David Crisafulli (left) and Steven Miles during the Courier-Mail leaders debate (Image: AAP/David Clark) With the Queensland election done and dusted, the hunt is on within Australia’s political punditocracy for the all-encompassing narrative that explains what just happened — and what comes next. The choice they make matters, because these national narratives are how our news media decide what makes news now: individual stories are no longer newsworthy in their own right — unless they fit the narrative. It’s why the opinion makers in the Canberra press corps were so keen to leap into their pre-mixed views on national politics.
Is it: Albo in crisis, as the ABC’s David Speers was keen to kick-start while the result was still up the air on Saturday night (and again, on Insiders the next day)? Or maybe it’s crisis-to-come with Labor’s loss of its lock on mainland states making governing harder, as The Australian was hoping on Sunday? There’s been an enthusiastic embrace, too, of the narrative of the far-too-radical Greens. Although their vote held up, at about 10%, it was — like in the NSW council elections — less efficiently distributed into seats that they held or hoped to win. Crunching the numbers on the Queensland election results, including silver linings for Labor Read More Perhaps it was that dreaded cost of living crisis in the outer suburbs, home of the “real” working class that Melbourne-based pollster Kos Samaras cut and pasted to fit over th.
