State elections around Australia, especially for a first-term government seeking re-election, are usually stale stolid events. Quite often, the results offer some pointers to the federal government but, as the political operatives love to say, they are ‘fought on state issues’.
But not this Queensland election. There has been an unusual synchronicity between Queensland and federal politics, with the respective leaders, Campbell Newman and Tony Abbott, facing many leadership issues and following a similar ‘crash through or crash’ strategies, and largely alienating the electorate with similar political agendas: public sector job cutting, austerity.
