Just over a month to go

Dear ,

The Queensland election is now just over 4 weeks away and we will be doing our best to influence public policy during this period by education, and also campaigning.

Election coverage and analysis

Regular commentary on ABC Radio

As of Wednesday this week I'm back on ABC Radio at 5:30 pm discussing state politics with Steve Austin. My opposite number is Rachel Nolan, former cabinet minister in the Bligh governments, and also the former member for Ipswich. You can hear our first session here at around the 2:15:00 mark. This is important – Steve has an audience of around 130,000, and it is a great opportunity to pitch our message of initiative and self-reliance.

Queensland Election 2020 with John Mickel and Graham Young

Next Thursday at 6:00 pm we will be hosting a webinar where Hon John Mickel, former speaker of the house, and a cabinet minister under Peter Beattie, and I, will discuss the election. John and I frequently teamed-up on ABC radio and I know it will be an insightful session.

There should be plenty of opportunity for audience participation as well, with some very knowledgeable people in the audience. John is currently an academic at QUT, and will base his analysis on his knowledge, research and long experience. I will be basing my comments on our research, as well as my experience.

To book click here.

State Election Polling

We have done the first of our three polls during this election. This gives us a baseline against which to judge the others. I released the analysis in two parts, and we've had significant media coverage of both.

Part one, which looks at voting intentions can be downloaded by clicking here. Surprisingly, while the ALP outperformed the LNP on most measures, there was a small preference to elect the LNP rather than Labor. This is qualitative research, so the quantitative conclusions have to be handled with care, but even so it points to a close election.

Part two looked at attitudes to COVID. While most people said it would be important to their vote, it is still not as important as the economy or climate change, and most voters are looking past COVID to see what plans the parties have for recovery. I had an article in The Australian explaining what is going on, republished in On Line Opinion (no paywall). The research can be downloaded from here.

State Issues

It is standard practice that any budget updates from the state treasurer include the forward estimates. In his update on July 7 Treasurer Cameron Dick broke with that practice and only produced a year's worth of projections. He claimed that was because the situation was too uncertain, but I'm pretty sure it was because the numbers are horrendous.

We commissioned Gene Tunny of Adept Economics, the author of Beautiful One Day, Broke the Next: Queensland's Public Finances since Sir Joh and Sir Leo to complete the treasurer's job for him. His "Queensland Budget Update Report" shows general government debt increasing by up to 134% between June 2019 and June 2024, and total gross debt up as much as $47 billion to $118 billion in the same time period.

COVID-19

Both I, and my fellow director Dan Ryan, have had a number of articles published on COVID-19. Including "Five vital steps to restore confidence in corona case calculations" and "The madness of St Jeannette".

I've also issued two media releases aimed at governance issues around how governments have dealt with COVID-19. The role that Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young plays in Queensland is completely opaque. While she claims to be the sole decision maker, this is belied by decisions appearing to be driven by polling, and if it is true is a complete failure of governance by the premier and her cabinet. You can read my views here.

Flaws in the modelling were also discovered by researchers at James Cook University, leading us to call for a summit for open discussion about the issues surrounding COVID-19 with a view to rebooting the process. My release got coverage in the media, including the Daily Telegraph, which reported the issue first.

Bushfire Royal Commission

AIP fellow Charles Essery, made a submission on our behalf to the NSW Royal Commission into Natural Disaster Arrangements. The commission has released a "Draft Propositions Report" which incorporates a number of our recommendations. Since the summer bushfires we've been campaigning for proper land management practices. Blaming bushfires on the small increase in temperature from climate change is nonsense, and even if it were true, could not be fixed by anything Australia does. What does make a difference, and over which we have considerable control, is the build-up of fuel load in forests.

Conclusion

Stay tuned for announcements of our activities during the campaign. We intend to do more than just publish papers this election. When we have that sorted-out you will be amongst the first to know.

Regards,

GRAHAM YOUNG
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR