- by David Matters
- The Guardian
- Issue #2123
Comrades at the Sunshine Coast.
An election contested based on who could be tougher on children, with an underlying appeal to racism. A strategic flip towards making abortion an issue, and flipping votes from young women back to the Labor Party.
A preference deal between the two major parties as a means of unseating non-two-party candidates. A resurgence of the tacit alliance between the One Nation and LNP who form the cover for regional reaction.
The issues that sit at the heart of the political slide are still unresolved. Housing and homelessness remain in record numbers. Racism towards first nation people will be ramped up. Developers will have a paradise while paradise will continue to be lost.
The attack on construction workers will be deepened by this government. Unclear are what attacks are in the making by this newly elected conservative-led parliament. The struggle within the Labor Party is intended to deepen conservative hold over that party with the destruction of left-leaning forces.
Public transport as an issue was neutralised with the introduction of 50 cent fares, and rolling out new transport infrastructure in time for the 2032 Olympics. What is not clear is the level of attack being prepared against workers to fund this infrastructure push.
What is most amazing is just how slow these construction companies are in building this new public transport. The Victoria bridge has been resurfaced now at least five times, rerouting of bus stops has been going for years.
Instead of attacking construction unions a real inquiry is needed into the tenders issued for these infrastructure projects to answer why it takes years to do seemingly minor construction work.
The population centres in North Queensland have been under pressure since COVID and closures of major industry throughout, with the increased shedding of labour in the mines. Mt Isa faces a major shift as the mines are earmarked for closure.
The political shift is towards Brisbane as the central political force with the massive population increases in Southeast Queensland. The population centres represented by the continuous housing stretching from west to east and south to north. Housing estates now continue along all these corridors. This population and political shift was apparent in the short term of the Newman government.
During the Bjelke-Petersen years, the state government relied on a gerrymander that favoured rural constituencies. We now have a large population concentration in Southeast Queensland. Brisbane City Council was originally a Labor Party stronghold but, is now held by the LNP.
So, we have a situation where the Greens controlled three major seats federally in Brisbane while Labor held the state seats. Now, we have a LNP Council and an LNP government. In the next federal elections, the Labor Party and the LNP will no doubt cooperate to remove Greens from federal seats.
The slide to the right of the political parties will continue while the needs of the people will remain unsatisfied. The fight on crime will lead to even higher incarceration rates on top of already high rates of incarceration. The already privatised government assets will face new forms of privatisation. This is what happened under the short lived Borbidge LNP government. The electorate didn’t have the stomach to absorb more of these attacks under the Newman government.
This election may be a bellwether for the next federal election. Reactionaries in the Labor Party are going to support the LNP government and its reaction to any small l liberal reforms proposed by the Greens.
This means that the future governments in Queensland will deepen the existing crisis.
