Hoping for a government friendly to progress

Dear ,

I know a number of our members and supporters will be working on polling booths tomorrow, and not all for the same parties, but I wish them all the best. 

Australia is a place where you can have confidence in the voting system, where results will be delivered in a timely and non-partisan way, and where booth workers from different parties will be friendly to each other, and some new bipartisan friendships may even be formed.

The AIP has played a significant part in this election with a campaign against Labor. If you haven’t seen them, you can view the permutations of our two ads by clicking here:

• What’s Up with Labor 30 secs
  
• What’s Up with Labor 15 secs
  
• Power points 30 secs
  
• Power points 15 secs
  

We’ve also produced two corflutes and 2 DLX pamphlets.

• What’s Up DLX Version 1
  
• What’s Up DLX Version 2
  
• Another Labor Lie Corflute
  
• What’s Up Corflute
  

I’ll have a better idea of the full picture after the election, but our ads which have been distributed by social media have apparently been seen 8 million times. As we were judiciously targeting a small number of seats, they should have quite an impact.

If you want to know how the election will play out, you could do worse than read my article from the Courier Mail of September 13, or with a few refinements in the one from October 15. As predicted the race has tightened, according to the latest Newspoll, for all of the foreseeable reasons, with the added twist of a scare campaign on abortion.

Over the course of this campaign we have also produced three policy papers.

• Faster, Better, More
  
• Queensland Government Spending and Inflation
  
• Easy Labour: Identifying construction industry cost drivers in Queensland
  

I’ve been disappointed that the campaign has featured slogans and not much else. The ALP has not been held to account for its dismal record, and the LNP has not advanced many substantial policies. Queensland is in a mess and requires radical rehabilitation, but you’d be excused from seeing that from the campaign. 

We are unusual for a think tank in that we actively play a part in elections. This is partly dictated by the financial gerrymander of the electoral rules under Labor. You can let the unions monster public debate so that there is none, or you can trade blows with them. I’d choose practicality over purity any day.

One of the purposes of being involved in a campaign is to put issues on the agenda. Another is to change minds. Sometimes you need to change governments to change minds. The current ALP government is Peronist in its outlook. It will steal from anyone in order to remain in power. 

What it did with coal royalties is a case in point. 

On which point I have to thank COAL Australia  for stepping up and funding our campaign. We have been a strong advocate for coal as a legitimate source of energy since we began, so we were an obvious organisation for them to support in trying to achieve change in this election.

We accept that a Crisafulli government won’t change the coal royalty regime, but we do expect that they will embrace policies that are even-handed and encourage business. Queensland is well-endowed with resources, but it lags well-behind the other resource-rich state, Western Australia, in exploiting them effectively. 

Increasing sovereign risk only drives investment away. It might give an immediate sugar hit, but as this government is showing, that won’t last.

We have policies and ideas that can radically return Queensland to where it should be. If the polls are correct, we will have a government that will be more open to those policies and ideas than the previous one.

That government should also be aware that if they step up to champion new good ideas there will be at least one organisation prepared to step up and support them.

Regards,