YOU’RE THE SUCKERS WHO KEEP VOTING ’EM IN
Integrity inquiries and ministers asleep at the wheel as residents suffer – from the party which prides itself on sticking up for the battlers in society
SO unless you’ve been living in a hippie commune at Nimbin, you’ve probably heard that the Palaszczuk government has appointed former QUT vice-chancellor Peter Coaldrake to look at culture issues within the Queensland public service.
Prof Coaldrake will do a good job, although his terms of reference are skinny and he may have to broaden them to get to the bottom of the malaise.
Having observed and reported on the Palaszczuk government for the past seven years, there’s no doubt in my mind that the public bureaucracy is a well-oiled, systemic arm of the Queensland Labor Party.
It supports, fosters, encourages and delivers on Labor’s wicked and misguided political ideology, especially those in the Left faction, who lack soul.
But for taxpayers, who just want their civil service to do a good job and perform with some semblance of sensibility and acumen, the real worry is the incompetence.
Take the recent example of an apartment block in Biggera Waters, purchased by the government for nearly $4m to help ease the city’s housing crisis.
In a scene straight out of the hilarious UK comedy show Yes Minister, the Palaszczuk government has decided to evict those who are living there, effectively making them homeless.
So they’re solving the city’s homeless problem by kicking people out of a home they themselves have acquired to provide more housing. Even the clever writers of Yes Minister would not foist that one upon us.
It just seems too fanciful. But that’s the public service we’re dealing with here. Prof Coaldrake, it seems, has a bigger job than first envisaged.
Now what makes this comedic and nonsensical scenario even worse is that the minister responsible for cheap housing, Leeanne Enoch, had no idea what was going on.
When she found out, she issued a quick directive that nobody would be left homeless and no doubt there was plenty of people running around with a broom trying to clean up the mess. Very kind of the minister but how did it get to this in the first place?
Where’s her senior staff on all this? Why didn’t they spot this anomaly and knock it on the head before putting the poor people in that unit block through hell?
Who was the bureaucrat who signed off on this? I hope he or she has been fired?
That’s the problem with a bureaucracy mired in incompetence, filled with Labor Party hacks. There’s no incentive to do a good job.
Those who rise through the ranks are the best of the brown nosers, those annoying employees who suck up to their superiors to get ahead.
Anybody with any brains or principle is quickly swallowed up by the cronyism vortex that rewards wankers, not workers.
It has clearly taken hold in the Housing department, a powerful organisation that can literally make or break somebody’s life.
We have heard horror story after horror story of how the housing crisis, particularly on the Gold Coast, has sent many families to the point of desperation. Trying to secure a rental property is almost impossible these days, and as far as buying a house, forget about it.
The Labor Party likes to spruik its credentials as the political party that stands up for the battlers, helps those who need it most, especially on social housing.
But the very MPS who are charged with helping the poor and underprivileged, the Left faction of the Labor Party, have abandoned the constituency that put them there. They’d rather sip chardonnay and ruminate on climate change than fix housing issues. They’d rather watch on as conservative female MPS are bullied and harassed by Getup than go in to bat for them.
They’d rather close down greyhound tracks, which employ thousands of people, mostly battlers, than help their own. The Palaszczuk government is broke and $100bn in debt. It has no answers because it has a cabinet full of union and party hacks who have never lived in the real world.
They’re a mirage.
And Queenslanders – including those very people who would have been kicked out of their Biggera Waters units except the media jumped in – are the suckers that keep voting them back in.
Yes Minister would not foist that one upon us