Annastacia Palaszczuk’s nine-year tenure as Queensland Premier saw damaging social and economic policy, the consequences of which will continue to play out.

Legislating for the killing of unborn babies to birth and the destruction of girls’ and women’s sex-based rights were two notable howlers.

Under Palaszczuk’s gender self-ID laws, a man can wake up in the morning and decide by lunch time to be a woman, gaining access to women and girl’s private spaces and sports.

The LNP are not much better, with their shadow Attorney General Tim Nicholls agreeing with Labor and the Greens that girls and women would face no dangers from men identifying as female.

Euthanasia and the criminalising of doctors and counsellors who warn children of the dangers of experimental gender conversion therapy were two other terrible pieces of law passed.

Many of these “reforms” also occurred concurrently in other states and even under Liberal governments as was the case with abortion and euthanasia in New South Wales and abortion in South Australia.

Palaszczuk was part of the current crop of politicians from both Labor and Liberal who either ushered in radical social policy or acquiesced to it by either openly supporting it or remaining largely silent.

Like her counterparts in the other states, Palaszczuk also pursued net zero policies with no thought to the engineering or economic realities of shutting down cheap and reliable coal and gas and replacing them with expensive and unreliable windmills and solar panels.

Palaszczuk is the last of the “Covid era” Premiers, who with former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, were responsible for a draconian and costly over-reaction to the lab leak from Wuhan.

As Palaszczuk leaves, she has pledged Labor will remove restrictions on the buying and selling of young women for sex, despite evidence of its harms and other countries moving away from this to criminalising men who buy women.

She has also pledged to introduce laws next year allowing nurses and midwives to kill unborn babies for the first time using abortion pills.

Jockeying to replace Palaszczuk, after un-elected union heavyweights pressured her into resigning, has begun.

One of the contenders, Health Minister Shannon Fentiman, thinks a woman can have a penis – a view sadly shared by too many politicians.

Another, Steven Miles, cited abortion and euthanasia as two of Palaszczuk’s greatest achievements. So much for the cost of living crisis, which has only been made worse by high government debt and its electricity grid-crippling net zero policies.

Sadly the LNP, which should win government at the October election, is unlikely to unwind the damage.

Opposition leader David Crisafulli has promised that there will be no changes to abortion and euthanasia laws and the LNP remains on board with net zero.

This is why Family First intends to run candidates. While it is difficult for minor parties to win in Queensland because there is no upper house, a family-focussed party can shape outcomes through principled preferencing of candidates who share its values.

ACTION: Family First urges anyone who wants to be part of changing politics in Queensland to sign up today.