Labor lays tightrope path to win back voters. They now have to walk it

It was a 60-minute speech 20 months in the making. The first major outlay of new policies and priorities from a Queensland Labor opposition finally looking up from its 2024 election wounds.

Whether the course set off along by leader Steven Miles on Thursday goes far enough, or in the right direction, to satisfy his partyroom colleagues this year is one thing – the state’s voters are another.

But Miles has now given initial shape to his focus for the 2028 state election, while making clear he views not just the Crisafulli LNP government, but an ascendant One Nation, as competition.

This has been rooted in targeted efforts to return or keep money in people’s pockets, through interest returns on portable rental bonds or free vehicle rego for apprentices and their supervisors.

Both have been welcomed (if only in a backhanded way) by some key stakeholders, and appear dialled-back echoes of the big-spending universal-style support offered when in government.

Miles has also waded, if only tentatively, back into issue of crime which caused Labor such grief in the 2024 campaign, with an effort to inject a much-needed voice of authority around the underlying data.

There was mention of an already announced 5¢ daily cap on fuel price increases (backed by the RACQ), and a less fleshed-out pitch to put resource royalty revenue windfall billions into a “cost-of-living fund”.

While Miles and has team have criticised the lack of budget repair by the LNP in their first two set pieces back after a decade of opposition, Labor will hold fire on their plans to rein in debt and repayment costs.

If budget repair will be a continued attack by Labor, such detail must flow. And come well before election week.

Though, to be fair, this was also nowhere to be seen in now-premier David Crisafulli’s second budget reply from opposition back in 2022 – which was still very light on policy detail or even direction.

There are even echoes of the LNP’s “health crisis town halls” strategy in Labor’s plans to take its housing affordability issues paper on the road for input from renters, first home buyers and home owners.

Miles, maybe unsurprisingly, denied this when asked at a brief media conference on Thursday afternoon.

But beyond the internal certainty Miles needs his newly articulated vision to give restless partyroom colleagues as poll numbers continue to fall, it is the voters of Queensland he really needs to convince.

While lacking a real state-level hometown presence, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is on the verge of eclipsing Labor for second place in those polls – and Miles risks plumbing new personal popularity depths.

This is where his tightrope act calling out the “race-fuelled hatred” of the party and starting to float ideas to ease the economic pain driving some people to it comes into the clearest focus.

It’s in stark contrast to the approach taken by the federal Coalition, and illustrates how alone the Miles opposition is in its position as a Labor alternative navigating the sharp shift in conservative politics.

Is it enough for Queensland Labor, under Miles or any alternative emerging this year? This opposition’s third budget reply next year should give some more clues.

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