Pollsters say one word – “abortion” – has entered the minds of Queensland voters as Saturday’s state election draws near.
“It is coming up unprompted in our surveys, people are bringing it up as an issue” one political strategist told Guardian Australia last week.
The opposition leader, David Crisafulli, has repeatedly refused to give a direct answer to questions about his personal position on abortion rights, and whether he would allow his party a conscience vote.
At Tuesday’s final debate with the premier, Steven Miles, Crisafulli finally deviated from his rehearsed line. He said attacks by Labor were “desperation”.
“Women deserve better than the scare campaign that has been run. There will be no change at all. The scare campaign should not cut a single mention in your mind.
“Those laws will not change”.
Asked by Miles whether he was pro-choice, he said: “Yes.”
It is unlikely this will end the issue.
As Guardian Australian revealed on Tuesday afternoon, Crisafulli told a live audience last year that “I do not believe in late-term abortions” and that he would allow LNP MPs a conscience vote on the issue.
This is Crisafulli’s key problem. He cannot rule it out if he cannot rule out a conscience vote.
This week some media reports claimed that crossbencher Robbie Katter had backtracked on his vow to introduce a private member’s bill that would in turn trigger a conscience vote to wind back abortion access and rights.
A spokesperson for Katter said he made no such backtrack. Katter spoke about his intention to revive a “babies born alive” bill that would mandate life-saving interventions on the extremely rare occasions where an unviable foetus is born alive. Healthcare professionals say claims by anti-choice lobby groups about the situation amount to misinformation.
Reports claiming Katter has backtracked appear to misunderstand that re-introducing this bill proposes to amend the Termination of Pregnancy Act. It is – by definition – a wind back of abortion laws.
Regardless, the prospect of a conscience vote has put significant focus on the personal views of LNP MPs and candidates. Many have previously been on record opposing abortion rights; none has been willing to answer questions about those views during the campaign.
One LNP candidate – a former MP who once claimed abortions increased a woman’s risk of breast cancer – told voters that she was “pro-life” but that she couldn’t “say anything yet because we have got to get elected”.
Crisafulli’s previously unreported remarks at a Griffith University event on 31 May 2023 – that he did not “believe in” late-term abortion, that Labor’s laws went “too far” but that he would not support re-criminalisation – are likely to add further pressure.
When Crisafulli took charge, the LNP was riddled with factional infighting – most notably involving members of the rightwing “Christian soldiers” faction but also grassroots unrest at the organisational leadership. The party was directionless and almost locked out of inner-Brisbane, where voters have been put off by the party’s conservative social policies at state level.
Crisafulli was asked at the Griffith event about why “fierce ideological battles” had become apparent on the conservative side of politics.
“I’ll answer that with two words: not here,” Crisafulli said.
“Even my harshest of critics will acknowledge the unity and discipline of the Queensland LNP is at a level it’s never been before and it hasn’t happened by chance.”
That unity and discipline has brought the LNP to the brink of an election victory but the divisions within the party remain. Earlier this year, the Christian right won control of a branch covering the state’s most progressive federal electorate – Griffith, held by the Greens. Its new president is Alan Baker, a veteran anti-abortion campaigner.
The other key problem for Crisafulli is that the LNP can not point back to any sort of record of success running a more modern Queensland. The last long-term conservative government in the state was from the Bjelke-Petersen era.
Since the merger of the Liberal and National parties, conservatives have only won one election – a landslide victory in 2012 that brought Campbell Newman to power with the country’s largest ever majority, and ended after only a term.
During that time Newman – elected after campaigning as a moderate – inherited a party of candidates who had not been expected to win, and a caucus where the Christian right had significant influence. It scrapped same-sex civil unions and was embarrassingly swept from power.
Labor is exploiting the issue because it knows it puts the LNP’s candidates and grassroots membership at odds with the general public.
But ironically, it could be the Greens who suffer most from the focus on abortion. Sources say abortion will likely have the biggest impact in middle-class electorates, where most voters are university educated. These are, in many cases, seats where Labor is under pressure from the Greens, rather than the LNP.
Greens MPs would vote in a bloc to support abortion rights – they wouldn’t have a conscience vote like the major parties – but the threat to them remains that traditional Labor voters in these seats might stick with the party if it puts progressive social issues front and centre.
Outside Brisbane, the issue could cut through in another way.
On Tuesday, Miles compared Crisafulli to the Townsville mayor, Troy Thompson, who was elected in a protest vote and quickly came under pressure to resign amid an investigation into his claims about his military service.
“It underlines what can happen when you elect someone who is unknown. The people of Townsville didn’t really know what they were getting with Troy Thompson and that’s worked out really badly. And that could happen with David Crisafulli. He’s hiding his views on so many important issues”.
There is a contradiction between Crisafulli’s comments on Tuesday, that he is pro-choice, and his statement in 2023 that he did not believe in late-term abortions.
There is a contradiction between his steadfast defence of the right to a conscience vote a year ago and his continued refusal to make a clear statement about it these past few weeks.
While those contradictions remain, so will doubts remain in the minds of many voters.
