Deputy Premier Jackie Trad betrays sisterhood, say indigenous women
DEPUTY Premier Jackie Trad has betrayed the sisterhood. They are not my words, writes Des Houghton, but the words of a group of influential Aboriginal women from Cape York communities.
Opinion
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DEPUTY Premier Jackie Trad has betrayed the sisterhood.
They are not my words but the words of a group of influential Aboriginal women from Cape York communities.
They are on the warpath over her decision as Treasurer to kill off the Family Responsibilities Commission which has regulated anti-social behaviour in the Cape for a decade.
One of the commissioners, Keri Tamwoy, likened Trad to former hard-line premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
And she condemned Trad for announcing the changes during a luncheon to mark the success of the commission.
“For me it was like a punch in the guts,” Tamwoy says.
“We were telling the world about our communities and how we felt; from the heart. We don’t open up easily, especially with a room full of strangers. But we thought that Trad was here to hear us. But she already had a speech scripted for her and continued to read it out like a robot.
“She does walk in the shoes of Joh Bjelke-Petersen.”
Tamwoy adds: “Our leadership must not be squashed by powerbrokers in government. This is a betrayal on female leadership.”
Cape women were already mistrustful of the Palaszczuk Government after two of Queensland’s most senior indigenous public servants, Helena Wright and Tammy Williams, had their contracts terminated recently only to be replaced by two whitefellas.
“The D-G said he wanted his own leadership team,” Wright tells me.
Indigenous groups say the Family Responsibilities Commission appears doomed in its current form with funding for just six more months. And it cannot access federal funding without approval of the state.
Trad has proposed a new “Thriving Communities” model but has not released the details.
The FRC included local commissioners with the power to impose “tough love” sanctions against troublemakers in the community and parents who failed to send their children to school. Their welfare payments could be docked.
Individuals struggling with family violence, grog or other problems could also ask the FRC to take charge of their affairs.
The commission was criticised as being a throwback to colonial times.
However, the FRC maintains it has empowered local communities to improved school attendance and cut domestic violence rates in Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale and Mossman Gorge.
Doreen Hart from Hope Vale, who has been a commissioner for 10 years, says the FRC has also improved the “moral” tone of the communities.
She says: “Minister Trad has absolutely betrayed us and our children who deserve to have parents and families taking good and proper care of them, sending them to school and feeding them – this is what the FRC provides in our communities.”
The death sentence for the commission came at a time when other indigenous communities were requesting it supervise their towns.
The Queensland Government spends around $1.2 billion a year, or $29,000 per person, on services to remote and discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Says Tamwoy: “If the Family Responsibilities Commission discontinues, our communities will suffer. Our communities. Children will suffer. Grandparents will suffer. Families will suffer. We have had enough of things being done to us. It is time for our voice to be heard.”
YOU PAY FOR STUDENTS’ COMMONWEALTH GAMES FREEBIES
AFTER stonewalling for months, the Palaszczuk Government has been forced to shed a little more light on TAFE’s secretive spending spree on Commonwealth Games tickets.
Documents tabled in Parliament show 1292 “clients” and 639 “guests” received free tickets to the Games. So did 162 volunteers, the entire TAFE board and 30 TAFE executives.
But despite preaching openness and accountability, the Labor State Government is still refusing to name the “clients” and “guests” who got the taxpayer-funded freebies.
Training and Skills Minister Shannon Fentiman said “clients” referred to “prospective and existing students”. She did not elaborate, and she declined to be interviewed.
The perks were part of a marketing exercise to promote TAFE, she said in an answer to a Question on Notice.
Fentiman still won’t say who got the tickets, or why some students were eligible for valuable tickets while others missed out. More details please. Taxpayers have the right to know how their money is spent.
It is known from earlier parliamentary hearings that TAFE purchased more than 2148 tickets for $230,641.
TAFE maintained the expenditure was within government guidelines, even though Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk ruled out free tickets for government staff in the lead-up to the Games.
On top of the Commonwealth Games freebies, TAFE hospitality expenses have doubled in the past three years. TAFE also spent more than $2 million on international travel during that time. Much of the spending was left unexplained.
And how much TAFE paid to be a Games sponsor is an official state secret.
The extravagance would probably have been swept under the carpet had it not been for the dogged persistence of the Member for Maroochydore, Fiona Simpson, the Opposition training and skills spokeswoman. She says the Palaszczuk Government has failed the transparency test, and she is right.
In September, Simpson stirred the pot when she wrote to Speaker Curtis Pitt pointing out that ministers had a duty to answer questions, and accusing Fentiman of a cover-up. She quoted precedents.
“Questions on Notice are an important part of parliamentary procedure that provides for scrutiny of government on decision-making and expenditure,” she said. “This is a fundamental part of what makes our parliament open and accountable to the people.”
She added: “I believe the Member for Waterford (Fentiman) has deliberately misused this process in an attempt to avoid scrutiny.”
It certainly appears that way to me.
Simpson’s letter prompted a more detailed response to a Question on Notice.
Now she has accused TAFE of wastefulness by spending more than $100,000 on brand research while its training rates plummet.
She says fresh data from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research reveals training cancellations are up, completion rates are down, and fewer Queenslanders are in training compared to last year.
So much for free tickets.
PS....
POETICAL NUMBERS
TO HIS schoolmates at Anglican Church Grammar School in Brisbane, Nigel Greenwood will be chiefly remembered as the humanities scholar who won the poetry prize and married a violinist.
To the international science community, however, Greenwood, 51, the son of Joh-era Cabinet minister John Greenwood, is a brilliant mathematician pushing the boundaries in the world of artificial intelligence.
After an exhaustive, three-year AI competition that drew hundreds of entries from 60 countries, Greenwood’s team has been named in the top 10 in the world. If it wins the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, it will get $5 million.
Greenwood’s Team MachineGenes was short-listed for developing an artificial pancreas with an application for personalising insulin treatment for worst-case Type 1 diabetes sufferers.
If diabetes continues to rise at the current rate, 3 million Australians will suffer from it by 2025.
“That is why this AI technology is so important,” Greenwood tells me. “Trials already conducted have shown AI could be extremely successful in controlling blood glucose levels.”
Greenwood runs four AI tech start-ups from Brisbane, and is also working on computerised models for transformative aviation engines that make flying safer. He recently demonstrated his engine to Rolls-Royce.
Greenwood and wife Kinga, who studied at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, have three young daughters. And yes, he still writes poetry. “I have done so since I was a boy,” he says.
FORGET IT
VITAL work to restore the memories of dementia sufferers is in jeopardy after the State Government failed to stump up enough funding for the Queensland Brain Institute.
“The state has dropped the ball on this,’’ says David Muir, who chairs the trust that funds the Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research. The institute got $5 million when it expected the state to match the $10 million federal pledge.
“We need $30 million to get the job done,” says Muir. There’s $25 million in the kitty.
A team, led by Professor Jurgen Gotz, has found that a type of ultrasound can remove the brain plaque that causes Alzheimer’s.
There are 420,000 Australians living with dementia, for which there is no cure. “We can change that,” says Muir.
By 2056, 1.1 million Australians may suffer from dementia. Muir is mystified by the funding shortfall. He says the state would get a cut of the action when the project is commercialised.
Minister for Innovation Kate Jones says the Government understands the importance of the work and has not shut the door on a top-up.
GOOD RIDDANCE
DESPITE adding 28,000 extra public servants, Queensland lags behind other states in providing basic services like health, education and transport.
So what do these extra people do? We can ponder long hospital waiting lists and lousy literacy rates as we sit in traffic jams this Christmas. We can also consider the state’s parlous financial status.
Ratings agency Moody’s says debt is projected to reach 128 per cent of government revenue in 2022, despite billions of dollars in coal royalties.
Moody’s warns that deficits, combined with higher spending, will “challenge Queensland’s credit profile”.
Frankly, this year under Labor has been another shocker. I’ll be glad to see the back of 2018. This is my last column for the year.
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