With a shrug and a wide grin, Annastacia Palaszczuk vowed to "stare down" the fourth LNP leader to come up against her.
Standing at the lectern in the "Tower of Power" — a legacy of a premier she once toppled — Ms Palaszczuk was in a triumphant mood.
She has now become the first Australian woman to be elected as a state premier twice.
"I've stared down Campbell Newman," she quipped, "I've stared down Lawrence Springborg. I've stared down Tim Nicholls.
"Who's next? It doesn't really worry me."
Barely two hours after becoming Premier-elect, Ms Palaszczuk was already engaging in mind-games with her political foes, currently down in the dumps without a party leader.
"If the LNP does not back Deb Frecklington I fear that the Nationals will break away from the LNP," she said, capitalising on grumblings of discontent from within the merged party.
"So there's a lot riding on who they select."
Ms Palaszczuk will spend the weekend in discussions with her former frontbench to decide on a new cabinet before a swearing in ceremony on Tuesday.
Queensland's 56th Parliament will have one of the most diverse crossbenches in years, including three Katter's Australian Party MPs, the state's first Greens MP and the first elected One Nation representative since 2009.
Ms Palaszczuk spent the four-week campaign vehemently refusing to make deals with minor parties to form government.
Now the risk of a hung parliament has passed, Ms Palaszczuk said she would be happy to work with the crossbench.
"I didn't say I wouldn't be working with them in the best interest of Queenslanders in terms of legislation," she said.
"That is called consultative government."
A month earlier, Ms Palaszczuk stood steely-faced in the same room late on a Friday afternoon, fronting a hastily-called press conference.
In what could have been a crushing blow to the Labor campaign, Ms Palaszczuk revealed her partner Shaun Drabsch had worked on miner Adani's application to the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund, through his employer PricewaterouseCoopers (PwC).
She accused the LNP of planning a smear campaign and declared while she had done nothing wrong, her government would have no more to do with the loan application.
And she re-affirmed that position on Friday, saying one of the first things her government would be to write to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and veto Queensland's involvement in a potential $1 billion loan to Adani.
Among her other election commitments was increased Great Barrier Reef and tourism, a $70 million boost to country racing, a pledge to fix issues with Queensland Rail's new generation trains in Maryborough and to re-introduce controversial tree clearing laws.
But she refused to elaborate on the make-up of her cabinet, and was not keen to indulge too many questions from political reporters who had spent nearly a fortnight agonising over the election result.
Battling the flu and a sore throat, Ms Palaszczuk said she would be marking her victory with "a cup of tea and some honey".
