Annastacia Palaszczuk celebrates winning a third term as Queensland Premier on Saturday night.Credit:Getty Images
But winning the state election was the easy part. Now comes the long painful road to economic recovery following the havoc wreaked by COVID-19. The next four years are going to be tough for the new government and playing the old political games of border closures will not create one job. Now there is nowhere to hide.
Rebuilding the devastated tourism industry,reducing the state’s high unemployment and managing the inevitable spot outbreaks of coronavirus head the government’s challenges,along with the timing of the full opening of the Queensland border.
Too often my Sydney and Melbourne colleagues struggle with Queensland parochialism,forgetting that,because the States of Queensland and Western Australia are geographically enormous,the political attitudes there can be very different from those in southern and eastern Australia. When tourists arrive in Cairns they are often stunned to find that from Cairns to where Queensland touches the Papua New Guinea border,there is enough room to fit in the whole state of Victoria.
Growing up in Atherton,in Far North Queensland,I was very familiar with the popular saying of"bloody southerners,what would they know?” The phrase was frequently used to even refer to people living in Townsville,not just Sydney or Melbourne.
Queensland is a vast state,and political views are often different to those in the south and east of Australia.Credit:Glenn Hunt
Perhaps it was the legacy of the rumoured Brisbane line,where Queensland,north of Brisbane,was to be abandoned to the invading Japanese,which shaped Queensland parochialism,or maybe it was just the lack of services and the need to be self-reliant.
Whatever the origin of the parochialism,the Queensland election saw it at play on Saturday,when Queenslanders followed the Premier and ignored calls from the Prime Minister,the Premier of NSW and the Queensland tourism industry to open the Queensland borders. Clearly Queensland parochialism is far from dead. Peter Dutton,Pauline Hanson and the Katter Party,all keen players of the parochial card,will now find it harder to attack the mandate of the Queensland government.