Annastacia Palaszczuk is the author of her own circumstances. She can complain about the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune but everything confronting her and befalling her government starts and ends at her desk.

The former US President Harry S Truman had a carved sign on his desk, proclaiming “The buck stops here”.
Truman believed if you were in the arena, you carry the consequences and responsibility for it all. “The President – whoever he is – has to decade. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No-one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.”

Palaszczuk has to own her government’s actions and ambitions. If there are blunders, they are her blunders. If she and her ministers fall short, that is on her.

This is what leadership looks like. You can’t whinge and blame the media. That, according to a phrase mis-attributed to Winston Churchill but actually said by Enoch Powell, is like a sailor complaining about the sea.

Your lot in life is your lot in life, Premier, and whatever the coming weeks or months hold will be the consequence of your actions.

Palaszczuk is in serious trouble, probably more so than at any time in her almost nine years in Queensland’s top job.
As Labor ministers boot-scooted out of Parliament last week, putting in a short appearance on TikTok and nominating favourite tunes, there were some grumbles from the cheap seats.

A little like the old guys in The Muppets, former MPs Robert Schwarten and Bob Gibbs were giving Palaszczuk some free character advice and some tips for her political future.

Parlayed into easy headlines for the local daily news, these ex-MPs from another era said the public had lost faith and trust in the government, the premier was mainly to blame and the Caucus should grow a spine, move a vote of no confidence and deal with the festering issue.

You can imagine every want-to-be Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood’s “get off my lawn” character in Gran Torino), adding their grouchy voices over Christmas, during the traditional media summer “silly season”. It’s the way these things play out unless a government under siege is capable of putting a lid on the trouble.

The problem – not the worst on the government’s problem list but one on high rotation – is this government is not just incapable of putting a lid on anything, they can’t find where the lid should go.

As a commentator remarked when observing the plight of the Democrats’ Joe Biden in Washington: “He has a problem problem”. Palaszczuk does too.

It’s been a terrible end to a year of blundering, chaos, tripping over, walking into the easiest-to-stop political traps and a championship winning tally of own goals.

Of course, the ministers and backbenchers have gone back to their electorates with every good wish from the Premier who said they’d return in 2024 refreshed and re-energised. Such sunny optimism but there is deep concern just millimetres below the surface.

Palalszcuk looked straight through any doubt: “I think you will see that everyone will be hitting the ground running at the beginning of next year; it is an election year.”

It was one of those strange, very Palaszczuk statements which infantilises what’s going on. She added the year was ending and everyone was tired – the government, the opposition and the media. Thanks for that.

Quite a few Labor MPs left Parliament wishing Palaszczuk would reassess her future over Christmas and New Year but were resigned to the likelihood she was sticking around for the election on October 26 next year – a fourth term test on W.S. Cox Plate race day.

This trajectory was not as set as most assumed with some serious reassessments and Plan Bs being put together.
The intervention by The Muppet Guys – looking a bit like punters who hadn’t been to the races for many years – might have set back any chance of change by a month or two.

While Palaszczuk’s shortcomings are numerous, her most formidable trait is her stubbornness. It is admirable but can also be a twisted complication, getting in the way of any rationality and sensible advance.

The bigger problem for Palaszczuk is once the New Year hits, her leadership will soon become a compounding dead weight.

January 1 is 300 days before election day, 2024. Australia Day is 275 days before election day.

May 10, the day Palaszczuk passes Peter Beattie’s time in the Premier’s chair, is 170 days before the election.

Finally, July 26 is the likely meeting date for the International Olympic Committee at the Stade de France in Paris next year where Palaszczuk dreams of one last global stage attention in the build up to our 2032 Games. That’s 93 days before the next election.

It’s easy to imagine, at any one of these points, local media setting a date clock in motion: 300 days until Queenslanders have their say on Palaszczuk and so on it goes. It’s easy journalism the public will relate to which is why there’s a high likelihood it might happen.

The Palaszczuk government has been in a trench of turgid political turpitude since at least May when there was a ministerial reshuffle which the Premier said “unveiled a refreshed Cabinet focussed on delivering for Queenslanders – now and for the future”.

This included, the year’s been awash with resets and resets of the resets but the government is stuck. Labor’s primary vote support is at 30 percent on a good day, the two party preferred vote is languishing at 45 percent and the estimated seat loss would take the ALP into a minority situation if everything went brilliantly.

However, things do not go brilliantly when events turn in the way they have over the past eight or so months. There is a swing on and unless there is a black swan event, the future is as grim as the crowd shouting at the clouds say it is.

The question the stubborn premier needs to think about over Christmas is whether she wants to leave with her record in some order and provide a successor with an opportunity to at least stem the seemingly inevitable losses.

It’s a question for which there’s only one logical answer.

Right now she looks every bit like the captain of the Titanic, startled when a clueless crew member rushes in and announces the arrival of an iceberg.