Freelance Journalist and Agmates member John Mikkelsen writes:
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JUST a couple of months ago, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh told us we had to have an early election to provide business and economic stability.
She promised us 100,000 new jobs; she promised there were no plans to dump the State’s 8.35 cents a litre fuel subsidy when we went to the polls six months early.
The LNP’s then-leader, Lawrence Springborg, had warned there would be a move to have the fuel subsidy scrapped at the State Labor conference this weekend. He was wrong, but only just – Ms Bligh announced on Tuesday the decision had already been made.
According to media reports, that will mean a fuel price rise of more than 9 cents a litre when GST is factored in, costing average motorists an extra $300 a year on top of scheduled increases in vehicle registration.
But that’s not all. The government also plans to sell off key State assets including Queensland Rail’s coal freight business, the Port of Brisbane, Queensland Motorways Ltd, Forest Plantations Queensland, and the Abbot Point Coal Terminal, to raise $15 billion.
(Coincidentally, Abbot Point has just been named as the export port for Waratah Coal’s huge $6 billion thermal coal project in the Galilee Basin near Alpha).
The Premier’s announcements on the eve of the conference where such controversial moves are usually debated, has practically everybody fired up, including the unions among her key backers during the election campaign.
Businesses, producers, transport companies, the RACQ and the unions are practically united in their protests about increased costs which will flow through to all consumer items, and the increased threat to jobs.
Labor’s state president and union leader Andrew Dettmer said he was shocked by the decision and promised the State Government would face a showdown at this weekend’s ALP conference.
He accused the Government of dealing with a short-term economic downturn with a solution which would create long-term problems. These included giving major mining companies complete control of regional economies.
“Would you want Rio Tinto or BHP in charge of everything to do with your economy from pit to port?” he asked.
Mr Dettmer said the government was certain to face a series of resolutions from the floor of the State conference condemning its action.
Not surprisingly, Ms Bligh has blamed the global financial crisis and the huge black hole in projected income for such radical action.
“These are tough decisions for tough times,” she said.
When the State lost it’s AAA credit rating just before the election, critics pointed out that after years of boom times, Labor had kept nothing in reserve. Now the Premier plans to sell off the equivalent of the family silver and raid the kids’ piggy banks to bail her government out.
Back on February 28 I wrote:
“So you could say it’s a brash move by Ms Bligh to provide Queensland with the early opportunity to elect a government ‘with a mandate, it needs economic stability, it needs political certainty…’ But she knows she is on a slippery slope, so standing up for judgement now rather than later is probably a shrewd, cynical move.”
It’s history that a majority of Queenslanders took her at her word – not the discerning voters of Gladstone though, who returned our strong independent Liz Cunningham with a vastly increased majority.
Had she waited until after this week’s shock announcements or next month’s budget, the proverbial snowflake in hell would have stood a better chance of survival.
I’d imagine things will get pretty hot at this weekend’s Labor conference too.
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