‘Infantile’: David Crisafulli blasts Steven Miles’ ‘deflect and distract’ playbook

But before that, let's move to that horror weekend for Labor in Sunshine State, where the Miles government's in serious trouble after massive swings towards the LNP and two by-elections held over the weekend. Ipswich West, the LNP picked up the seat thanks to a huge 18.5% swing away from Labor. While Stephen Miles hangs on to Anastasia Palaszczuk's former seat of Inala, first preference votes there, 30% swing. I don't think I've ever seen it that big. He's surviving, but only just. What's gonna happen? Well, interestingly, Stephen Miles went on the attack. Have a listen. Holding on to particularly Ipswich West was always going to be very hard. I said that. This result, these results are clearly very bad. I was expecting a bad result, and they're even worse than that. Clearly, they wanted to send us a message that we need to work harder, particularly on cost of living and on community safety. Joining me now, Queensland opposition leader, David Crisafulli. Well, David, I'll get into what this vote means, what voters are saying to you, because I know you're out on the hustings throughout this campaign, but the Premier today reckons you're pretty cocky after the weekend. Are you cocky? Peter, we remain the underdog, and history shows that. We've got a massive task ahead, and results in by-elections don't just translate to a general election, I can assure you. So we remain focused on a really big task ahead. Now, I never play to personality politics if he wants to be infantile and do that over to him, but let me make this point. He also said that somehow that we've tried to sensationalise youth crime. Tell that to the victims. Tell that to the people of lost loved ones. It just shows that despite saying that they have got the message, it's the same playbook. Blame everybody else, try to deflect, try to distract. We focus on the task at hand, and the result shows that Queenslanders want better, they deserve better, and we're focused on the issues at hand. When you get a swing of 30%, when you're getting 18% swings even, this is Labor people deserting Labor. So what are voters saying to you is driving their vote away from Stephen Miles? Well, we ask Queenslanders to send them a message on youth crime, health, housing, and cost of living. And in all four of those, Queensland is ground zero when it comes to the crisis in this nation. We asked them to send a message, and they did so. Now, the message is they don't trust this government to fix the problems. They created the problems, in many cases, by doing things like watering down the laws. So they created it, and Queenslanders don't trust them to fix it. Now, the message to us is keep going. Keep focusing on these issues. Keep putting forward solutions. And that's what we're gonna keep doing, Peter. It's important. We're still a little over half a year away from a general election. It is a big task ahead. We remain the underdogs. We need over a dozen seats to win. So it is a big task, but we're united, we're focused, we're hungry, we're disciplined, and we wanna serve Queensland and bring real change. October's not that far away, though. I mean, are you confident if you get the trust of Queensland voters, you can hit the ground running and get done quickly what needs to be done to turn the state around? We are, Peter, and I'm a big believer in you set targets and you hold people accountable, and that's not happening in Queensland at the moment. I've said across the board, in every one of the crises, we've identified the problems, but we've also put forward the solutions. And let me tell you, within 100 days of the election, Queenslanders will see in real time what is happening in their hospitals. Doctors and nurses are gonna be put back in charge immediately. When it comes to youth crime crisis, we are going to rewrite the Youth Justice Act this year. We're going to remove the provision that says detention has to be a last resort. Power prices, Queensland's had the biggest rise in the last 12 months, 19.9%. That's three times the national average. Well, we're going to implement a maintenance guarantee to keep the lights on in this state. It's been over 1,000 days since the Calide coal-fired power plant went boom, and the government hasn't said why, and it doesn't say when it's going to bring it back on. We're committed to a maintenance guarantee. And when it comes to housing, I'm determined to make sure that targets are set to deliver infrastructure to get young people in the market. At the moment in Queensland, our home ownership rate is 64%. That is the lowest in the country. Now, I'm not comfortable with that, and we have a plan within a decade to go from last to first. And I'm also going to hold ministers accountable when it comes to community and social housing for the most vulnerable as well.