Palaszczuk’s Pyrrhic Power Play

The Queensland election is over and Labor has defied the odds, going from a netball team to what is shaping up as a minority government in the making, given the assumed support of independent Peter Wellington. What’s missing is an assessment of what Labor and Premier-apparent Annastacia Palaszczuk will do now that they have defied even their own expectations and won government.

In Palaszczuk’s words, Labor’s strategy was to run “a referendum on asset sales” — an extraordinary single-issue campaign that ran directly counter to the policy her own party advocated at the 2012 election. Working hand-in-glove with its union allies and boosted by a groundswell of grass-roots, anti-privatisation sentiment whipped up by the activist group Not4Sale, the strategy worked.

Palaszczuk’s problem is that it worked too well.

If you don’t follow Queensland politics let me explain, starting with a little background: Both Campbell Newman and his predecessor, Labor’s Anna Bligh,  entered…