SECRET MUST BE SHARED

THE one shadow hanging over a golden future for the Gold Coast is the rise in crime.

Yes, we need an urgent fix to our traffic congestion, and government after government has failed to anticipate let alone plan for our growth.

Each party’s strategy to address the daily chaos of the M1 could help decide the election.

But crime is a far more sinister and destructive challenge than gridlock.

The Gold Coast holds the dubious distinction of boasting the highest per capita increase in grievous assault (19 per cent) and common assault (at 20 per cent, almost double the increase of any other region).

Unarmed robbery is up 41 per cent and shop break-ins up a staggering 80 per cent.

These rises are alarming and unacceptable.

Yet the government cynically waited until election eve to announce plans to add about 50 extra cops.

Why wait until now? If the government knew there was an alarming increase in crime why didn’t it get on the front foot and tackle it immediately?

Surely it wasn’t holding back on resources to have something nice to offer during the election campaign?

Now the Queensland Police Service is refusing to reveal the number of officers at each of its Gold Coast stations.

For QPS, read government. There is no doubt senior police executives are taking orders from the Palaszczuk Government to keep that information secret.

And why would that be secret? We would suggest because it would likely reveal that many stations are understaffed.

Not a good look when you are fighting an election amid rising crime levels.

Police station operating strengths should be transparent, like NAPLAN results and hospital waiting lists.

If the government is serious about picking up seats on the Gold Coast, and we sincerely hope it is, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and her Police Minister Mark Ryan need to look voters here in the eye and tell them the truth. How many cops, and where they are.

Until they do, we are entitled to assume they are hiding something unsavoury.