Smoke and mirrors over funding fireys

THE Palaszczuk Labor Government has been caught redhanded exaggerating and misleading Queenslanders on the level of funding it’s putting towards Rural Fire Brigades.

Labor Minister Craig Crawford was sprung, after he claimed there was nearly $13 million (or 25 per cent) more in the 2019-20 budget for Rural Fire.

In March, Mr Crawford bragged that Labor had increased Rural Fire funding “by a third to $52 million”, compared to the $39 million it inherited from the LNP in 2015. Problem is, that’s not true. When questioned in Estimates and under parliamentary oath, Minister Crawford came clean and admitted the budget had in fact not grown at all. Instead it was still $39 million in 2019-20 – the same as in 2015.

With no increase to even cover CPI, this is effectively a cut. This means funding for Queensland’s Rural Fire Service has stalled under Annastacia Palaszczuk.

What we have here is a minister willing to say one thing in the regions, but something completely different in parliament when his Brisbane masters are giving him scripts.

We saw the contempt in which Labor held rural and regional Queenslanders by slashing hazard reduction burns and then turning around blaming farmers for fuelling the bushfires, in the “so-called” bushfire report.

Blaming farmers for being confused about backburning rights while ignoring Labor’s own mismanagement of statecontrolled land and national parks is a new low.

LACHLAN MILLAR, LNP Spokesman on Fire &

Emergency Services.