Anzac spirit betrayed
TWO stories in today’s paper explain why Townsville residents are despairing about law and order in this city.
The first involves Isaiah Joel Stanley, a 17year- old who embarked on a month- long crime spree in and around Townsville.
In the space of a month, he broke into an Ayr home, drove a stolen car, burgled a shop in Aitkenvale, stole from Woolworths, stole petrol and trashed a TV.
He also twice failed to appear in court and breached his bail 10 times. And what did he receive for his crimes? Freedom. Stanley was released on probation with a fine and community service.
The second involves funding for our hardworking cops.
The Government has admitted it has cut funding to Townsville’s city police stations by more than $ 550,000 at a time when crimes such as those committed by Isaiah Joel Stanley are soaring.
Despite State Government pledges to resolve our crime crisis and a solemn promise to give police every resource they need to get on top of the problem, funding is reduced.
The revelation shows how cheap words are in politics. The money trail tells you a government’s true priorities.
It is interesting to note that while for 201617, the quantum funding for Townsville stations has fallen by more than $ 550,000, the Government handed out $ 600,000 to the Environment Defenders Office, a legal service devoted to fighting green causes, most notably the Adani coal mine project.
To put this in context, two of Townsville’s biggest challenges are jobs and crime.
The Adani coal mine would deliver thousands of jobs to this region yet despite Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s admirable support for the project, another arm of her government hands $ 600,000 to its sworn enemies.
At the same time as police struggle to keep up with a growing crime menace, the Government slices funding from the stations at the front line of that battle.
If Ms Palaszczuk was fair dinkum about tackling crime here, she would be raising funding for our police stations.
She would be fighting her Treasurer for the cash to ensure citizens here were satisfied that her government had their back in the fight against crime.
We all need to be on the same page to restore law and order to this city.
Right now the courts and the Government are out of step with our police and citizens. ANZAC Day is truly inspiring.
Joe and Mary Citizen unite to remember the selfless devotion to duty of the men and women whose sacrifices and pain underpin the human costs of the freedom we enjoy and the ongoing vigilance to protect it.
Ironically, Tuesday’s Australian’s front page “Cut Spending – But No Pain”, points to the cognitive dissonance that exists in the dumbed- down post- truth voter mindset. Succinctly, 70 per cent of Australians want the Government to cut its spending while at the same time, in a magnificent prescription called a “magic pudding”, don’t want cuts to welfare payments or tax increases.
The dearth of economic scholarship in voter- land finds its genesis buried in the era of the China resources boom, an era that raised false expectations, encouraged societal complacency, virtually torpedoing productivity as the harbinger of Australia’s national wealth. This destination has been wittingly/ unwittingly aided/ abetted by an energised political progressive elitism hell bent on filling the pockets of voter- land demanding the unearned five- star life.
Team Blue/ Team Red/ Team Green have collectively been guilty of spawning this expectation, particularly the Labor Party, always applying the emotional tourniquet of playing to welfare dependency, class envy and intimating that this absurd debate about dangerous budget trajectory is somehow an illusion, nothing to worry about, and always running a distant second to the dictum of Labor values.
It is an intended ruse to buy political patronage, wrapped and marketed under the Labor mantra of “it’s only fair”.
In a troubled geopolitical world, Australia must address this real budget emergency, the time for gutless political equivocation long passed.
The moral imperative of intergenerational equity – the bequeathal of a fairer society, economic freedom for generations that follow – is the cardinal maxim of fiscal rectitude that must be delivered by those Australian politicians that seek high office.
In a period when many question our economic and cultural decline, it is time for the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull and the Opposition Leader, Bill Shorten, to offer a genuine economic narrative and engage voter- land in a frank/ deliberate discussion explaining how the budget will be swiftly brought back into surplus.
Failure to have a “National Interest” bipartisan approach, sadly, dishonours those Anzacs who have made the supreme sacrifice – After all, the New Zealanders seem to have been able to do it. PETER J. SMITH,
Rosslea.