While Queenslanders will vote primarily on state, local and personality issues, the result for the LNP will be telling, especially for embattled Premier Campbell Newman.

The man who all but obliterated the Bligh Labor government less than three years ago is in real danger of losing his own seat to former Labor minister Kate Jones.

While the swing would have to be enormous to unseat the LNP government in that state, most observers are expecting them to receive a beating at the hands of disgruntled voters.

Why? According to the Premier, they didn't like the tough decisions his government was making.

He told ABC radio in Queensland on Friday morning, "We were elected to sort out a big mess. You've got to make hard decisions … some people didn't like it for sure."

While it's legitimate to question whether the Newman government overreached in some of its big decisions such as sacking thousands of public servants and introducing heavy handed anti-bikie laws, it cannot be accused of sitting on its hands since coming to power.

But the fact that electorates turn so swiftly and viciously on any party that attempts major change is a worrying development for our system of governance.

When we elect a party to power, we elect them to govern – that includes making unpopular decisions that may involve some pain, but are in the wider interest of the electorate – raising taxes for example, unpopular but occasionally necessary.

Yet since Federal Labor made it OK to turf out a sitting prime minister during his first term, Australians seem to have become emboldened to destroy a government as soon as it acts in a way they don't like – as experienced by Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu, who remained in the job for little over two years before being dumped.

The media, including social media, is often blamed, but it only mirrors the views of its audience. Politicians live and die by opinion polls and it is ultimately voters feeding their displeasure into those polls that cause politicians to consider previously unthinkable changes, like dumping a sitting prime minister – a real threat currently facing Tony Abbott.

Mr Abbott is currently feeling the flames of negative sentiment over his knighthood for Prince Philip, the latest in a series of unpopular moves that have angered voters.

But like Campbell Newman, rightly or wrongly Mr Abbott and his government have been attempting to make major changes they believe to be in the wider interest of the nation, to reduce debt and strengthen the economy. This was at the heart of decisions to reduce the Medicare rebate, deregulate university fees and to take a knife to the public sector.

If politicians are to be booted out either by their own parties or voters every time they try to implement unpopular change, we risk squibbing the hard decisions and creating a breed of even more timid politicians, unwilling to contemplate difficult reform for fear of being instantly deposed.

We have already created a situation where concepts such as raising taxes have become virtually taboo – politicians are loathe to even mouth the three letters GST, despite ours being one of the lowest rates in the western world with similar consumption taxes. Instead we are prepared to reward increasingly beige politicians who insist they will not rock the boat.

Most voters have little idea who Labor's Bill Shorten really is or what he stands for, yet seem willing to support him as a viable alternative to lead the country. Equally, Queensland Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk appears set to receive a huge boost on a platform of being, "moderate, sensible and responsible," which includes refusing to sell off state assets.

Abbott's and Newman's plans for change may not be the right way of addressing the problems they sought to fix. But simply rejecting those plans without an alternative is not going to address problems like the increasingly unhealthy state of the nation's balance sheet.

Nobody likes the idea of paying more taxes on their groceries, getting less back when visiting a doctor or having their wages frozen. We all have a right to debate these issues and oppose them when we feel they are not in the broader interest of the country.

But problems like national debt, rising health sector costs or lack of university places are not going to go away just because we don't want to contemplate ways of addressing them.

When governments are elected on a platform of fixing the economy, paying debt or cutting waste, they need to have the guts to stare voters in the eye from time to time and make unpopular decisions. Equally, once elected to do so, governments also need to be given a chance to govern and make those difficult decisions in the first place.