Pollies must get priorities right
WITH a state election likely to be called soon, many North Queenslanders are crying out for one of the political parties to pledge immediate action on costs of living.
While politicians this week embarked on one of the more braindead self-congratulatory schemes of banning plastic bags, we are all still paying exorbitant power prices and Queensland is still the most expensive place in Australia to own a car.
Power prices are now so high that farmers are instead using diesel to run their water pumps.
According to the RACQ, Queenslanders pay more than anyone to register six and eight-cyclinder cars.
Fuel costs in the North are higher than in Brisbane, but even Brisbane has the highest capital-city fuel costs in the country (RACQ figures).
While federal fuel tax adds 40¢ a litre to petrol costs, suppliers burdened with exorbitant state-controlled power prices are forced to slug motorists even more.
So do pubs, restaurants and motels, and if they pay more, so do we.
It’s a double-attack on people’s pay because they first pay their own high power bills, and then they’re forced to pay – through higher retail prices – the bills of businesses they utilise.
At a time when wage growth is at record lows, it is incumbent on all levels of government to ease pressure on their constituents, not add to it.
Still, we have government wage increases outstripping private-sector wages, further worsening our budget position. Under Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, the public service has ballooned by 15,000, debt could exceed $80 billion by 2021, we’ve spurned private sector growth by kowtowing to hysterical green scare campaigns, and we’ve been set on a path of even higher power prices due to a 50 per cent renewable energy target.
As reported just last month, Ms Palaszczuk has ordered a new review or inquiry every three business days since taking office in early 2015.
A lot of time and cost for little visible benefit.
But don’t worry, while families are being treated like cash cows, our leaders are worried about plastic bags.
In states that have banned plastic bags, sales of thicker, heavier bin liners have skyrocketed.
And how is that supposed to be good for the environment again?
In the race to receive the hollow praise of human-hating enviro-warriors, Labor and the LNP have simply added more to our cost of living because we’ll either have to pay 15¢ for bags, or pay for “real” rubbish bags.
They don’t realise that bigger government means less personal freedom, and the more people have to pay to the government, the less they have to spend in the private sector.
Queensland is crying out for a government to put the people first.
Not jobs-destroying green activists, not minority self-interest groups, not unions, not fun police, and certainly not itself.
The LNP said yesterday that taxes under this Labor government had risen $50 per person while Queenslanders’ wage growth was the worst in the country. It’s an unsustainable equation. Here are just some of the cost-saving measures any party looking to win the election could consider as part of a strategy to not just win votes, but look after people:
At least halve the profit being taken by state-owned power stations to provide instant bill relief;
Reinstitute Newman-era restrictions on vexatious environmental legal challenges to developments;
Streamline the Department of Transport to cut – not just freeze – car registration costs;
Scrap payroll tax on businesses or at least raise the tax-free threshold for regional and remote businesses;
Stand up to unions which are believed to add as much as 15 per cent to the cost of building infrastructure.
We need agility of thought, not just raising taxes.
While we’re at it, which party will pledge to increase the state’s waterstorage capacity?
The newly-formed “Relaxivism” think tank based in Far North Queensland has suggested we should not only be building new dams, but dredging our existing ones to increase their capacity without having to flood more land by raising dam walls. What a great idea. Hopefully increasing the supply of water will result in downward pressure on water bills.