A missed opportunity
DURING this last week one could not help but notice Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk standing in front of a microphone flanked by highranking professional officers of the emergencies services together with a representative from BOM and a sign language person advising the citizens of Townsville of the extreme weather conditions that we found ourselves in recently.
Then to cap it off we also had our local so-called representatives jockeying to be in camera shot on the same stage looking like stunned mullets standing behind the Premier.
It is to be hoped that politicians view these segments on television so they can see how ridiculous they look and how nauseating it is to watch them (the politicians) trying to give some form of illusion that they have some level of expert knowledge of the situation when the true experts with all the knowledge are held silent, while the Premier speaks and they the experts are forced into the background as back-up.
I would suggest that the people of Townsville in trouble would rather hear advice from the experts, people who know what they are talking about, not the Premier.
It was noted that the Premier spent her time here travelling around the North sightseeing with her entourage of experts, who I suspect could have managed quite well without her input/interference and any information regarding the situation could have been relayed back to the disaster centre by electronic means.
One of the television news segments Friday evening, if I’m not mistaken, filmed the Premier and her local entourage, not the emergency services, visiting a dwelling devastated by floodwater.
I never saw any of the three so-called representatives of the Palaszczuk Government lending a hand with the clean-up, even though the television cameras were there and rolling, a missed photo opportunity.
It is also disappointing that the Premier and her local representatives did not take the opportunity to gain some credibility by taking the Mayor’s lead in calling a spade a spade in relation to the theft of property, but not only during the present floods.
It would have also been the ideal opportunity for the Premier and her followers to visit the vehicle scrap yards in Townsville, and while in the mood for inspecting things inspect the vehicles that have been stolen and wrecked for the fun of it; she would have then had first-hand information of the consequences of her Government’s policies of dealing with Townsville’s other disaster, youth crime. This would have meant all of her time here hadn’t been wasted. DAVID THOUMINE,
Cranbrook.