David Crisafulli staked his government’s success – and his own future – on meeting targets.
During last month’s election he vowed to resign if crime figures didn’t decline and to sack ministers who couldn’t deliver on key performance indicators (KPIs) set for each portfolio.
“Ministers will be given tasks to deliver, and that means that Queenslanders will see a better government,” the Liberal National party leader declared, two days before the 26 October election.
But the newly minted LNP government, barely a month old, is already under attack for breaking the accountability promise.
The ministerial charter letters the new premier issued to his cabinet – made public at 10.16pm on a Friday night – do not include genuine key performance indicators at all, according to public policy academic Alastair Stark.
“They’re not explicit in terms of real, measurable input/outputs, but I guess more importantly, the steps of progression that would take you to really clear deliverables,” he said.
Many of them are vague, lacking timetables, or even numbers at all.
For instance, it’s hard to see how arts minister John-Paul Langbroek’s would be kept accountable to his charter to “foster a vibrant arts scene across Queensland” and “deliver and maintain arts assets”.
Crisafulli has no ministerial charter letter at all, so has no targets to meet as minister for veterans affairs.
Only a handful of ministers have been given specific targets. The health minister, Tim Nicholls, must “reduce ambulance ramping to below 30% by the end of this term of government” and “stabilise the elective surgery waitlist” by November 2025. Both were election promises.
No less than four ministers have been tasked with reducing crime – but their charter letters do not define success or failure.
In opposition, Crisafulli promised to set targets “for fewer victims year on year” and even staked his future premiership on reducing the number of victims of crime below the 289,657 counted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
“I’m serious about it, and I’m not giving myself any wriggle room. It’s victim numbers,’ he said during a televised debate with then premier Steven Miles on 3 October, after promising to quit after a term as premier if the target was not met.
Crisafulli backtracked on that vow three weeks later – on the eve of the election – telling reporters his promise to resign actually referred to per capita rates, rather than total numbers.
The police minister, Dan Purdie, attorney general Deb Frecklington, the minister for youth justice, Laura Gerber, and the minister for child safety and the prevention of domestic and family violence, Amanda Camm, have been tasked with “reducing victim of crime numbers in Queensland”, but there are no details, timelines, interim goals or metrics listed to which they could be held accountable.
In a speech to the party’s state council on the weekend, Crisafulli told the LNP faithful he’d listed “three things in particular” in the charter letter of the education minister, John-Paul Langbroek: “bullying programs, behavioural management for teachers and a strengthening of the school chaplaincy program in this state”. They are not mentioned in the charter letter.
Stark said a KPI needed to be a “discrete, understandable – typically quantifiable – target, that’s the kind of baseline definition”.
“Then for any organisational performance, you need a set of milestones and a chronology and a timeline,” he said.
In a public service department, a KPI would come with a clear reward structure, but that’s not the case with political targets, Stark said.
“Those are just implied. You know, it’s an electoral consequence,” he said.
‘Full of good intent and lacking in ambition’
Crisafulli brought few new policy initiatives to the public during the election campaign, and the charter letters suggest the LNP will operate in a similar way in power.
Former Labor minister, now QUT adjunct associate professor John Mickel, said many of the letters are broad statements of policy which do not constitute a KPI.
“They are full of good intent and lacking in ambition,” he said.
Mickel said their primary message is budget discipline – the government hopes to avoid the sort of cost blow-out that bedevilled its predecessors.
The minister for the environment, Andrew Powell, has been ordered to “progress Queensland toward net zero and reduce our emissions in a sustainable and practical manner”.
This mirrors language from before the election that some saw as moving away from the LNP’s commitment to the state’s 75% by 2035 emissions reduction target.
The Queensland Conservation Council director, David Copeman, said the government had “made an absolutely explicit promise to Queenslanders” to achieve the interim target but the charter letters are “generally broad motherhood statements” that “don’t have the detail”.
“That’s why we look forward to working with the government to quickly flesh out the details of what their plans are,” he said.
Many advocates for social housing have welcomed the charter letter for the minister of housing, Sam O’Connor.
He has been ordered to “deliver a master agreement for community housing providers in Queensland”.
Q Shelter chief executive officer, Fiona Caniglia, said the sector had been calling for the agreement for years, because an arrangement with the government for long-term leases or tenure over state-owned properties would enable them to better access capital to build more.
The opposition leader, Steven Miles, said Crisafulli was “willing to say anything just to get elected” and had broken seven promises in less than a month as premier, including a vow to elevate the entire LNP shadow cabinet to the government frontbench.
“Queenslanders just can’t trust anything he says,” Miles said.
