ARE WE ALL SAFE? Community safety should be more than a numbers game for politicians

WORDS: Wild Cat PHOTOGRAPHY Bastian Pudill & Michael Owen @Unsplash

QUEENSLAND Premier Steven Miles will go down in history as Queensland’s second-worst state political leader.

Only his predecessor, Annastacia Palaszczuk, will be remembered as the worst: a leader without scruples, without heart, without ability and without the empathy required to lead the Sunshine State.

Let’s take a quick look at Ms Palaszczuk’s dismal record.

She allowed her terrible Cabinet to flounder from one crisis to the next, seemingly unable to rein in errant Ministers with integrity and accountability issues.

Under her watch, young criminal thugs ran rampant, turning the Sunshine State into a criminal state. She may have kept us safe during COVID-19, but her lax youth justice laws and weak judicial appointments consigned most Queenslanders to a life of fear within their own homes. People stabbed to death in their front yards by teens who should have been behind bars, not on the streets. And where are their parents?

Frustrated police have become powerless to keep these young thugs off the street. Meanwhile, if the young crims don’t get you, our archaic and moribund health system will surely do you in.

People are dying on ambulance stretchers waiting for treatment in emergency departments.

The ambulance ramping is so bad – the worst in the country – that Triple Zero calls are not being attended to in time, meaning people are dying at home waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

Queensland Health is a dysfunctional basket case run by pen-pushing bureaucrats who bully staff if they stray out of line.

Then you have a homeless crisis that we’ve never experienced before in this state. Tent cities popping up everywhere in the city that will host the 2032 Olympics.

Ah, the Olympics. What a shemozzle it has been for a premier who waged her own vanity project in securing the Olympics, only to then appoint a board that are so woke they haven’t heard the starter’s gun go off.

Ms Palaszczuk presided over a government that was run by the unions, for the unions, to benefit the unions.

The so-called CFMEU tax on government-controlled construction sites means cost blowouts on big projects are costing us an extra $11 billion over the next four years.

Throw in the extra 100,000 or so extra public servants that have been added under Labor, the spiralling debt that will now be $180 billion by 2027, the gross incompetence and integrity scandals that engulfed her Ministry, the commitment to Treaty even though seven in  10 Queenslanders rejected the Voice … you get the message. They are way beyond their use-by date and there is a sense that the voting public are waiting with baseball bats come October 26.

So why did they switch to Steven Miles after a couple of terrible polls that showed Ms Palaszczuk had run out of electoral appeal?

Simple. The man who really runs Queensland, union powerbroker Gary Bullock, a mentor to the premier, installed him after tapping Ms Palaszczuk on the shoulder.

Why have the numbers as the Left faction boss if you are not going to use them?

Instead of giving us the best option as premier, Treasurer Cameron Dick, or the second best option, Health Minister Shannon  Fentiman, Bullock installed his mate, Miles.

In doing so, he gave us a dud leader, a terrible communicator with the vision of a caterpillar. It means Queensland is rudderless, the laughingstock of the rest of the country, a state paralysed by ineptitude and incompetence.

Some criticise Opposition leader David Crisafulli for being slow off the mark with his policies and reform agenda.

Why would he give Labor a start on anything? One thing you cannot underestimate is Labor’s ability to campaign during an election.

They will throw the kitchen sink – money that comes from unions – at this poll, knowing that it has the potential to be catastrophic because of Labor’s poor performance.

Don’t be duped by their sugar-hit handouts, nor their spin and well-rehearsed policy narrative.

This is the worst government we have ever seen, and they should be punished for sending this state into such uncharted economic and policy territory.

Queensland is a powerhouse and it should be governed that way. Instead, Labor has turned us into a jobs for mates fiefdom that has been set back a generation in growth and prosperity.

They seriously need to go – and for a very long time.