doubled down, urging the membership not to be distracted by “ideological issues” or internal squabbles.
“We cannot be captured by those who seek to divide us.”
Having been elected on a “small-target” platform focused mainly on addressing a perceived youth crime “crisis”, the Crisafulli government has kept those divisions in check by focusing much of its first year on the same small target.
It passed hardline laws in December to sentence children as adults, and then expanded them in May to apply to 33 offences, including some non-violent ones.
LNP sources say that inside the cabinet room, Crisafulli is more moderator than premier. Such is his determination to stay above the ideological fray, he rarely involves himself in policy debates where the party’s “broad church” is divided.
It is hard to argue with the strategy, particularly as Liberals in other states, and the federal party, appear to struggle with existential questions.
Liberals say the party’s first, second and third priority is a second term in government, and that they need to appeal to more moderate Brisbane voters to make that happen.
“That is what gets the premier out of bed in the morning,” an LNP MP tells the Guardian.
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On one hand, Crisafulli appears to have learned from the breakneck bungling of the Newman years – of a government elected on a moderate platform but captive to a hard-right party room of MPs who weren’t expected to win seats in parliament.
Scott Emerson, the transport minister in the Newman government, says a key lesson from those years was not to act too quickly; that it was important to explain why first.
“I think some of the strategy that we’ve seen from the Crisafulli government is very much from those lessons that were learned [from the Newman government],” Emerson says.
“Maybe [there is] the criticism out there that they’re not doing enough fast enough, but … you have to make sure that the public is aware there’s a problem [first]”.
Queenslanders tend to like “conservative” governments: not necessarily in the ideological sense, but voters seem to get scared when reform happens too quickly. The early mantra of the Goss government was “don’t scare the horses”. Annastacia Palasczuk was tagged in the early years for “reviewing and not doing”.
But Crisafulli’s government appears to be something else entirely: an administration with a firm stance on only one issue – youth crime – and one that is perhaps quickly discovering the flip-side of an ideological vacuum.
A year on, has the LNP simply run out of things to do?
Aside from the youth crime laws, the government has focused most of its attention on planning for the 2032 Olympic Games, beating up on the CFMEU, and attempting to convince Queenslanders Labor was cooking the books.
Paul Williams, an associate professor at Griffith University and a commentator on Queensland politics since the 1980s, says there is almost nothing on the government’s legislative agenda.
The parliamentary notice paper for the next sitting day lists just one bill for government business: a proposal to reform the Queensland Building and Construction Commission.
“If you’re not offering enough, except disgruntlement of the incumbent and the status quo of a crime [agenda] … you haven’t got really anything to hang your hat on,” Williams says.
“So then the rationale for people sticking with you is impressions rather than policy substance, and the impression … of the LNP has been one that’s been … largely spinning its wheels.
“If the government doesn’t find an agenda outside the Olympics and youth crime it becomes a government run by the media cycle”.
“This could easily be a one-term government.”
Recent polling has shown the LNP having lost support in Brisbane and the suburbs, where it failed to break through, despite a comfortable election win built on success in Queensland’s regions.
There are, logically, two ways the government can go from here. The first is to solidify its position by continuing to appeal to moderate city voters, the sort that have been put off by the hard right, socially-conservative elements of the LNP at past elections.
But if polls show the party struggling to make urban inroads, the likelihood is a pivot to defend the regional seats won in 2024, where voters are more comfortable with rightwing rhetoric.
Ideological divisions still live inside the LNP, no matter how fervently Crisafulli might try to suppress them.
“The current premier risks losing the very base that built the Liberal National party,” Matthew Cliff, chief executive of anti-abortion lobby group Cherish Life, wrote in a blog post last month.
Cherish Life has campaigned for conservative Liberals in recent years; the organisation’s vice-president, Alan Baker, is a party official.
“Perhaps [Crisafulli] is comfortable with that,” Cliff wrote.
“But the history of politics suggests it is a dangerous gamble. Every time conservative leaders neglect conservative concerns, others are waiting in the wings to fill the void.
“If he continues to dismiss and alienate that constituency, the long-term cost could be high. Not only with his supporters on the right but also with those in his own party who lean right.”
Crisafulli seems to have managed that situation so far by giving just enough rope to the conservative elements of his government – headed by deputy premier Jarrod Bleijie – who sources say are the loudest voices in the cabinet room.
This is not – however Crisafulli wants to characterise it – a government that is above culture wars. That was writ large in the decision to end the First Nations truth-telling inquiry; the backtracking on coal power plant closures; cracking down on windfarms; abolishing pill testing; and banning critical gender-affirming care treatments, including puberty blockers, using a justification that appears remarkably thin.
That has staved off a conservative insurgency, for now.
A year in, the Crisafulli government is stable but being criticised as boring, directionless and stuck on a high wire. The premier has another three years to maintain the balancing act.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
