Liberal National Party rising hope David Crisafulli has blamed the Queensland government's inability to sell their reforms as the reason for their likely boilover defeat in Saturday's election.
Mr Crisafulli, the Community Recovery and Resilience Minister, is poised to join dozens of fellow LNP members to lose their seats as Labor is sweeping towards an extraordinary victory.
The 35-year-old former Townsville councillor backed the LNP's controversial plans to lease $37 billion worth of the state's assets to help fix an $80 billion debt, as well as their hard-line reforms to the public service and law and order.
But Mr Crisafulli says the government failed to properly explain their actions.
"Just because it's politically difficult doesn't mean you shouldn't reform," he told the Nine Network on Saturday night.
"That doesn't mean we didn't make mistakes.
"We haven't taken people on the journey. In many ways we've just gone in and fixed problems and then told people why they needed to be fixed after.
"You have to find a way to say why you have a problem and why you have to do something about it."
Mr Crisafulli believed that his popularity in Townsville had kept the former city councillor in the hunt to possibly hold off Labor's candidate Coralee O'Rourke and retain Mundingburra.
He labelled the 12-plus per cent swing across the state as similar to what happened to former prime minister John Howard's federal government when he struggled to sell plans for the goods and services tax.
"In many ways it mirrors the 1998 federal election when the then Howard government took GST to the people and in real terms nearly lost that election," Crisafulli said..
"It's a very similar result for us tonight."
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