Political failures hurt city
I am writing regarding the article “Lancini gloom fires defence of city vision’’ (TB 7/9/19, pages 4, 5).
I have operated a number of small businesses based in Townsville over many years. I have also worked in other operations, which have withdrawn south.
I agree with Laurence Lancini’s assessment, with which Peter Tapiolas concurs, with no offence to Mayor Jenny Hill.
Townsville has suffered from the incompetence and disinterest of politicians for many years.
Look at the empty businesses, look at the poor cash flow of businesses, look at the prices and availability of goods, the cost of living pressures, look at the inability of local people to afford things.
I have had more work down south than locally for a number of years, which is a sad reflection on our economy. It is even sadder out west.
They have seen even more cost cutting, government and bank withdrawal, service closures, and politicians playing to the big city voter base, rather than managing smaller cities, and rural and regional Australia for the benefit of all.
The list of political failures in this country at the federal, state, and local level is far too long – and extends over far too many years – to be published in this letter.
We have been stabbed in the back repeatedly, by Queensland Labor; few will forget Jacki Trad and her “coal miners must accept the need to retrain”, nor her surprise that people thought her buying a house, to benefit from improvements she was in charge of didn’t smell.
Few will forget that for 10-odd years Queensland Labor was so busy pandering to minorities that it forgot that Adani was about jobs for a dying town.
It took a federal Labor loss to suddenly turn on a very dull light in a premier’s brain, and drive “some” progress
I am not for development for development’s sake. I am for forward planning with 10, 20, 30-year time frames that effectively manage where we should be going, but don’t block the steps we need to take to get there.
Coal mining isn’t dead, but it is coming to the end of the road gradually. So make use of that life, that income, to fund the next generation.
The same with city planning, Townsville, don’t build on all the reclaimed swamp, lowlands, and water courses, as we have permitted. That will continue to bite us into the future.
Look at real satellite cities, real planned areas, with water, and development potential.
Look at the real long-term environment we live in, because the current dry is just a repeat of the Federation drought, and geological records tell us there have been far longer droughts.
I am for forward planning, building roads for tomorrow, not yesterday, as has happened over and over … what little development we see is always too little, too late, and a waste of money because they finish and have to start again, because they didn’t plan for growth. The perfect examples would include the ring road, or maybe the Townsville Hospital, replacing an old service with something smaller, and closing surrounding services at the same time … then wondering why it couldn’t cope.
The build it once, build it right, thing never happens now. I could go on with these examples of failure.
The list is long, the cost to the taxpayer huge … but the only thing we have seen is a growth in the public service, the red tape, the need for licences for this, permits for that, to pay the government to prove we aren’t criminals, just to get work; it is all just public service empire building, which costs us, but doesn’t improve our quality of life.
It drags us down, bogs us down, making life sadder and harder.
Our lives have become an endless cycle of politicians “creating” a problem to solve, then crowing about how they have “fixed” that problem, for political gain! Before telling us about the next problem, and how they are going to fix it, but never addressing the problems their last “fix” created. That is where our legislation problems lie; incompetent politicians too busy preening about “doing something”.
So, in summary, Townsville has a problem, country Queensland has a problem, the whole of Queensland has a problem, Australia has a problem, and that problem comes down to incompetent politicians, many too self-centred, and slavishly tied to party politics. CHRIS EASTAUGHFFE, Woodstock.