This week, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman made the surprise announcement that a state election will come early this year – with Queenslanders going to the polls on January 31.
The early election means Queensland’s opposition will have just 26 days of campaigning in order to try and win back the government. It also means Queensland has an opportunity to elect its next female premier: Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk.
At 45, Palaszczuk is one of Australia’s youngest female party leaders, having taken over the Queensland Labor party in 2012 unopposed, when former premier Anna Bligh resigned.
This left Palaszcsuk with a difficult task: rebuilding the party after a landslide loss to the LNP. The 2012 election saw Labor lose 44 seats, leaving the LNP with 78 seats and Labor with only seven. It was the worst defeat of a sitting government in the history of the state.
Palaszczuk has demonstrated that although difficult, leading the party to recovery is possible. This week, she polled just nine points below Newman as the state’s preferred leader. Saturday’s Newspoll put the Labor and the LNP on equal footing on a two-party preferred basis, at 50% each.
Under Palaszczuk’s leadership, it seems the party may be back in an election-winning position – which is a no mean feat, considering she had only two and a half years to do it.
The huge number of seats the party would need to recover from the LNP in order to win the election is cumbersome, but Palaszcsuk is confident it can be done.
“Over the last three years the Queensland people have seen a government that is arrogant, that has broken promises, that promised to lower the cost of living – that hasn’t happened – they promised to keep people in jobs – that hasn’t happened – and now they want to sell the assets, which they said wouldn’t happen before the last election,” she said.
“People can’t trust Campbell Newman and I think that is what is being reflected out there in the polls.”
Palaszczuk studied Arts and Law at the University of Queensland. She worked as a policy adviser to Labor ministers Warren Pitt and Dean Wells in the early years of her career. She then decided to leave politics and practice law, but changed her mind when her father, a Labor MP for the Brisbane seat of Inala, announced his retirement. Palaszczuk then stood for her father’s electorate, winning a seat in the House of Representatives in 2006.
She served as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Roads and Local Government, Minister for Disability Services and Multicultural Affairs and later Minister for Transport and Multicultural Affairs.
She has announced the Labor campaign in the lead up to the January 31 election will focus on returning to the party’s core values of jobs creation and worker’s rights.
She said she will focus on reversing the Newman government’s spike in unemployment, particularly youth unemployment. Yesterday, she said she will reinstate the Skilling Queenslanders for Work scheme, which was reversed by the Newman government in 2012.
Her leadership has also focused strongly on opposing the LNP’s cuts to the public service and rising cost of living.
Palaszczuk is expected to hold the safe Labor seat of Inala without too much difficulty, but will her party be able to win over the rest of the state?
What do you think? Has Queensland found its next woman for the top job?