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Pre-polling has officially opened for the 2024 Queensland Election, and the state’s entire political landscape has been up-ended since this time last week.
According to opinion pollsters and the bookies, the Labor Party was heading into a guaranteed election loss as of Monday last week. But things have changed.
With the LNP now treading water after their deeply-buried anti-abortion tendencies were exposed by the Katter Party last week, it seems that Premier Steven Miles has doubled down on his policies aimed at tackling the cost-of-living crisis.
But last night, out of nowhere, Premier Miles announced that, if re-elected, free and healthy school lunches will be available for all state primary school students from prep to year 6.
It would begin “next school year”, Miles said, and will be paid for with the revenue that Queensland is finally reaping from his government’s Mining Royalty Tax.
With subsidies on car rego, 50 cent bus fares, and plans for the roll-out of a state-owned energy retailer – Miles is fighting tooth and nail with the type of social policies that the Labor Party has shied away from for decades out of fear of being hammered by the Murdoch press. But Miles has nothing to lose at this election, so he’s going to give the people what they want.
The party argues the policy would save parents about $1,600 per child each year, and that long-term studies suggest that universal free school lunches lower social inequality, lift women’s participation in the workforce and help to prevent childhood obesity.
This is a disaster for both the LNP and the Greens, with the Greens whingeing that Miles is stealing Greens votes with policies that they would’ve liked to introduce in the parallel universe where they form government. And the LNP basically arguing the same.
But the LNP has other issues. Now that they’ve been exposed for harbouring a backbench of right-wing Christian fundamentalists who want to strip reproductive healthcare from Queenslanders experiencing unplanned pregnancies, Opposition Leader David Crisafulli is starting to look like the flakey dad who popped down to the shops to buy a bottle milk and never came back.
Regardless, Miles has promised to feed these kids that the LNP plan on forcing women to have, even if the dodgy LNP patriarchy abandons them at birth.
