Des Houghton: Queensland Labor’s misinformation merchants could derail state election campaign

OPINION: Could the state election campaign be derailed by the government’s army of misinformation merchants? The deception has already begun, writes Des Houghton.

State Labor is paralysed by contradictions.

It says it wants to keep Queenslanders safe but changed bail laws to allow young offenders back on the streets, sparking a youth crime horror show with violent home invasions, car theft, woundings and even murder.

Labor came to power saying it would repair the broken health system but nine years later our loved ones are still dying in agony waiting for an ambulance. If the Labor Party was a person, it would be searching for a bed in the intensive care unit right now.

Labor is paralysed by contradictions again when it says it will provide affordable housing for working families while punishing mum and dad investors who try to provide it.

Labor professes to stand up for workers but has trashed the rights of thousands of nurses and teachers by trying to freeze out independent unions, which has fees of about half those paid by the big unions with Labor links.

Labor promised accountability and transparency but Peter Coaldrake’s Let the Sunshine In report found a disturbing lack of both.

Coaldrake, a former QUT vice-chancellor and head of the public service reform agenda in the Goss government, raised questions about integrity and cronyism.

Premier Steven Miles and Industrial Relations Minister Grace Gra. Picture: David Clark

But after promising to implement Coaldrake’s recommendations “lock stock and barrel” Labor reneged, and the public service remains under an integrity cloud.

With the election just months away, I think it is time for political observers to examine Labor’s record more closely, and to challenge the misinformation merchants peddling distortions and falsehoods in press releases and on social media and in newspaper online posts.

Labor may very well hijack an election it does not deserve to win.

The volume of Labor spin has rapidly increased. The misinformation floating around cyberspace suggests to me a deepfake election campaign is already under way. And pro-Labor taxpayer-funded billboard advertisements have started to appear.

Will this be first election in Australia hijacked by fake news, I wonder? Labor refuses to tell us how many propagandists are working in the ministries and the departments, but it estimated to be higher than the number of journalists employed by the ABC and The Courier-Mail combined.

Labor has paid lip service to separation of powers conventions by appointing Labor identities to high-powered public service jobs and boards and by stacking the courts and the Industrial Relations Commission with former ALP officials and union mates. Voters gave Labor politicians a lot of power and they have misused it, and comprehensively so.

Steven Miles is now the titular head of a state government that is in effect a woke socialist collective favouring only those unions with Labor links whose members fund ALP campaigns – whether they like it or not.

Obsequious Police Minister Mark Ryan’s pledge to rein in youth crime has been made more forcefully – even though he let frontline police numbers shrink by 322 in 18 months.

Labor’s pledge to keep us safe is now the rotting albatross around its neck. That said I don’t think some of Labor’s biggest failures have had nearly the exposure they deserve.

Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace. Picture: David Clark

Amid the hullabaloo over crime and hospital chaos, Grace Grace, a recidivist political incompetent, has somehow escaped the heat.

Queensland schools fell behind other states in literacy and numeracy during Grace’s term as minister. Budget papers showed Queensland failed 24 targets for reading, writing and numeracy at all year levels tested in NAPLAN.

Christian Rowan, the Shadow Minister for Education, described the results as embarrassing. Rowan also told state parliament there was no improvement in any of the 49 key metrics in the 2023 School Opinion Survey report. Not one.

Grace’s plan to employ 6000 more teachers has stalled, with Parliamentary Estimates hearings reporting only an additional 388 have been signed on.

Is it any wonder that Grace was quietly shuffled out of the education portfolio in the first Miles cabinet.

However, she did retain responsibility for the Industrial Relations portfolio.

She was in the chair when parliament heard Labor unions overcharged teachers and nurses by $48m a year in fees.

And a “wicked” change to industrial relations laws would see many more millions of dollars funnelled from teachers and nurses to fund the Labor Party in a system that was “corrupt”, parliament heard.

The charges came in a debate in parliament when Labor moved to curtail independent unions from representing members at the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission.

“Make no mistake, most of the amendments in this Bill are driven by pure politics, an ideological obsession and a hate for competition,” Opposition Deputy Leader Jarrod Bleijie told the House.

“Ultimately, this Bill is a Bill to further entrench the Labor-aligned union monopoly in Queensland and take away choices for teachers, nurses and other frontline workers.’’

The new laws effectively compel 120,000 nurses and teachers in Queensland to fund ALP campaigns by funnelling large sums of money through the Queensland Council of Unions via secretive affiliation fees, he said.

Opposition Deputy Leader Jarrod Bleijie. Picture: Dan Peled

Bleijie said Queensland now had “gerrymander donation laws”. Teachers and nurses would be “horrified” if they knew the amounts channelled to the ALP.

“This Labor government is lining its own pockets. Monopoly unions will continue to exist in Queensland.”

Where does all the money go? It’s an enduring mystery. Grace Grace has some tough questions to answer.

Unions became the focus of other integrity issues last year,

Labor rejected a sensible Crime and Corruption Commission recommendation to have union officials deemed as lobbyists and their contacts with government recorded.

The recommendation came in a CCC report titled Influence and Transparency in Queensland’s Public Sector. The crime watchdog sought to have union officials declare any contact with the government when they seek to influence policy or law changes. But Labor wasn’t having a bar of it. Why? In arguing that union bosses were not lobbyists who influence policy, Labor shot another big hole in its credibility.

Meanwhile, Labor is still making promises so fantastic they are beyond comprehension.

It is a huge stretch of the imagination to accept the ALP government’s grandiose regional plan for “an overhaul of the urban landscape” to “significantly increase density” and create 900,000 new dwellings by 2046.

The housing crisis is getting worse because of interstate and overseas migration and natural population growth. Shortages of land, tradesmen and capital will surely make these targets impossible to achieve.

Des Houghton, a former editor of The Courier-Mail, The Sunday Mail and the Sunday Sun, is a media consultant who has previously worked as a media adviser for the NPAQ