Opinion: Premier, PM have more pressing issues than photo ops

Annastacia Palaszczuk’s latest photo op with Anthony Albanese shows everything that’s wrong with our leaders, writes Kylie Lang. VOTE IN OUR POLL

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk open the new Coles distribution centre at Redbank in Ipswich. Picture: Tertius Pickard/NCA NewsWire

The optics are awful: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk beaming for the cameras at the opening of a whiz-bang automated Coles distribution centre in Ipswich, a day after Brisbane became a national disgrace with the steepest cost-of-living increase of any capital city.

The centre will theoretically mean supermarket shelves stay fuller for longer or, as Mr Albanese enthused on Thursday, “as we’ve seen during the pandemic and natural disasters, resilient supply chains are essential when it comes to feeding our nation and providing Australians with essential supplies”.

Yes, but how will having well-stocked shelves drive prices, to use Coles’s own advertising catchcry, “down, down”?

The short answer, it won’t.

There is no precedent for supermarkets passing concessions to customers, with prices going “up, up”.

Better optics would be for the Prime Minister and Premier to ditch ribbon-cutting events and get serious about improving life for people on Struggle Street.

Sensible, targeted plans – for the short and long term – must be urgently conceived and implemented, not vaguely “promised” when headlines become uncomfortable.

On Wednesday, it was revealed Brisbane recorded the sharpest spike in living costs for the March quarter.

According to ABS data, its housing price rise of 3.4 per cent was almost double those of the second highest cities – Sydney and Hobart ­– with the hike in education (7.4 per cent) and health (5.4 per cent) costs also claiming a shameful first place.

These figures confirm what residents have been grappling with for some time.

A survey by Woolworths this month found Australians are eating only half the recommended five serves of vegetables a day – and one-quarter just one serve – with people citing affordability.

And a YouGov poll found voters blamed the Palaszczuk government more than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for escalating living costs.

When quizzed on Thursday, Ms Palaszczuk said “more things need to be done”, promising concessions in the state budget in June.

But when asked who should shoulder the most blame, she said it was a “national” issue.

Surely, it is both.

Given the ugly spectacle of partisan bickering – led by Ms Palaszczuk and her deputy Steven Miles – when Scott Morrison was prime minister, you’d think that with Labor now in Canberra common ground would be easier to find.

Let’s take the housing crisis.

Queensland now has two unused quarantine facilities.

Wellcamp, in the Toowoomba region, will return to the Wagner family this month when the state government lease runs out.

That $220m facility was mothballed after being barely used.

John Wagner has said he will eventually incorporate the 1000-bed facility into his company’s Wellcamp Entertainment Precinct.

As for the Federal Government’s own white elephant, the 500-bed Pinkenba quarantine facility that was completed last year after it became redundant, this continues to lie dormant.

The dormant quarantine facility at Wellcamp near Toowoomba

Here are 500 beds that could be offered to vulnerable Queenslanders.

This week a survey by Anglicare revealed only nine rooms in share houses across Brisbane were affordable for renters on income support, and 82 homes for those on minimum wage, from a pool of 3000.

Anglicare’s Sue Cooke called it “a catastrophe” and demanded the state and federal governments deliver a three-pronged response: more social and affordable housing, rental assistance, and welfare support.

In March, another damning report, commissioned by the Queensland Council of Social Service, found 300,000 Queenslanders were experiencing housing insecurity.

While a raft of measures must be used, and some will take time, Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner has long been pushing for Pinkenba to open to the vulnerable.

He says the federal and state governments should be joining forces to bring in a professional operator to open the facility, and that council will work with Translink to provide additional bus services.

But the Albanese Government has now declared the $400m Pinkenba facility be kept for the defence force and as accommodation in any future natural disaster or pandemic.

Meanwhile, we have people without roofs over their heads as Queensland looks more like a Third World country every day.

I’d call that a pretty compelling disaster.

It’s time for politicians to change the optics and deliver services that will actually help people.

Kylie Lang is associate editor of The Courier-Mail

LOVE

■ More kids kicking goals for health and wellbeing, with an extra 54 teams in the Aussie rules South East Queensland junior comp.

■ Ron Howard behaving like a nice guy, akin to his character Richie Cunningham in Happy Days, and posing with locals while hunting for a film locale.

LOATHE

■ Overpaid university bosses. I’m with the tertiary education union’s Michael McNally: “Vice-chancellors should not be paid anything like $1 million salaries, they are public institutions.”

■ Research showing motorists not bothering with a “thank you wave”. It’s easy to do, try it.