By Denis Bright

With the Queensland Government now in caretaker mode, time is running out for more communication about the priorities of a fourth term of government for Queensland Labor. Pre-polling voting commences on 14 October and continues for the last two weeks of the campaign. State Labor’s primary vote is still stuck on 30 percent in the most reliable polls.

There were no new major polling updates this morning on The Poll Bludger site. A global statewide polling result conceals the diversity of Labor’s support base from the 2020 state election of vast Labor regional heartlands, traditional inner-city seats with strong environmental agendas and outer metropolitan seats where cost-of-living politics is in the ascendency. In key marginal seats, the polling could be better or worse for Labor. Calling the result at this stage by the mainstream commercial media surely undermines democratic processes and makes a farce of the whole election campaign.

The recent allocation of LNP preferences to Labor over the Greens challenges the possibility of the Greens leap frogging from their two current state electorates of South Brisbane and Maiwar (formerly Indooroopilly) to adjacent seats like McConnel, Cooper and Moggill. There were similar possibilities in electorates to the east and south of South Brisbane and McConnel on both sides of the Brisbane River in LNP electorates like Everton, Clayfield and Chatsworth.

In Maiwar, the LNP is running a traditional campaign in support of David Crisafulli’s Tough on Crime Strategies.

Readers should also note the failure of the Brisbane City Council’s Management Company to turn on the existing floodlights at the Witton Barracks Community Centre.

The recent Freshwater Polling results show that the LNP’s campaign on the extent of community crime has hit the mark in shaping public opinion by swamping real debate on a fuller range of public issues (AFR 30 September 2024).

The Queensland Police are as tough on crime as any recent LNP Government.

On many indicators, Queensland crime rates are below those experienced under the LNP’s Campbell Newman Government.

The issue of comparative crime rates is complex. Numerous resources are available from Queensland Policy and from Treasury for further investigation by readers. Political points scoring on this issue is surely inappropriate when both sides of politics are united in their opposition to crime. There is a high degree of opportunism and sensationalism in the LNP’s approach which is ushering in the return of a bygone era in Queensland politics with its emphasis on Law and Order as a key policy priority.

Mainstream media outlets claim that Queensland is in the midst of a crime wave but in reality, there is a mixed picture of criminal activity as outlined by Police Minister Mark Ryan on 26 July 2024:

The latest crime statistics from the Queensland Police Service compare the financial year 2023/24 to financial year 2022/23.

The figures reveal a reduction in the rate of youth offences of 6.7%. In addition, the total number of unique youth offenders has reduced by 2% since last financial year and by 18% since 2012/13. The rate of unique youth offenders has reduced by 4% since last financial year and by a staggering 32% since 2012/13.

These annual statistics are underscored by a 9% statewide decrease in the number of unlawful entry offences committed by youth offenders and by a 9% statewide decrease in the number of unlawful use of a motor vehicle offences committed by youth offenders.

The statistics also show that the rate of all offences (inclusive of domestic violence flagged offences) by all offenders decreased by 0.1%.

Significantly, the rate of all offences (exclusive of domestic violence flagged offences) by all offenders decreased by 1.9%.

As a proportion of total offence rates, Domestic Violence offences continue to grow. For example, in relation to assault offences, in 2019-2020 Domestic Violence accounted for 24.4% of total assault offences, while in 2023-2024 it accounted for 56.9% of total assault offences.

It demonstrates the scale of domestic violence offending and how important it is that everyone in the community works together to stamp out this scourge on society.

The fact is that even one instance of offending is of concern, and that is why the government and police will never relent in targeting those who cause harm in the community.

Although law and order campaigns against criminal activity as proposed by David Crisafulli have overseas precedents, Queensland under an LNP government will take this state beyond the extreme measures trialled in some US states (Sourced from Gemini Google Bard):

• Georgia: While the general age of criminal responsibility is 13, Georgia has provisions that allow children as young as 12 to be tried as adults for certain serious offenses.
• North Carolina: In North Carolina, children aged 13 and older can be tried as adults for certain felony offenses, including murder and rape.
• Texas: Texas allows 10-year-olds to be tried as adults in rare cases.

Tough on Crime Strategies in Texas itself coexist with high rates of crime by Queensland standards. But even in Texas, crime rates vary considerably (SafeHome Org: 15 August 2024). Crime deterrents across Texas have not contained crime rates in the troubled cities along the Gulf Coastline from the outskirts of Houston and Galveston to Corpus Christi and onto the Mexican Border.

High crime rates in Texas coexist with the reintroduction of the death penalty as a result of local far-right support for capital punishment with approval from US Supreme Court’s Gregg v Georgia Ruling in 1976. The sometimes-macabre details on Texan prison systems are available online for interested readers.

The Appeal (3 February 2024) notes the widespread return of Tough on Crime Rhetoric in US Politics:

According to a Gallup poll released in November, for the first time in 20 years, the majority of Americans think the U.S. is “not tough enough” on crime. In a marked shift from the last time Gallup asked this question, 58 percent of respondents said they believe the criminal-legal system is too soft, up from 41 percent in 2020.

This change in public opinion coincides with growing fears about – allegedly – rising crime in the United States. In the 2022 midterms, most voters ranked violent crime among their top issues. And in late 2020, a Gallup poll found that perceptions of increased crime reached their highest levels since 1993.

A few years earlier, “tough on crime” policies seemed passé. In major cities, voters elected pro-reform prosecutors who ran on promises to reduce the use of cash bail and end prosecutions of low-level misdemeanours.

Deep-red states like Oklahoma and Louisiana enacted sweeping criminal justice reform legislation in 2016 and 2017, respectively.

Since 2020, however, punitive approaches to public safety have come back in style. Progressive prosecutors have left office in jurisdictions like San Francisco, Orlando, and St. Louis, ousted by voters and hostile state officials. Numerous states have enacted harsh new penalties for drug crimes and retail theft. Landmark victories for the reform movement, such as New York’s 2019 bail reform legislation, have been rolled back by the same legislators who initially passed them.

On the surface, this shift towards “tough on crime” policies and rhetoric may appear to be a natural response to voters’ growing concerns about public safety. But this simplistic narrative misses a more nuanced understanding of Americans’ complex and often contradictory attitudes toward the criminal-legal system. Not only are perceptions of crime out of whack with reality, but public opinion polls show that most voters still support efforts to reduce incarceration, increase police accountability, and invest in alternative approaches to public safety.

Saturating voters with warning about crime and nasty cards that blame Labor and the Greens for all cost-of-living problems from rents to housing prices and insurance bills is a real Machiavellian ploy to divert attention away from the real achievements of the Labor Government in Queensland over the past three terms since 2015. David Crisafulli’s Tough on Crime Rhetoric is short on details about the underlying causes of crime including the widening income divide and the exploitation of social alienation by social media networks.

In contrast, the current Social Media Summit has the imprimatur of the Albanese Government as well as the governments of NSW and SA. Queensland is not involved as our government is in caretaker mode:

The summit will bring together experts, policymakers, academics, young people, and community voices to discuss the positive and negative impacts of social media on people’s lives and how government can best support digital wellbeing.

The summit will help inform the design and delivery of a range of policies, programs and resources to address the challenges posed by social media.

Key focus areas of the Social Media Summit will be:

• Impacts of social media on children and young people’s wellbeing
• Online safety
• Social media’s role in disinformation and misinformation
• Addressing online hate and extremism
• How social media is changing the way government delivers services

Live stream

Keynote addresses and major panel discussions from day one of the summit in Sydney will be live streamed via this webpage from 9:30am – 5pm AEDT on Thursday, 10 October.

 

The strength of the Queensland economy is a good defence against the descent into criminality in the LNP’s Tough on Crime Rhetoric. In management of the economy, Labor’s record is exceptionally good.

The Queensland economy has moved from Potential Dire Straits with the injection of additional revenue from mineral royalties, stable support from the Albanese Government and windfall profits through the Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) (https://www.qic.com/). The QIC’s real estate portfolio alone has built up $14.5 billion in assets under management since it was established under the Goss Labor Government in the 1990s (From the latest Annual Report):

“QIC has delivered a pre-tax profit of $127.1 million for 2022-23 against a target of $110.0 million. Total revenue for 2022-23 increased by $37.9 million to $654.5 million compared to 2021- 22, primarily due to increased investment management fees and property asset level service revenue.”

Eyewitness news services bring a measure of excitement into suburban and regional households with their coverage of specific criminal events which do not extend to the big overall picture of trends in criminal activity. The coverage always avoids emphasis on growing levels of corporate criminal corruption from tax evasion to support for highly prevalent illegal drug distribution or even anomalies in the management of nursing homes for the elderly which have been well covered in recent 7.30 Report segments. It is about scaring the Mamas and Papas.

Data transmitted by Metropole Property Strategists should allay these concerns. Many Brisbane suburbs are the safest locations in comparison to interstate metropolitan areas.

Every percentage point gain in Labor’s primary vote will save sitting members in the most marginal seats in both outer metropolitan and regional districts. Labor’s initially bad polling results have stabilized. Of course, I cannot guarantee that this will continue into the 30+ percent range. It is a wait and see game for the days ahead.

Twenty of Labor’s fifty-one current seats in a state parliament of ninety-three members are in the coastal zones from the Premier’s own electorate of Murrumba to the tip of Cape York in the Cook electorate.

Health Minister Shannon Fentiman made a commitment to extend Labor’s unfinished business in public health on today’s campaign trail. This repeats similar commitments about Labor’s unfinished policy agenda in earlier press statements (26 September 2024):

“Ensuring our hospitals are ready to serve their local communities now, and into the future is a priority for the Miles Government.

“That’s why we have invested over $14 billion in the Queensland Health Big build, to cater for this growth.

“These projects also mean our hardworking frontline nurses and doctors will be equipped with the support and resources they need to deliver world-class healthcare and improve the flow of patients through hospitals.

“It’s thanks to our progressive coal royalties tax that we are able to continue to invest in the services that matter most to Queenslanders.

“The LNP will not deliver a single new hospital bed for Queensland.

“And if their track record of savagely sacking 4,400 health workers is anything to go by, Queenslanders cannot trust a thing they say.

“Only Labor is doing what matters to build the facilities needed to ensure Queenslander’s can access worldclass healthcare close to home.

“Meanwhile, David Crisafulli, Ros Bates, and the LNP refuse to be upfront with Queenslanders about their plan for our health system. Last time they were in Government, they sacked 4,400 health workers and slashed $1.6 billion from the health budget.”

The strength of the Queensland economy is supported by efforts of the QIC which has sold its equity in the traffic management systems and car park at CampusParc at Ohio University in Columbus at twice the value of its purchase price for close to one billion dollars (Bloomberg Media 7 March 2024).

Ohio State University has more to offer Queenslanders than windfall profits on its parking and traffic management facilities. Within walking distance of CampusParc is the University’s iconic School of Communication where Professor Gerald Kosicki, Associate Professor Nicole Kraft and others have pioneered research over the years on the need for critical analysis from all academic perspectives on the opportunistic use of political spin of the style.

Students at the School of Communication at Ohio are trained to report on criminal activity as a social problem which can be exacerbated by journalistic repetition of that Tough on Crime Rhetoric (From the School of Communication 21 November 2022). Ohio State’s School of Communication partnered with the Ohio State University Police Department to conduct a mock crime scene, simulating breaking news.

“When news breaks, you don’t want that to be the first time you are covering breaking news,” said Nicole Kraft, associate professor – clinical. “We give them this opportunity to do it, to make mistakes, to be able to get evaluations on how they did and be able to build up the kind of muscle that they’re gonna need to do this in the field someday.”

Students reporting on the scene must think up, write and ask questions all at once. This on-the-spot interviewing challenges for young reporters, helping better prepare them for the real world.

“I think that feeling, that adrenaline rushing through my body was like something I’ve never felt before, so that was pretty exciting,” Jayla Van Horn, a third-year journalism student, said.

In contrast to this innovative training of journalism students at Ohio State, even Criminal Justice Web Sites in the USA can misuse application of their own Tough on Crime Rhetoric. Readers might take a look at the Death Row Information from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (Death Row Information (texas.gov) with its gruesome last statements from executed felons and even media liaisons with mainstream news reporting networks about forthcoming executions. There have been also six hundred executions in Texas by lethal injection since 1982. This emphasis on punishment has not contained the crime waves in urban centres along the Gulf Coast between the outskirts of Houston and nearby Galveston to Corpus Christi and the Mexican border. Media coverage of executions in Texas is a feature of mainstream news coverage:

In contrast to the grim reporting from Texas, last minute campaigning worked in the German State of Brandenburg to get the Social Democrats back into government on 24 September 2024 with a commitment to improved living standards and community services.

As in France on 7 July, a United Front was forged between the Social Democrats, the Greens and a newly formed Left Populist Party known locally as the Reason and Justice Party (BSW).

Labor’s agenda for should not be swamped by Tough on Crime rhetoric when these policies have bipartisan support. Both major parties are Tough on Crime but this commitment should not be at the expense of other policy agendas.

In every policy area, there are new opportunities for progressive change that combines old Labor traditions with new directions in affordable and sustainable living.

Imagine the opportunities for Queensland if Downer Rail at Maryborough became a new hub for hydrogen powered regional trains (Image: One H2 24 February 2024):

As the world looks for ways to reduce the impact of greenhouse gasses, the rise of hydrogen-powered trains is gaining momentum. The U.S., China, and Europe are driving this new technology, shaping the future of rail transportation.

In the United States, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority (SBCTA) just got its first hydrogen-powered trainset from Swiss-based Stadler. The two-car train will run on the 9-mile “Arrow” rail line in California and is set to go into service in 2024 after undergoing testing in Europe. California has a goal of making all its passenger trains 100% emissions-free by 2035, and this new train aligns with that mission.

China’s CRRC Changchun Railway Company and Chengdu Rail Transit have produced the country’s first hydrogen passenger train, specifically made for city environments. It is said to be the world’s fastest hydrogen-powered train to date, capable of reaching 100 mph (160 km/h). This train is part of China’s plan to grow its hydrogen energy sector and have 50,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the road by 2025.

Political miracles can happen. In the Brandenburg State election, good campaigning combined with an awareness of the consequences of the alternatives offered by far-right politicians brought a four percent increase in the local votes for the Social Democrats in the last week of the campaign.

From Potsdam in Brandenburg to Palardo, Pittsworth, Petrie and Piabla on the current Queensland campaign, commitment to the Light on the Hill will triumph over temporary phases of far-right opportunism. Better sooner than after another thirty-two-year phase of guided democracy and political corruption in the worst of the decades between 1957 and 1989.

For your interest, a short juxtaposition doco:

A Country Road: The Nationals: Joh Bjelke-Petersen