Queensland election result: Aussies must heed lesson and vote out ‘bad Labor government’: Peter Dutton

Queensland has voted out a “very bad Labor government’, Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has declared, as he called on Australians to now give the Albanese Government the boot.

LNP leader David Crisafulli emerged victorious on Saturday night, securing enough seats for a Coalition majority government and ending Labor’s nine-year reign in the state.

Mr Dutton praised Mr Crisafulli on Monday, saying he had run a strong campaign in which he’d shown himself to be a “credible alternative premier”.

“I think the swing (against Labor in Queensland) . . . is also a reflection of the fact that it was a very bad Labor government. People say that Steven Miles ran a . . . terrible government, and that’s exactly what’s happening at a federal level now,” Mr Dutton said.

“The Labor Party and the union are good at campaigning, Anthony Albanese is a good brawler . . . but the fact is that he’s a bad Prime Minister, and being a bad Prime Minister is not what our country needs right now.”

Mr Dutton said there were lessons to be learnt for Labor out of the Queensland result, namely that “if you treat people with contempt, if you run up a huge debt, you mismanage the economy, you create a cost-of-living crisis — you can expect the electorate to punish you, and that is exactly what happened in Queensland”.

“I think that is what is going to happen at the federal level as well because the prime minister has promised a lot but delivered nothing,” he said.

Labor’s loss wasn’t as bad as it anticipated in Queensland, in part because of a suite of populist cost-of-living policies announced by outgoing Premier Steven Miles

Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Monday confirmed he was looking at other measures in light of the results and ahead of the next Federal election — due by May.

Mr Chalmers, the most senior federal minister from Queensland, said the outcome of Saturday’s election was decisive but not unexpected.

He added that while the Federal Government should draw some lessons from it, there were key differences, including that Queensland Labor was seeking a fourth term.

“There are always things that we can learn. There are always things that we can do better, and we will go through the results,” he said in Canberra on Monday.

“We won’t telegraph those lessons to our opponents by running through them in detail for you at a press conference. But we won’t . . . be ignoring the lessons of Saturday.

“We understand that people are doing it tough.

“We understand that people often express that at the ballot box, which is their right.”

He flagged ongoing discussions about what cost of living relief could be offered in the mid-year Budget update in December, as well as a potential Budget ahead of next year’s Federal election.

The Treasurer said responsible economic management would continue to define the Government’s approach, pointing to inflation now being half what it was when Labor came to power in 2022.

Queensland Labor suffered larger swings the further out from the city seats were located.

Dr Chalmers said the approach of the Albanese Government was to “govern for the whole place — the regions, the suburbs and the cities”.

Another senior Queensland minister, Murray Watt, said while the State and Federal contests were different, there was “work for us to do to regroup and reconsider what sort of offer we put on the table for Queenslanders going forward”.

He said there were factors outside of Labor’s control that explained the loss of heartland seats Mackay and Rockhampton.

“But clearly we’ve got work to do in regional Queensland, and I’m sure that Steven and his team will give that some thought going forward,” Senator Watt said.