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DEB Frecklington is a nice lady, and a great local MP for her regional electorate, but nice doesn’t win elections.
After promising to fight on despite the abysmal performance of the party she led to election defeat in Saturday’s Queensland state election, she has today announced her resignation as the Liberal National Party (LNP) leader. Mrs Frecklington said she won’t recontest the leadership ballot, but would love to serve in any position offered.
The LNP failed to differentiate themselves in any meaningful way from the Labor Party, and fell in line with the Premier’s leadership of dutiful obeisance to the Chief Health Officer. The election being the COVID referendum, voters were presented with two leaders who would do whatever the CHO said with regards to closed borders and other restrictions on freedom.
What might have made the election a whole lot better and possibly even saved some of the seats the LNP lost to a cynical COVID fear campaign by Labor, was a strong alternative leader willing to show some leadership and go against the ABC.
Mrs Frecklington could have argued that a multivariate analysis of the risks of COVID versus the known costs to mental health, employment and every other killer of many more Queenslanders than COVID was required.
She could have argued Labor’s recklessly simplistic and blunt ‘lock down’ policy on the say so of a single mid-level bureaucrat with no expertise in public policy beyond viral transmission was excusable in March but unforgiveable in October.
Deb Frecklington failed to tackle the toxic Jackie Trad abortion-to-birth legislation and campaign on greater concern for women with no assurance of independent counselling or screening for domestic violence abortion coercion.
Deb Frecklington failed to call out the Labor-Green death cult obsessed with killing innocent Queenslanders — not satisfied with making it easier to kill unwanted babies — when Annastacia Palaszczuk announced euthanasia was her top priority if re-elected.
Here’s what the Opposition Leader should have said repeatedly until it shaped the agenda and forced Labor to double down or back down:
Ms Palaszczuk is obsessed with killing Queenslanders, calling abortion essential ‘health care’ and death ‘therapy’. The government I lead will ensure women in the terrible position of considering an abortion have real choices with independent counselling and are free from domestic violence pressures and have all the support we can give them.
We agree end of life suffering must be prevented by a compassionate society, and where it can’t be completely eliminated, minimised. But my government is committed to the message that every suicide is a tragedy to also be prevented, and instead of killing those suffering we will increase funding and training for the front line palliative care health professionals who tell me they have inadequate training and funding. We won’t stop fighting until we have eliminated preventable suffering entirely and minimised what little may remain.
Every jurisdiction in the world which has gambled on euthanasia with innocent lives has lost and incurred unintended fatalities, including the disastrous Victorian Andrews Labor government. We are not so arrogant as to presume we can do a better job of legislating euthanasia than everyone who has tried to when every one has failed.
We cannot risk another four years of illiberal lock downs, irresponsible abdictation of leadership to unelected bureaucrats, and constant gambling with the lives and livelihoods of an authoritarian, pro-death Labor government which can’t even be trusted to prepare a budget, let alone defend the natural freedoms and human rights God gave us.
That’s the campaign I would have advised; but nothing like it was heard anywhere.
Of course, the ABC and leftist media outlets would howl and bay for her political blood if she made such an unapologetically conservative speech her campaign platform. But conservatives would come out in droves to donate and volunteer. Many disillusioned conservatives would return to the fold if she could articulate the message convincingly, and it is my belief that less elections would be lost to an incompetent and corrupt swarm of Marxists.
But what does she, and now the new LNP leader (whoever it will be), have to lose?
The leftist media have her political blood, so campaigning to woo the centre clearly doesn’t work. By the time the next Queensland election occurs, Labor will have ruled with unfettered power for 29 out of 34 years since December 1989. The ‘progressive’ media & the consumers who swallow their swill never vote right of centre, so fearing their scorn is an exercise in futility.
Undecided voters are where the battle for government is and everyone knows it, but to continue the current strategy of conflating them with ‘the centre’ and compromising conservative convictions is the definition of insanity. That’s what the LNP have been doing since inception, and but for one flash in the pan when the fates aligned, it has never ever paid off in Queensland. The last conservative to truly dominate Queensland politics was an unapologetic force of nature like Trump.
If the LNP want to make it 33 years out of 38 for Labor, they should elect another leader to woo the ABC, campaign on climate, cave on conservative convictions, shun conservatives from their ranks and chase the ‘centre’.
If they want to end the reign of terror and return Queensland to liberty, peace and prosperity, they must allow conservatives into their ranks to democratically preselect candidates who will get rid of pro-abortion & pro-euthanasia ‘progressives’, and must campaign as unapologetic conservatives who will lead undecided voters to make better decisions.
The LNP must abandon the theory that there’s a mid point on the political spectrum between right and wrong. Conciliatory compromise when lives and liberty are at stake isn’t nice, it’s hateful. What’s needed on the right side across the Western world and no less in Queensland are statesmen who will stand up and lead no matter the risks to themselves, instead of the current breed of political careerists of whom there are a few noble exceptions.
Deb Frecklington is a very nice lady who tried very hard to not offend ‘the centre’, but nice doesn’t win elections.
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Dave Pellowe is a Christian writer & commentator, founder of The Good Sauce, convener of the annual Australian Church And State Summit and host of Good Sauce's weekly The Church And State Show, also syndicated on ADH TV. Since 2016 Dave has undertaken the mission of arming Christians to influence culture through events from Perth to Auckland, videos, podcasts and articles published in multiple journals across Australia and New Zealand. [more]
