Stick season arrives for Queensland politics

One of my favourite songs at the moment is Stick Season, by the US artist Noah Kahan, which takes its name from the late autumn/early winter when the leaves have fallen in his home state of Vermont. 

He describes it as “a really miserable time of year when it’s just kind of grey and cold”.

As we count down 50 days until the Queensland election on October 26, and with just one week of Parliamentary sittings to come next week, it very much feels as though we are in the political equivalent of stick season – just waiting around for something to happen.

Both sides of politics feel as though they are now marking time until the election campaign officially begins at the end of this month (although the race will begin in earnest after next week’s final sitting).  

The LNP has an eye to favourable polls and is starting to turn its mind to the responsibilities of governing the state. Labor hopes for an unlikely victory, but has largely wrapped up its activities in government.  

The public service too is looking to the caretaker period which will occupy October.  By convention this should mean that it makes no decisions that will bind an incoming government.  However, it is often interpreted to mean not making any decisions at all in the caretaker period, and generally throttling back on most activity in the lead-up.

And so here we are.  Stick season. Queensland’s first four-year term of government is, for all intents and purposes, finished. But we still have 50 days of theatre before we can be certain of what the future holds.

In Canberra, it’s a similar story as my colleague Johnathon Baque points out in the Federal Politics update below.  At some point in the next six months there will be a federal election also, and already it feels that the “business” of the Parliamentary term is coming to a close.

For political junkies like us here at the SAS Group, it is – in the words of Noah Kahan – the “miserable time of year when it’s just kind of grey and cold”.  Speed on both elections, and a new political season that will hopefully refocus our MPs and bureaucrats on the needs of the state and nation. 

In the meantime, don’t forget the SAS Group’s state election guide, which is being regularly updated and republished on our website.