The Queensland election this Saturday, 26 October, is expected to deliver a change of government, and usher in a Liberal National Party Government that has campaigned hard on punitive justice policies. This raises some significant public health concerns, writes health policy consultant John Mendoza.
“What the media has ignored is that First Nations children and youth are 29 times more likely to be in detention than their non-Indigenous peers,” he writes. “There’s no ‘closing the gap’ on this issue in Queensland – it’s a case of ‘closing the door’ on vulnerable black or brown children.”
John Mendoza writes:
To most Australians, Queensland is where they go to escape winter and where the politics is as colourful as Cooloola’s famous sands. How does one explain almost continuous state Labor governments since 1989 and less than a handful of Federal Labor MPs? Queensland: both the birthplace of the world’s first social democratic party and One Nation?
And then there’s the intergenerational conga line of colourful characters – think of The Hon Vince Lester advocating walking backwards, the indecipherable Bob Katter, Minister for Everything (especially self-interest) Russ Hinze and, way back, my Great Uncle Andrew Thompson, whose casting vote helped end the Qld Upper House.
So, to the 2024 state election and, if the polls are correct, Queensland will have a change of government on Saturday for only the third time since Wayne Goss’s win 35 years ago. But my home state does throw up landslide wins as consistently as Cat 5 cyclones and we are due for both, so hold that headline!
Labor turned to Steven Miles (PhD) as Premier in mid-December 2023 to turn around the Government’s persistent poor polling under longstanding Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk. Since then, he has thrown the proverbial kitchen sink at turning around Labor’s position and more recently shifted strategy to sandbag Brisbane seats for the anticipated LNP storm surge.
His opponent, David Crisafulli, has run an “on message”, “small target” and disciplined campaign. Maybe channelling the ‘inner Joh’ is in the LNP’s DNA?
The election campaign has been dominated by the so called “youth crime crisis”, cost of living, housing, and health.
Copaganda unleashed
Both major parties and the media have engaged in “copaganda” to fuel a moral outrage targeting marginalised youth and supporting more punitive measures including suspending the Human Rights Act for child offenders.
Miles recognised the Government’s exposure on youth crime on coming to the top job, and quickly announced a mix of punitive and evidenced-informed responses (a summary is included in the report Time to Get it Right).
Despite the downward trend in child and youth crime, the issue has been front and centre of the campaign.
The LNP has brought every other billboard on the Bruce Highway with the very memorable “Adult crime, adult time” message.
Not to be outdone, Katter’s Australia Party (KAP) have ‘Trumped’ that with a message to “send ‘em (kids) out bush”. Very helpful for creating inclusive communities.
Like most Australian jurisdictions, children as young as 10 in Queensland can be placed in detention. On an average night last year, there were around 340 children and youth aged 10-17 in Queensland detention centres or police watchhouses. This is the second highest rate in the country and almost double the national rate.
Of those in detention, only 12 percent had been sentenced, more than half will have been the recipient of child protection services and specialist alcohol and drug services and many will have a neurological disability.
What the media has ignored is that First Nations children and youth are 29 times more likely to be in detention than their non-Indigenous peers. There’s no ‘closing the gap’ on this issue in Queensland – it’s a case of ‘closing the door’ on vulnerable black or brown children.
The LNP’s 44-page policy document for the campaign fails to mention “adult crime, adult time”. Instead, it refers to “unshackling the judiciary” and “delivering gold standard early intervention programs to put kids back on the right track”.
Details are thin but David Crisafulli has announced four $10 million “early intervention schools” and further funding for three-week long “reset camps”.
Neither the funding amounts nor models have much in the way of evidence. Indeed, just about every expert has given the LNP’s approach a thumbs down and forecast less safe communities.
Clear as mud
In health, like youth justice, both major parties have stuck to road tested slogans and vague commitments – quite possibly involving crash test dummies.
The ALP has committed to “employ(ing) over 46,000 additional health staff in Queensland by 2032” with 21,104 (note that number) by 2029. That barely justifies discussion, it’s so off the charts!
But the LNP is far more restrained, announcing just 34,000 additional healthcare professionals also pre-Olympics (presumably they have found these people lying on a beach somewhere).
Labor is spending big ($14 billion – a big number) on more and bigger hospitals and Emergency Departments and getting into bulk billing GP clinics – 50 of them for the Reject Shop price of $356 million!
Equally worthy of the scriptwriters of the ABC’s Utopia is the LNP commitment to get ambulance ramping and transfer times back to pre-COVID levels in its first term.
The ALP said it will match that, but without a timeline. As to how the LNP could achieve that ambition with less than $600 million committed is about as clear as the Brisbane River in flood.
In true Queensland politics form, the Greens would appear to have engaged the health economists with their promise to establish 200 free public health clinics, at a cost of $4.75 billion over four years. That at least sounds plausible.
And as is often the case, Queensland appears to be the test site for neoconservatives mirroring their American ideological mates, with women’s reproductive rights becoming a late campaign issue.
The Opposition Leader has dodged, for a reported 132 times, questions on if he had changed his view on abortion from his previous rejection of the legislation in 2018 and his view on granting MPs a conscience vote. Will it matter? I have no idea.
Finally, on the cost-of-living agenda, Steven Miles has spent big on things that do shift the dial on equity and disproportionately support those on low and middle incomes. The 50c public transport fares, the $1,000 electricity bill rebates and the free school lunches, all funded through an increase in mining royalties, are not only popular, they are good policy in terms of wellbeing and health outcomes.
So, I’m off to vote and find a low-fat alternative to that Democracy Sausage.
Author details
John Mendoza is Principal Consultant, ConNetica Consulting, Adjunct Professor, Health and Sport Science, University of Sunshine Coast, and Adjunct Associate Professor, Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney.
See Croakey’s coverage of the 2024 Queensland election
