4 more years

Dear ,

I don’t want to sound like Pollyanna, but maybe this election result was all for the best.

Like you I want a government that implements good policy based on respect for, and promotion of, individual rights, rule of law, respect for the individual, and appreciation of how our culture has created one of the best societies in the history of the world.

No matter who won on Saturday, I’m not sure that was what we were going to get. Labor won by default. Voters were looking for a reset in the post-pandemic future, but neither side was offering it, so they voted based on two things – a belief that Labor had kept us safe during the pandemic, and that they were the better economic managers.

The only reason they got away with both arguments is because the LNP, and the other parties, failed to take them on properly.

Take the pandemic. Keeping the borders locked tight-shut was not what kept us safe. A more flexible policy would have had the same results with lower unemployment and economic damage, and fewer deaths from other causes.

There are huge swathes of the country where there is no pandemic, and from where we could quite happily have taken visitors. In fact, by establishing the border bubble we put people in Northern New South Wales at risk, because there was less COVID-19 there, than here.

Closing the border to people in some suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney makes some sense, but closing the border to everyone else in the country makes no sense at all.

What’s more, it is not a strong policy, but a weak policy. A strong policy would have been to take-on those who were almost literally “scared to death” and shown them that while a more open border policy would have increased risk slightly, the benefits to them and their relatives would have more than compensated for it.

And it’s not a strong policy to hide behind advice that may or may not have been given by the Chief Health Offices acting as a Deus ex Machina.

The opposition had plenty of grounds it could used to challenge the government’s policy without opening themselves to a criticism of dicing with the lives of citizens.

You might find this piece from the British Medical Journal interesting. It advocates for a multi-disciplinary and transparent approach that is open about the degree of uncertainty. Not only does this allow politicians to change course if required, but it also engenders greater trust in the community.

It’s a similar approach to what was advocated in our open letter (still open for signatures). We also called for a review of the governance procedures used to set health policy saying:

Given the premier’s distress at the decisions, her admission of lack of control, and the clear inadequacy of the decision-making process (which has now been dealing with COVID for 8 months), when does the premier or the health minister, intend to reform the process?

Why didn’t the recent parliamentary sittings amend the Health Act to reform and broaden the governance process to involve a range of health and public policy professionals?

We then subsequently called for a summit to review governance around Australia.

It was open to the Queensland opposition to take these ideas and run with them, forcing the government to either resist, revealing the naked politics in its strategy, or depoliticising the whole process, as it should have done from the start.

Instead the Opposition ran with the line that it would follow every word that fell from the mouth of the CHO, but be more sensible and flexible with it. So which was it to be – obedience or improvisation?

Of course, they could have gone full Trump and argued “You can’t let it dominate your life,” But only Trump could do that, or maybe John Howard, Jeff Kennett, or even Campbell Newman. And maybe today will show the folly of that line.

In politics, as in life, you have to take some risks.

The perceived economic superiority of the government as revealed in opinion polls is even less understandable. This is a government that, even before the pandemic, presided over the worst unemployment in the country; that was spending significantly less on infrastructure than any other state; whose debt was out of control; that had increased public service hirings well in advance of the growth in the population; that treated the public as fools moving debt between government and government-owned corporations and pretending this was paying it back; and so on.

Traditionally the Liberals are seen as economically superior to Labor. That’s because in their hearts voters know that the electoral cycle goes like this – Labor gets elected to hand-out the punch bowl, and the Libs get elected to take it away and deal with the hangover.

Yet the Queensland LNP made so little impact on the government’s economic record, that they blew away this deeply-ingrained perception and were rated behind the spendthrift ALP.

I attribute this to their being so scarred by the loss after Campbell Newman that they refused to defend any of his legacy. The most common criticism of Newman you will hear is that he “tried to do too much too quickly”. This implies that he was doing the right things, just that his execution was bad.

For example, every time someone criticised the LNP because Newman sacked 14,000 public servants it could easily have been turned around. That was almost 10 years ago. Those public servants retired with an average payout of $80,000. In the most relevant 5 years to this election, the term of the Palaszczuk government, 48,600 people lost their jobs, most with no payout. That’s the real test of who’s good for workers.

They also allowed the ALP to define building an economy as “spending more money on public services and supporting business”.

We know this is exactly the opposite of the way to build an economy. Services have to be effective which is not necessarily a function of funding, and the best way of supporting businesses is to set clear rules and get out of the way.

I’ve closed businesses and borne losses as everyone in business has. It’s not fun, but it is progress as trial and error allocates resources to their highest and best use.

The pandemic gives us an opportunity to develop new businesses and business models, but these will never happen if government capital is being squandered keeping legacy businesses on life support.

The LNP, and other parties, needed to have some innovative policies that demonstrated a point of difference. They could have done worse than plundering our Ten Big Ideas document which has innovative policies that would boost the economy, as well as boosting good cultural values, mostly without spending any extra money.

The LNP also needed to have a credible economic plan. After telling us all election that they would deliver a surplus by the end of 4 years, and hold debt steady, it was deeply disappointing to find on Thursday that they would actually increase debt by $1.7 billion. I think they are lucky 70% of people had voted by then.

So Labor wins – at this stage with a likely majority of 5. This is not a huge margin.

As Queensland’s only Centre-Right think tank, it is our role in the next four years to put forward good policy and analysis. If Labor picks up some of our ideas, then that is good for our fellow citizens. I doubt they will – they’ve had ample opportunity so far.

Which leaves the other half of our task – to ensure the LNP, KAP, PHON and others, understand that for Queensland to prosper we need opposition parties that are forensic in their criticism and grounded, and innovative, in their policies. Hopefully they will raid the ideas bank we will be developing.

Either way, I hope the new frontbenchers on all sides read our critique of the Cross River Rail project which reveals cost over-runs, privatisation and no passengers.

The opposition parties have 4 years into which to turn themselves into something worthy of governing, which they aren't now.

Regards,

Graham