Des Houghton: Annastacia Palaszczuk leads Qld into chaos

The Queensland Labor government is no longer fit for purpose, as Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk presides over a growing list of failures, writes Des Houghton.

Even rusted-on ALP supporters must now accept that Annastacia Palaszczuk has led Queensland into chaos, and that her government is no longer fit for purpose.

Queenslanders are dying in pain waiting for an ambulance or a hospital bed.

The Courier-Mail revealed the government ordered seven new planes for $157m as they were cutting hospital beds.

And the paper reported a decline in bed numbers in the past eight months.

Non-Labor electorates seemed to me to suffer the biggest cuts.

No fewer than 125 disappeared on the Darling Downs.

Official inquiries now point to botched surgery.

Medical malpractice in Mackay allegedly left babies dead and some women robbed of the chance of motherhood.

Rapists and murderers walk free because of repeated bungles – and sheer neglect – in DNA testing in the “toxic” State Government forensic science lab.

Meanwhile, allegations of criminal activity like money laundering threaten the survival of Star Entertainment casinos in Queensland and also point to failures at the Office of Liquor and Gaming.

Shame on Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman, who made the Gotterson inquiry terms of reference so narrow that links between the government, Labor lobbyists, unions and casinos were not able to be examined.

The Queensland government is neither robust nor accountable, and its ministers are third-rate.

Transport Minister Mark Bailey has presided over one of the biggest cost blowouts in Australian infrastructure history.

Under his watch the cost of the cross-river rail project has ballooned from a budgeted $5.4bn to $8bn.

Treasurer Cameron Dick

And Parliament heard work on the Pacific Motorway was $600 million over budget.

Treasurer Cameron Dick showed laughable incompetence by proposing land tax laws that would have made housing affordability worse; only to see his plan junked by Palaszczuk. Palaszczuk’s government is good at cover-up and spin and little else.

The Courier-Mail revealed Palaszczuk has up to 30 media spinners reporting to her, including a secret team of 12 in charge of “curating” her public image.

They include journalists, photographers, video operators and special projects staff who post propaganda on social media.

And there appears to be little room for dissenting comments in her social media as we learned this week.

One live Palaszczuk feed contained a note: “comment removed by moderator”.

It’s clear that Palaszczuk’s time is up.

Under her leadership the government has inflicted too many horrors on ordinary Queenslanders.

It might be too soon to say so, but I think she’s finished.

There is hardly an area of public life in Queensland that her administration has not made worse.

Politicians and public servant fat cats get pay rise after pay rise while battlers can’t find homes to rent.

Billions are found for sports stadiums but precious little for emergency housing.

Incompetent leadership has left families sleeping in their cars, unable to put a roof over their heads.

Labor has even ruined the relaxing day out at the beach. The Pacific Motorway and Bruce Highway are frequently large car parks.

Inquiry after inquiry has failed to make life better.

And the Palaszczuk government continues to run under an integrity cloud.

Ousted state archivist Mike Summerell got it right when he described the Queensland Government as “toxic” when he exposed how Parliament was misled and annual reports falsified to hide “bad news”. Former Integrity Commissioner Nikola Stepanov had her staff slashed to one person who had no legal training while she was investigating alleged illegal lobbying. Stepanov’s laptop was seized and the contents “deleted without my knowledge or consent”, she told a Parliamentary hearing.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath

These are just some of the serious matters that remain unresolved. Palaszczuk, Fentiman and Health Minister Yvette D’Ath knew for a year that there were “profound” problems at the Queensland Health DNA testing centre.

Findings of a commission of inquiry conducted by Walter Sofronoff KC, were damning.

He said statements issued by the Queensland Health since 2018, which said “DNA insufficient for further processing” or “No DNA detected”, were untrue or misleading.

“That statement connotes the certainty that the sample cannot yield a usable profile when that is not known,” Sofronoff’s report said.

“I am of the opinion that the practice of putting forward these untrue statements as true expert evidence is a profound issue for the administration of criminal justice, for the integrity of police investigations, and for decisions made by victims of crime.”

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has been at the epicentre of much of the government dysfunction.

And I’m getting a little tired of how she attempts to depict ambulance and hospital calamities as the new normal.

D’Ath dodged the media when this paper reported last month that 20 Queenslanders tragically died in cases where paramedics under “extreme pressure” took too long to respond.

Surely these cases demand a major investigation by the State Coroner. And getting an ambulance is just the start of the crisis.

Three-quarters of patients who arrive at a hospital are ramped.

Opposition health spokeswoman Ros Bates said the government had been in power for seven years, and in that time ambulance ramping had gone from 15 per cent to 46 per cent across the state.

How many deaths will it take to convince Palaszczuk and D’Ath that this is a real crisis?