Queensland Premier Steven Miles said his government needs to do better after voters turned on Labor, which will lose one of its safest seats after suffering a huge swing against it at two byelections on Saturday.
The shattered premier faced the media on Sunday after the devastating result just seven months from the October 26 general state election.
‘We will be listening to voters and we will now redouble our efforts to deliver on those issues,’ he said.
‘It’s an admission we need to do better and it’s an acknowledgment that that’s what we’ve started to do, much more focused on those immediate concerns – cost of living, community safety, health and housing.
‘We’ve made big steps on some of there but there is clearly more for us to do, especially on cost of living and community safety.’
Queensland Premier Steven Miles (pictured) said his government needs to do better after voters turned on Labor, which will lose one of its safest seats after suffering a huge swing against it at two byelections on Saturday
The Premier seemed a far cry from the ‘Lord Giggles’ persona Labor insiders know him as, instead looking deflated on Sunday.
LNP candidate Darren Zanow is expected to claim the seat of Ipswich West after his Labor opponent Wendy Bourne suffered a 15.2 per cent swing against her.
Former Labor MP Jim Madden, who resigned to stand at the council elections also held on Saturday, held the seat with a margin of 14.2 per cent. Labor has held the seat for 19 out of 22 elections since 1960.
Beverly Baker (pictured) of the Older Women’s Network in NSW said it’s wrong that baby boomers are viewed as ‘greedy’
Labor will hold onto the seat of Inala, vacated by former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, despite voters turning against the party with a massive 30.9 per cent swing against the government.
Candidate Margie Nightingale, who was supported on Saturday by Ms Palaszczuk, Premier Steven Miles and Deputy Premier Cameron Dick, will take her seat in parliament, after defeating the LNP’s Trang Yen.
Federal Nationals leader David Littleproud said voters had sent a message to Labor, but the LNP and leader David Crisafulli shouldn’t get complacent.
‘This is a big “up yours” to the Queensland Labor government. This is a big message,’ Mr Littleproud told the Today show.
‘But I wouldn’t be measuring up the curtains just yet if I was David Crisafulli. There’s a lot of work to do between now and October in convincing Queenslanders.
‘Understand there’s a big message for federal Labor in this. This was a cost of living election.
‘And so I think from Anthony Albanese to Steven Miles, all the way down, they should be very concerned that they need to make sure that they’re attacking the real issue, which is cost of living pressures here in Queensland.’
Mr Crisafulli said voters had made their concerns known.
‘It was clear they couldn’t change the government, but they could change their vote and send a message. And they did that in large numbers,’ he said on Saturday night.
Mr Miles told supporters on Saturday night that Labor was ‘talking about issues in the campaign that we know people care about’.
‘Only Labor knows and understands and cares about communities like Inala and Ipswich West,’ he said.
‘We’ll keep listening to Queenslanders and keep delivering on those things.’
It was the first electoral test for Mr Miles, who succeeded Ms Palaszczuk late last year after her sudden resignation, before the October 26 state election.
He has previously spoken about how hard it would be for Labor to win a fourth term in October.
LNP candidate Darren Zanow (pictured) is expected to claim the seat of Ipswich West after his Labor opponent Wendy Bourne suffered a 15.2 per cent swing against her
‘No matter what the results are tonight, particularly Ipswich West was always going to be a very hard seat for us,’ he said.
On Saturday night, deputy Opposition leader Jarrod Bleijie said a strong message had been sent to the Labor government.
‘Trang has taken what was one of the most safest seats in Labor, to what is likely going to be a marginal seat within a swing of election winning status in October,’ he said.
‘Trang and the team should be immensely proud of what they’ve done and it shows that people of Inala are unhappy with the cost of living crisis, the health crisis, the youth crime crisis, housing crisis, all the things that Trang the LNP have been talking about.’
It comes after Mr Miles was called out for laughing when asked by a reporter what his government was doing about youth crime in his state, just days after the fatal attack of a woman in front of her granddaughter.
The premier had been addressing the undersupply of affordable housing at the Queensland Media Club last month when he took questions from reporters who grilled him about the youth crime crisis.
It was just a week after Vyleen White, 70, became the latest victim after she was allegedly stabbed at a Redbank Plains shopping centre.
Queensland Premier Steven Miles is under fire after nervously laughing when asked at a press conference what his government was doing about youth crime
Brisbane bureau chief for Sky News, Adam Walters, asked Mr Miles why he had not addressed the subject in his speech to which he replied ‘it was a speech about housing’.
But Mr Walters pushed: ‘The absence of any reference to youth crime in your speech would have been noted by the people of those communities.’
‘C’mon,’ Mr Miles said and laughed at the reporter for persisting with the question about why the topic wasn’t in his speech on the housing crisis.
His reaction angered many, who labelled his response ‘shameless’ and ‘pathetic’.
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