Kylie Lang: Govt spent three times as much spruiking its ‘economic recovery plan’ as it did on urging us to get jabs
Billions have been spent to help Queensland businesses survive Covid, but the government can’t prove it had any impact, writes Kylie Lang.
Kylie Lang
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The Palaszczuk government has no idea what happened to billions of taxpayer dollars meant to help our smashed economy recover. How’s that for fiscal fumbling?
It also “doesn’t know what’s coming” as the most severe Covid-19 wave tears through Queensland and many Courier-Mail readers demand the return of mask mandates and lockdowns. Makes you wonder what, if anything, the government does know, or what it is refusing to share.
These latest two classic examples of cluelessness are further proof that we are at the mercy of politicians preoccupied with image at the expense of accountability.
After my column this week on Health Minister Yvette D’Ath’s limp response to the coronavirus surge that has sent more than 1000 Queenslanders into our haemorrhaging hospital system, one reader suggested I had nothing good to say about Labor. That my eyes were “too blue”.
Perhaps this person would prefer I don a pair of rose-coloured glasses to gloss over the abundant failings of this government.
The same goes for whichever mob is in power – do your job or prepared to be called out for incompetence.
More than $4bn of our money was meant to be spent on 79 initiatives to help the state recover from the pandemic, a pandemic which despite months of virtual radio silence from the government until this week, isn’t going anywhere.
A damning report by Auditor-General Brendan Worrall released on Tuesday reveals this and other bungles amid shamefully skewed priorities.
It found the Palaszczuk government doesn’t know how many jobs it created or businesses it supported through billions of dollars in Covid support packages, and there is no evidence one dollar has been spent on those 79 aforementioned recovery initiatives.
It also found the government spent three times as much money spruiking its so-called economic recovery plan – a copy of which you may recall was jammed under the arm of any minister fronting the cameras – as it did on urging Queenslanders to get the Covid-19 vaccine. It’s image before vaccination.
So here we are, unsurprisingly, with Queensland having the lowest full vaccination rates in the country as we are floored by a third wave about which the government provides vague and scant information.
It is true the virus is mutating into different subvariants and that makes it more unpredictable, but that is no excuse for any government to take its eye off the ball.
Notably absent until the proverbial hit the fan this week with record reported cases have been the frenzied updates and furrowed brows of Annastacia Palaszczuk, previously flanked by former chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young. Did the current wave catch our leaders off guard while they were trying not to drown in a tsunami of integrity issues?
Not so long ago, Covid numbers of below the 56,000-plus cases this week would have triggered snap lockdowns and mask mandates.
Such widely unpopular moves might not be politically wise a little over two years out from the possibility of re-election. So instead, we have Ms Palaszczuk politely asking us to mask-up. “If you’re indoors, put on a mask,” she said on Thursday, extending the request to schoolchildren.
“Please take this seriously … and if you have not had that booster go and get that booster.”
But the question which, like so many others raised in reports on this government’s performance by independent assessors, remains conspicuously unanswered.
Why did the Palaszczuk government spend three times more on a fiscal ad campaign than spruiking the lifesaving message of full vaccination?
All we’ve heard on that matter is Treasurer Cameron Dick saying the government has “done our bit” and blaming the previous federal LNP government for a slow vaccination rollout.
It seems like yesterday – actually it was six weeks out from the October 2020 state election – that Ms Palaszczuk proclaimed: “If it means losing the election, I will risk all that if it means keeping Queenslanders safe.”
Those who believed her must be shaking their heads at how things have changed.
kylie lang is associate editor of The Courier-Mail
kylie.lang@news.com.au
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