Editorial: Travel duplication is waste in plane sight

For a government claiming to care about the best use of taxpayer money and climate emissions, two private jets ferrying the premier and a senior minister around the state to the same events is damning, writes the editor.

Premier Steven Miles (right) with Deputy Premier and Treasurer Cameron Dick

For a government that claims it cares about the appropriate use of taxpayer money and climate emissions, the revelation that two private jets were used to ferry the premier and a senior minister around the state to the same events is damning.

The 2800km, two-day trip involved stops in Townsville and Cairns on Monday, before returning to Townsville, then Hervey Bay and Brisbane yesterday with Premier Steven Miles in one plane and Police Minister Mark Ryan and new Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski tailing in another.

The fact the government has refused to explain how much the trips costed or why the trio could not travel together ensures taxpayers reading the exclusive report this morning will do so with raised eyebrows.

Travelling around a large state such as Queensland to discuss the important issue of crime clearly requires the use of air transport. But there simply has to be a better way than chartering two expensive, fuel-guzzling jets to hop from town to town within minutes of each other.

ALL NEWS IS GOOD NEWS BEFORE ELECTION

The government’s pre-election spin machine is at it again – trying to paint bad news as good news, and promising even better news ahead.

Last week we had state Treasurer Cameron Dick insisting a potential five-fold surge in net state debt – to more than $70bn by 2028 – was a sign of positive and responsible economic management, while working on a big-spending budget that the Premier says will be “the biggest cost-of-living budget ever”.

Then on Monday we saw Police Minister Mark Ryan wave away a 5.2 per cent jump in youth criminals last year on top of an 11.2 per cent increase in the overall crime rate to an “increased intensity of police operations”.

That is, he says crime rates had gone up because police were doing a better job at catching criminals; possibly good news, depending on how you look at it – but still definitely an argument that falls safely into the looking-for-the-silver lining category.

Premier Steven Miles then added that the crime rate had dropped 1 per cent in the nine months since the annual period those figures relate to. This, then, was a definite “turning of a corner” on the crime crisis – or so the Premier said, a point he was able to reinforce thanks to a no-doubt carefully managed piece of timing by also confirming the appointment of Steve Gollschewski as the state’s new police commissioner (and then heading off on a taxpayer-funded private jet tour of the state with him by his side).

And then came yesterday when we had another government good news story: that hundreds more police officers will be added to the frontline to combat crime.

The new commitment is that 900 additional personnel – including 500 sworn officers – will be employed by mid-2027.

But, as we report today, this latest recruitment commitment comes despite the government already being 30 per cent – or 600 staff – short of its 2020 election promise for police numbers.

Recruitment has struggled to keep up with attrition, as auditor general Brendan Worrall noted in November last year. He found the promise of hiring 2025 additional police personnel by 2025 – which he noted had never been “informed by evidence-based analysis of demand for services” – would not be met.

In fact, police office numbers grew by fewer than 100 between 2020 and 2023 – and actually fell by more than 200 last year, because of a 47 per cent jump in resignations.

The problem with today’s announcement is that all the government is doing here is patching over past promises it has failed to achieve.

And they have done this before. Minister Ryan pledged in February that the 2025 targets would still be met “thanks to the extraordinary recruitment effort and innovative approaches of the QPS recruiting team”, which he said had delivered a more than doubling of the number of recruits in the QPS pipeline in just 12 months.

If it was not clear before this week, it sure is now: the Premier is determined to show that his government is focused on fighting crime. The other way to look at this truth is that we are now six months out from an election where the crime crisis engulfing the entire state could determine whether Mr Miles keeps his job.

The Premier has predictably spent the week jetting across the state with his Commissioner Gollschewski in tow – spruiking crime crackdown initiatives.

We would urge caution here. In the lead-up to the last state election, former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk occasionally sailed perhaps a bit too close to the wind in having then-chief health officer Jeannette Young (the person Ms Palaszczuk later appointed as governor) at her side at what were political announcements.

In the post-Fitzgerald era it is even more important than in health that the police service and the executive remain well and truly distinguishable from one another.

Responsibility for election comment is taken by Chris Jones, corner of Mayne Rd & Campbell St, Bowen Hills, Qld 4006. Printed and published by NEWSQUEENSLAND (ACN 009 661 778). Contact details here