With polling day nigh in the Queensland election campaign, Opposition Leader David Crisafulli has appeared incredibly weak, vacillating, and indecisive on many things but none more so than the life and death issues surrounding babies born alive after a late-term abortion.

On too many occasions to recall, he has displayed a predilection for ‘me-tooing’ almost every wacko policy that Labor has embraced including 50 cent public transport fares in the south-east and vowing to keep the ruinous royalty imposts on coal, amongst the world’s highest, despite opposing them at the time of their duplicitous introduction.

Even on the nuclear energy initiative flagged by federal Opposition leader Dutton and which has growing nationwide support, Crisafulli has also gone to water, embarrassing the feds. He has form in not reading the mood of the electorate uncertain as he was about the Voice to Parliament and initially sucked into state Labor’s Treaties imbroglio until the referendum 70/30 against the Voice in Queensland put paid to those fancies.

So terrified is Crisafulli and the LNP of governing and addressing crippling debt as an alternative to the economic wreckage, bulging public service, and union scandals delivered by Labor that he appears only capable of bequeathing more of the same with a tweak here and a tweak there on crime posited as an instant fix. Good luck with that.

In effect, there is a split match between he and Miles who nicely leaves an incoming LNP government, which is all but certain, no mandate to do anything but try to fix up the mess Labor has created within the strictures Labor has imposed. In effect, he has catapulted himself face-first into a neat trap setting himself up for inevitable despatch next time around.

With just under a week to polling day, it is fair for electors seeking a change to ask whether this man is capable of standing firm on a single principle, other than the goal of getting elected. So come Monday October 28, while Mr Crisafulli will likely be ensconced in the front office in George Street, he may as well be playing the fiddle in central Queensland when it comes to the exercise of power.

But his greatest campaign failure and lack of principle has been on the issue of late-term abortion, that is permitting the destruction of a child at up to 22 weeks for any or no reason at all other than the wish of the mother.

He has been constantly peppered with questions by the media on abortion generally with Labor conflating abortion into it being a woman’s sole choice, keen to avoid specifics about the point in pregnancy at which that choice can be made.

Yet he and all but two members of the LNP voted against discretionary abortion at 22 weeks when the legislation was debated. His stock answers these days are that there will be no changes if he is elected, ‘next question, please’. This against the background of stark and horrific first-hand testimony from a nurse detailing in horrifying detail, the specifics of abortions where the child is capable of sustaining life if properly cared for.

Just a few months ago, Ms Louise Adsett, a midwife with 14 years of experience, described in heartbreaking detail the plight of these babies – some of whom survive for hours after birth, only to be abandoned in ‘witches’ hats’ or kidney dishes, where they take their final breaths alone, unloved, and uncared for.

‘These babies deserve better,’ she declared, underscoring the urgent need for change.

Her evidence not only calls into question the morality of current abortion laws but also the very humanity of a society that permits such atrocities to continue unchecked.

The testimony was delivered during a Queensland Parliamentary inquiry into the Termination of Pregnancy (Live Births) Amendment Bill 2024, which seeks to enshrine protections for babies born alive following an abortion, ensuring they receive the same medical care as any other newborn.

As Adsett’s harrowing account made clear, these were not isolated incidents but rather the result of a broader systemic failure. She recounted one case where a baby boy, born alive at 21 weeks, fought for five hours before succumbing, with no attempt made to save him.

In another instance, a baby was allegedly left to die in a ‘dirty pan room’ because the hospital was understaffed and the mother declined to hold her child.

This evidence provided a shocking indictment of the current laws and contemporary society’s apparent indifference to the most vulnerable amongst us. Yet one cannot imagine that a properly informed majority of Queenslanders on both sides of the political divide would not regard the current practice as unconscionable.

So Crisafulli, armed with that evidence, had the opportunity to stare down the media hyperbole and Labor whip-up with a simple answer. Labor is saying let these babies die. The LNP is saying we will be the voice for those without a voice. We won’t let these children die.

But he fudged, he withered, he filibustered, and shrank even further from a principle to which had adhered so short a time ago.

Labor supports abortion-to-birth and it’s surely not unreasonable to conclude that Crisafulli’s weakness under media pressure throughout the campaign suggests he regards late-term abortion as something less than a first order priority.

Increasingly, he appears a weak man, destined to spend his time in office, rather than in power, at the helm of an LNP that will be gone from sight next time around.