Queensland Premier Steven Miles has promised to visit 36 seats in just 36 hours of campaigning just before voters go to the polls this Saturday.
It’s a suitably superficial and vacuous gesture to end a rather lackluster campaign from both major party leaders.
Today’s Newspoll reveals the gap between Labor and the LNP has closed, but the Opposition should still score a disappointing victory.
The possibility of a minority government is still up in the air.
Queensland Premier Steven Miles has promised to visit 36 seats in just 36 hours of campaigning just before voters go to the polls this Saturday. He kicked off the tour with a walk on the beach with his wife Kim
By promising to spread himself so thin in the final days of the campaign, the Prime Minister is engaging in a form of performance art that neatly suggests his fewer than eleven months in the top job.
I don’t know why I’m surprised by this latest gimmick. Last week he posted a video of a bench press challenge on social media.
Miles, the faction and union choice to succeed Annastacia Palaszczuk, has not exactly set the world on fire as prime minister.
Willing to push a fiscally irresponsible agenda, as called for by the Reserve Bank no less, Miles hopes to pick up enough marginal seats to win with less than 50 percent of the vote across the state.
There remains an outside chance of that happening, despite his clownish gesture of spending less than an hour in the last day and a half of the campaign with three dozen separate voters.
The stunt reminds me of Tony Abbott’s equally ridiculous decision to campaign for 48 hours just before the 2010 election.
Fortunately, he did not win, otherwise the new Prime Minister would have had to sleep for the first few days in office to recover from his lack of sleep.
The fact that Miles has decided to emulate Abbott says it all. Labor MPs at the time ridiculed Abbott’s antics.
Now one of their top state politicians is following Abbott’s example.
Steven Miles can bench press a hundred pounds, but can he push David Crisafulli out of the way?
If it works, Queensland voters will get what they deserve: a fourth Labor term in power.
It’s not like LNP opposition leader David Crisafulli has been particularly impressive as he tries to walk both sides of the aisle on most political issues.
Anthony Albanese is quietly hoping Queensland voters will take out their anger on the state party before his federal team goes to the polls early next year.
The cost of living is by far the most important issue on voters’ minds. This is undoubtedly why the Miles government has promised all kinds of benefits in an attempt to buy votes, despite the inflationary pressures it creates.
And cost-of-living issues certainly span both federal and state politics.
The problem for Albo is that Queenslanders have registered higher approval ratings for the prime minister than for the prime minister, according to recent polls.
That suggests that regardless of the outcome of the state election, Queenslanders will be rooting for the Prime Minister in due course.
Labor doesn’t have many federal seats in Queensland, but would like to pick up a few to offset expected losses elsewhere in the country.
