As Opposition Leader he still carries the opprobrium associated with the Newman Government, and the public rejection of their privatisation agenda. As Treasurer in the aforesaid government he was stuck with having to fund infrastructure with no money. Hence the privatisation agenda and the Strong Choices campaign to promote it.

While community engagement experts have panned Strong Choices as a poorly structured and badly managed propaganda exercise, it was valuable as government attempted to take the community with it on a major policy initiative.

Tim Nicholls should not be put off by the perceived failure of that exercise. Indeed, there is a view that it was the excesses of the Newman Government in the areas of law and order and industrial relations, along with an inexhaustible ability to upset people, that saw it turfed and not the privatisation agenda.

The current line in the Queensland LNP is that under Newman they tried to do everything at once and moved too quickly. The truth is that they were obsessed with second order issues, and ignored the main game. As Clinton advisor James Carville famously said in 1992: "It's the economy, stupid".

This past week Nicholls copped friendly fire from Jeff Kennett and Campbell Newman on privatisation. A sober look at the success of Kennett's privatisation of services while premier of the city-state of Victoria shows it to be a diabolical disaster. Nicholls should ignore them and focus on developing new policy pathways for economic development.

The Opposition Leader rightly asked this week how two congestion-busting urban transport infrastructure initiatives – the Cross River Rail link and the duplication of the Sunshine Coast rail line – can be funded.

Meanwhile the Deputy Premier has flown to London, the traditional source of capital for colonial railways.

State treasurers are caught in a horrible bind with demands for increasing services and no money to fund them. The Feds apparently have money to burn on plebiscites for next year, and submarines for South Australia in the next decade.

In Queensland, shadow treasurer Scott Emerson needs to spend less time growing exotic fruit in his back yard and start doing some heavy lifting on economic policy. It's not enough to shout at the cameras, and in the parliament, about a 'do nothing' government, and post selfies with your backyard mulberry tree.

Deputy Deb Frecklington, whose knowledge and experience of parliamentary procedures is lacking, also needs to get cracking on agricultural policy for the regions. Tarnya Smith is out of her depth on the digital economy, where the ALP government, through the strategic activities of ministers like Leanne Enoch, leaves the Opposition looking like Luddites.

The Newman Government had its four pillars and the Queensland Plan. While these pillars represented the traditional rocks'n'crops, reef'n'beef economy of Queensland, and failed to engage with the new economy, they were a clear policy prescription.

Tim Nicholls should not be afraid of new ideas, nor new faces on his frontbench.

Dr John Harrison is senior lecturer in the University of Queensland's School of Communication and Arts.

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