Des Houghton: Palaszczuk’s community forums just more useless talkfests at your expense

Does anyone seriously believe the Queensland Cabinet needs a series of community forums to tell it where it is going wrong, asks Des Houghton.

The Palaszczuk government has come up with a clever – and devious – way to get taxpayers to help fund Labor’s 2024 election campaign. It reeks of impropriety to me.

The Department of Premier and Cabinet has been busily recruiting staff to run “community forums” across Queensland to “provide support and guidance to the Premier and Cabinet to effectively deliver on the government’s priorities”.

“As a key member of the team, you will facilitate community forums in your region and provide a central point of contact to co-ordinate and strengthen Government collaboration,” said an ad this week for a Principal Stakeholder Relationship Officer to run the community forum on the Gold Coast.

Members of the community forums will be hand-picked by the Premier’s office, so they will no doubt be vetted by Labor MPs and Labor Party branches and unions to ensure they are fellow travellers.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk at 1 William St. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/Courier Mail

It seems to me the government is just hiring more useless bureaucrats and recruiting political allies to run useless community forums to conduct more useless talkfests – at your expense – to muddy the waters to hide Labor’s failures.

Worryingly, there are no minutes taken of community forum meetings. And there is a lack of transparency about the selection process.

Some worthy locals who applied to sit on forums wonder why their applications were declined.

Bizarrely, some forums are chaired by Labor MPs who don’t live in the region.

Does anyone seriously believe the Queensland Cabinet needs more community forums to tell it where it is going wrong?

The Premier and her embattled ministers only have to look at police statistics to show towns and suburbs where break-ins and car thefts are worse.

They only have to glance at the Department of Health statistics that show hospital chaos with deeply disturbing ambulance ramping and the failure of public hospitals to carry out vital surgeries within the recommended time frames.

And they only need to look at social housing waiting lists to see how they have failed utterly to provide affordable housing for battlers.

I suspect community forums were created to run interference while identifying potential future political candidates. However my biggest worry is that the unelected forums will usurp our duly elected local councils. There are 77 councils in Queensland conducting “community forums” every day.

Councils are close to the people. They employ 42,000 people in this state, who daily work through ratepayers’ problems – often face-to-face – for the betterment of their communities.

Local mayors have their fingers on the pulse of their communities. If they don’t, they are quickly shunted into the political wilderness.

Moreton Bay Mayor Peter Flannery. Picture: Liam Kidston

When Allan Sutherland was unfairly forced out as mayor of Moreton Council I wondered if his replacement Peter Flannery would cut the mustard.

I am happy to say Flannery seems to have his feet on the ground. I admired something he said recently: “Housing affordability could be the greatest challenge of our time, and it’s not just a Moreton Bay or a Queensland issue, this is a national crisis,” he said. Flannery didn’t need a community forum to tell him that.

And I liked what Gladstone mayor Matt Burnett said recently: “A drain, a road or a water treatment plant may not be the most glamorous bit of kit councils deliver, but we know that better infrastructure makes more liveable communities.”

So if Palaszczuk wants to know how she can assist rural and regional Queensland she should ask the mayors instead of grandstanding before the cameras at community forums.

If she genuinely wants to promote economic development in the regions she could also talk to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Local Government Association, the Council of South-East Queensland Mayors, the Queensland Farmers’ Federation, Meat and Livestock Australia, the Queensland Tourism Industry Council, the Queensland Resources Council and excellent groups like Townsville Enterprise and Advance Cairns.

They represent people with skin in the game.

Gladstone Region Mayor Matt Burnett.

Her community forums may also be seen as a vote of no confidence in the members of Parliament – including those on her own side.

Alarm bells rang in July when Palaszczuk staged a community cabinet on the Gold Coast.

Member for Burleigh Michael Hart, an anti-corruption campaigner who has been a thorn in Labor’s side since his election to Parliament in 2012, points out the community cabinet was an invitation-only affair kept secret until the last moment.

“It was a closed shop. So much for community,” he said.

Labor is establishing an unnecessary community forum on the Sunshine Coast and seven or eight more in the regions.

Glenn Butcher, the regional Development Minister said: “The forums have been valuable for the Queensland Government to hear from people on the ground, so that we continue to develop the regions and invest where it is needed most.”

Gold Coast councillor Herman Vorster.

GOLD COAST VOWS TO FIGHT COMMUNITY FORUMS

A high-profile Gold Coast councillor has convinced his council to formally oppose community forums in the belief they are “undesirable” and undermine local authorities.

Herman Vorster, 38, won support for a motion expressing concern, and pointing out that the establishment of community forums usurps the constitutional role of local government. Members appointed to forums by the State Government “were not elected or accountable to the community”, council heard. The council also resolved to have Mayor Tom Tate formally write to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk “seeking further information of the Gold Coast community forum”.

The council said local government “is best placed to provide considered, transparent, and democratic representation on behalf of communities, and that the proposed Gold Coast Community Forum will be costly, confusing and prone to political rent-seeking”.

And Vorster is taking the fight statewide. The council also voted to raise the matter at next month’s annual meeting of the Local Government Association.

The South African-born father of three (aged two to 10) told me: “This is a bit like the Voice. It’s a way for the State Government to cherrypick voices that agree with them.’’

Vorster was born in Boksburg, 27km east of Johannesburg, to a Swiss-South African father and a Sicilian mother, who fled “for the usual reasons”. His parents decided to emigrate to New Zealand when he came home from school one day to tell them they had started practising bomb drills. He came to the Gold Coast after winning a scholarship to Bond University where he completed two degrees.