By Denis Bright

In these times of unexpected election swings at home and abroad, the campaign strategies of the LNP in Queensland are worthy of careful consideration. Until Lia Finocchiaro’s landslide victory in the NT elections on 24 August 2024, Labor controlled every mainland state and territory administration. Times have changed in a few weeks as political marketing strategies take their toll on long-term incumbency. Even the Tasmanian LNP had to preside over a minority government after that state’s election on 23 March 2024. It looked to the Lambie Network and two former LNP members to govern. 

After the conservative landslide in the NT, the LNP’s successful campaign in Queensland became a referendum on long-term incumbency after almost a decade of Labor rule. David Crisafulli’s role in the unpopular administration of Campbell Newman was consigned to history. The LNP offered a commitment against any return to the cost-cutting and retrenchments that were part of old-style neoliberalism. Indeed, on some issues, the LNP agreed with the policies of the Miles Administration while imposing a shrill populism on some key issues as a political marketing strategy. This included the acceptance of 50 cent Translink fares, Labor’s cost of living initiatives and possibly even those higher mineral loyalties which were so crucial for budget management.

The LNP’s Right Priorities Booklet emphasized the five fundamental concerns about community safety, more access to health services, better financial management, new directions in housing and sheer policy commitment from political leaders.

This was a virtual It’s Time Theme with an agenda for the first hundred days of a newly elected LNP state government. Unlike FDR’s New Deal legislative initiatives in 1933, the LNP’s approaches to government are a continuation of its political marketing agenda rather than a needs-based agenda. 

Readers can compare this interpretation with the soon to be released saga on the rise of David Crisafulli as interpreted by Brisbane’s Courier Mail with biblical overtones. It will take a long time before details are available of the LNP’s campaign expenditure, its links to minor far-right political parties to deliver essential preferences and of course the involvement of third parties including expenditure by Zionist associations to vilify the Greens for their support for Palestinian statehood.

Sam Newton as Managing Director of Topham Guerin (TG) has kindly informed me that his company was responsible for the creative output and media campaign for the LNP at the recent election. 

Nine News did offer a news segment on the use of AI images in the ACT election campaign (13 October 2024) including the use of AI images from the ACT’s Independent Senator Pocock (Liberal Party launches Australia’s first entirely AI-generated political ad).

The Guardian’s Andrew Messenger also noted the initial intrusion of an AI Generated TikTok video of the Queensland Premier Steven Miles created by the LNP (23 July 2024). TG could offer a more disciplined campaign management style which had been perfected from years of practice, locally and overseas. 

From far-off Canada, Open Democracy (17 September 2021) reported on TG’s campaigning efforts on behalf of the Conservative Party (Controversial Tory-linked PR firm working to oust Trudeau in Canada’s election | openDemocracy). This Canadian campaign failed to oust Prime Minister Justin Trudeau but succeeded in raising the profile of TG in conservative campaigns in Anglosphere countries:

Topham Guerin was founded in 2016 by two young New Zealanders, Sean Topham and Ben Guerin, who specialise in producing memes and videos for right-wing political parties. As well as helping to steer Johnson’s Conservatives to election victory in 2019, the firm is also credited with playing a key role in the election victory of Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party in Australia.

The firm, which has offices in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, has been referred to as “a 24-hour meme machine”, known for producing simple and often shocking content aimed at triggering strong emotions. In a 2019 speech, co-founder Guerin told an Australian audience that “You’ve got to surprise people, you’ve got to shock people, you’ve got to unlock an arousal emotion in people… The particular emotions that we need to unlock are arousal emotions. We’re talking anger, excitement, pride, fear.”

ABC News (8 November 2019) also noted the involvement of TG in Australian elections (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-08/topham-guerins-boomer-meme-industrial-complex/11682116).

With the success of the LNP’s recent election campaign in Queensland, Peter Dutton will undoubtedly apply similar techniques in 2025 to make the Australian election a referendum on the policy style of the Albanese Government. 

Expect the Federal Labor Government to be blamed for every negative economic and social indicator without any mitigating coverage of the stresses of life and cost-of-living in a neoliberal society with the increased financial burdens of defence outlays to the cheers of global military-industrial companies.

A core tenet of the TG approach is the strategic construction of a central advertising theme. This technique is rooted in agenda-setting and framing theories. Campaigning strategies across the political spectrum will surely follow this successful advertising model.

The ideal of a plan for the future was also championed by former WA Premier Mark McGowan at the last state election on 13 March 2021. 

Lara Dalton became Labor MLA for Geraldton for the first time in thirty years. The seat had been in Labor hands continuously between 1950 and 1991.

Politics has moved into a marketing style in which motherland statements are a call to action on behalf of forgotten people by political elites. This is not a return to needs-based politics. The LNP consolidated its regional support base with the assistance of preferences from the KAP and One Nation. This advance was extended into regional urban cities and outer metropolitan areas which were former Labor heartlands with some exceptions like the retention of the state seat of Bundaberg and the three Labor electorates in Ipswich.  

The Guardian is to be commended for its coverage of efforts by the Albanese Government to protect the more progressive components of our national identity:

The Australian government has pledged to legislate an age limit of 16 years for social media access, with penalties for online platforms that do not comply.

But the Labor government has not spelled out how it expects Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and others to actually enforce that age limit. Anthony Albanese is facing pressure from the Coalition opposition to rush the bill through parliament in the next three weeks, although a federal trial into age assurance technology has not yet commenced.

Albanese and the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, did not rule out the potential for social media users to have their faces subject to biometric scanning, for online platforms to verify users’ ages using a government database, or for all social media users – regardless of age – being subject to age checks, only saying it would be up to tech companies to set their own processes.

The conservative tidal waves are of course not confined to Australia and are likely to continue until neoliberalism confronts heavy weather in the next global economic recession or strategic conflicts associated with the return of President Trump and the ties which bind his administration to Australian governments of all persuasions.

Postscript on a Potentially Progressive Era-The Biden Years Versus a More Emergent Narcissistic Era