TAKING THE POWER BACK FROM THE STATE
The case for a Royal Commission into Australia’s response to the crippling Covid-19 pandemic is not just compelling but is now mandatory
THIS is a plea to the many thousands of Victorians who have escaped the homeland and settled on the Gold Coast.
Could you please consider this an assignment that will help me better understand why Dan Andrews is a red-hot favourite to be re-elected as Victorian premier in about three weeks.
My theory is that anybody with any brains has left Victoria and emigrated to northern NSW or the Gold Coast to escape the clutches of the man they call Dictator Dan.
So effectively, all the good ones have left, leaving the #Standwithdan acolytes to return him to his rightful kingdom in a few weeks.
Ask any local real estate agent and they’ll tell you that Victorians have led the exodus to buy up big on the Gold Coast.
It does make sense. The weather is better, the beaches are far cleaner and there’s even an argument that our golf courses are superior.
But seriously, I need some feedback on this subject. Please email me on peter.gleeson@news.com.au on how Dan Andrews has brainwashed Victorians into voting him back into office.
And spare me that rubbish that Opposition leader Mathew Guy is not up to it. Fred Flintstone would be a better bet than Andrews so let’s not go there.
Spare me that rubbish that Opposition leader Mathew Guy is not up to it. Fred Flintstone would be a better bet than Andrews so let’s not go there
You voted for Albanese, despite warnings that it wouldn’t be easy, so don’t give me that rubbish that the Opposition is hopeless.
We saw a report released last week which characterised the way Andrews and his Queensland sidekick Annastacia Palaszczuk terrorised their subjects during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Do Victorians have amnesia? The guy put them through the longest lockdown in the world, sending people broke and taunting their state of mind.
The independent review into Australia’s Covid-19 response found government “over reached’’, schools should have remained open and lockdowns and border closures were avoidable.
No s..t Sherlock. The review also found that the federal and state government’s Covid response “wreaked economic and social havoc’’.
Again, tell us something we don’t know, scoop. The report, by Western Sydney University chancellor and former department of prime minister and cabinet secretary Peter Shergold, confirms what so many Australians already knew – that state governments in particular used the pandemic to terrorise people and impose their own draconian policies.
He said “we failed to get the balance right between protecting health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and workforce outcomes.
“Rules were too often formulated and enforced in ways that lacked fairness and compassion. Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response.’’
This makes the case now for a Royal Commission into Australia’s Covid response not just compelling but
mandatory. It exposes a deeper malaise in this country of opportunistic governments – in particular Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland – who subjected their people to such extreme lockdowns and border closures that it has irreparably damaged their people.
In particular, it was the people who are the backbone of this country such as small business and tourism operators, restaurateurs, hairdressers, barbers .. the list is endless .. who have gone out of business because government handled their response in a poor way.
The lack of compassion for people who couldn’t visit loved ones who were dying, yet special exemptions were given the wives and girlfriends of footballers to travel over the border into Queensland.
The fact that governments spent hundreds of millions on hotel quarantine facilities that were never used.
Pandemic decision making
in the future must be taken out of the hands of the states. Like war, it needs to be a federal matter.
The states have proven themselves unfit to govern in so many spheres of our everyday lives.
The time has come for the federal Government to take back responsibility for our hospitals and schools.
In Queensland, and the Gold Coast in particular, the ramping rates are at such diabolic levels that people are unable to get an ambulance within the normal clinical time frame.
It’s a disgrace and it should disqualify Labor from holding power. There’s two years to the next election. Bring it on.
And please let me know your thoughts on Dan Andrews. More than 800 people died under his watch during the pandemic, and those wretched souls are going to give him another go.
Must be something in the water, surely.
IN the 12 month period ending 31 March 2021, there were 322 distinct young people who completed a custody stay at the Cleveland Youth Detention Centre. Of those young people, 95 per cent were alleged to have committed another offence in the 12 months following their release.
The incarceration of young people greatly increases the likelihood of them reoffending and being placed on a trajectory into a lifetime of crime. It should be viewed as a solution to a problem that, in effect, becomes a far greater problem than the problem it was originally meant to solve.
Governments from across Australia are being placed in invidious positions of choosing between ‘tough on youth crime’ policy positions that represent attempts to appease the ‘squeaky wheels’ among us (while knowing that these policies are flawed), and the more progressive polices that risk the ire of those who will regard them as being ‘soft on crime’.
Unfortunately drugs and alcohol are much more freely available than reliable shelter, safety and nutritious meals. It doesn’t take much to work out that money allocated to community partnership initiatives costs much less than the many hundreds of millions of dollars that will be needed to build, staff and administer new youth detention centres.
Nor does it take intensive research to work out which will represent the better effectiveness and value for taxpayer dollars.
ANDREW STIMSON, UPPER COOMERA
THE letter from anti-light rail advocate Karen Rowles on light rail patronage was as factual and true as a Harry Potter movie.
If Ms Rowles had read the media release, freely available online, she would have noted that the two days in August where more than 527,000 trips were taken were across all modes – that’s bus, train, tram, and ferry across all of South East Queensland.
Not just the light rail as she so misguidedly claims.
In fact, her claim was so ridiculous it would have required every single resident of the Gold Coast to catch the tram in just two days.
This ridiculous attempt by Ms Rowles to rile up her anti-light rail opposition with some dodgy maths shows just how disinterested she is with the facts.
The truth is the vast majority of Gold Coast residents either support or love light rail.
Since it opened, there have been more than 65 million paid trips and counting.
Just two weeks ago light rail patronage numbers hit pre-covid levels, marking the first time any mode of public transport in Queensland has reached pre-covid patronage over any week since the pandemic started. Well done Gold Coast.
The Palaszczuk Labor Government is cracking on with construction of the next light rail extension through to Burleigh Heads from Broadbeach and have opened consultation on the proposed corridor between Tugun and Coolangatta.
Despite Ms Rowles’ reckless rhetoric, locals and tourists alike are using light rail in droves and are looking forward to seeing it extended further down the coast. MARK BAILEY
Minister for Transport and Main Roads
1618
Walter Raleigh, 64, is beheaded in the Tower of London for treason on orders of King James I, angered when Raleigh’s men burned a Spanish settlement in Venezuela.
Sydney is linked to Melbourne and Adelaide by telegraph cable. 1863
An international conference in Geneva, organised by Swiss citizens, completes the foundation of the Red Cross. 1923
Mustafa Kemal Pasha is elected president of Turkey, proclaimed a republic.
1929
On Wall St’s Black Tuesday, investors lose billions as 16,410,030 shares trade on New York Stock Exchange in one day. 1936
General Bakr Sidqi leads a coup which overthrows the civilian Iraqi government. He is killed nine months later by a fellow soldier. 1950
Australian troops of the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, reach and take Chongju, the most northerly point of their advance into North Korea. 1997
Nugget Coombs, 91, the economist who guided Australia to post-war economic prosperity, dies. 2004
Caretaker captain Adam Gilchrist’s (pictured) Australian team win a Test cricket series in India for the first time in 35 years. 1982
Lindy Chamberlain is found guilty of murdering her baby Azaria, despite saying a dingo snatched the girl near Uluru. On the same day she is sentenced in Darwin to life in jail with hard labour. The verdict is quashed in 1988. An Afghan soldier opens fire with a machinegun on his Australian mentors at a Saturday parade in Kandahar province, killing three and injuring seven. Killed are Corporal Ashley Birt, Captain Bryce Duffy and Lance Corporal Luke Gavin.
2015
It is announced that China is ending its one-child policy. Beginning in 2016, couples could have two children.