On the first day of the eight-week election campaign, former Queensland Labor treasurer Keith De Lacy joined other prominent business identities in calling for the campaign to be fought on scrapping unwanted taxes, The Australian Financial Review reports.

"Queensland used to be the low-tax state of Australia and that is a status we have squandered in the last few years," Mr De Lacy said. "If a state is competitive from a tax point of view, it attracts more wealth and ultimately superior taxation revenue anyway."

Mr De Lacy said the state's tax system was repelling investment. "Intrusive regulation is strangling businesses and removing certainty in the resources industry, which is squeezing out the small players and making it so much harder to do business," he said.

The chairman of construction company Watpac and director of Tatts Group, Kevin Seymour, who has invested heavily in the resources sector, said taxation reform needed to be a key part of the election campaign to help boost the private sector.

"Whichever persuasion of government gets into power, they have to be very careful they don't overtax the resources sector," he said.