From pineapple politics to the Smart State: capitalising on ‘eureka’ moments in public policy

Through the 1970s and 80s the rest of the country viewed Queensland as the ‘deep North’. For many in the state’s senior political, bureaucratic and academic ranks this image rankled, yet their discontent could not mask the recognition that Queensland’s governance suffered from a credibility deficit, laid bare at the watershed Fitzgerald Inquiry. The Goss government in the early 1990s cautiously turned to building stronger systems of governance that would arguably underpin long-term, ‘smarter’ strategies for advancing the state’s economic performance. The later Beattie government’s Smart State agenda, where significant government and philanthropic funds were channelled into emerging technologies in the bio-sciences, brought Queensland into a new era of innovation, unparalleled in any other state. This paper argues that the transformation seen in Queensland from the ‘pineapple politics’ of old could only have occurred with not just the political will for modernising change, and the serendipity of philanthropic capital, but also with the support of a more policy-sophisticated public service than existed previously. Drawing on interview testimony with key political and bureaucratic figures, this paper highlights the policy-making differences and continuities between the core administrative agencies of Queensland governments from Goss’s through to Beattie’s, culminating in the Smart State strategy