Nicholls calls rival a do-nothing Premier
QUEENSLAND’S “forgotten people” have been heavily featured in LNP leader Tim Nicholls’ pitch to voters as he scrambles to claw back votes leaking to One Nation.
Mr Nicholls framed his newest policy – $20.25 million to help mature-age job seekers retrain and find employment – around the disempowered.
Borrowing a phrase from Donald Trump, he said he wanted to ensure Queensland did not end up with “a group of forgotten people”.
He said technology and automation were confronting issues and it was often regional communities affected.
“I know that change can be scary,” he said. “But we can’t afford for a generation of middle-aged men and women not to be given a hand up to retrain or re-skill as job opportunities shift. We can’t afford to lose them – economically, socially and emotionally.”
Claiming votes for One Na- tion would only return Labor, he took his fight straight to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and branded her a “donothing” premier seven times.
He listed her “litany” of failures that included escalating wholesale power prices, cuts to infrastructure spending, the “worst rail fail in Queensland’s history” and a shrunken domestic economy.
In his first appearance on the campaign, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull highlighted his and Mr Nicholls’ shared commitment to build infrastructure, and accused Ms Palaszczuk of thumbing her nose at hundreds of millions of dollars of money on offer for new dams and water infrastructure.
“I tell you my friends, when Tim Nicholls is the premier of Queensland, you will have once again a Federal Coalition Government, a Queensland LNP government working together, delivering the investment, ensuring the jobs, the growth, the infrastructure that Queensland needs,” he said.