Queensland stolen wages
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (AAP/Glenn Hunt)

Queensland state elections have a long history of reverberating through national politics, foreshadowing defeats of federal Labor governments in 1974, 1995 and 2012 and establishing Pauline Hanson as something more than a local curiosity in 1998.

Now it falls to the state to be the first to hold an election in the age of COVID-19, the campaign for which officially began this week.

The Coalition's determination that the result should deliver another blow to a Labor Party still grappling with last year's unexpected federal loss has already contributed to the breakdown of the bipartisan spirit that prevailed for a time after the virus first emerged at the start of the year.