Opinion: Miles and Dick should quit for their shameful spending

Steven Miles and Cameron Dick have had their callous disregard of their sworn duty to serve Queensland voters honourably laid bare, writes Mike O’Connor.

Queensland Opposition leader Steven Miles and deputy leader Cameron Dick. Picture: Glenn Hampson

When you have been found out to have misled and deceived your employer and sabotaged their finances for your own benefit the only honourable course is to resign.

If you are a company director and found guilty of failing to act in the best interests of shareholders and deliberately concealing a company’s financial position, you are cast out into the corporate cold, banned from holding directorships and on rare occasions, jailed.

If you are a politician, however, you suffer no such penalty and as in the case of former Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick and his colleague, former Premier Steven Miles, carry on blithely as before.

This duo, desperate to hang on to their jobs, committed Queenslanders to billions of dollars of additional debt with a series of policy announcements designed to buy enough votes to keep them in government in the full and certain knowledge that no provision had been made to pay for them.

Their callous disregard of their sworn duty to serve Queensland voters honourably has been laid bare by the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Review. The state’s finances are a shambles, the debt burden by 2027-28 now projected to hit $217 billion, an increase of $45 billion since June with the surpluses projected by Mr Dick in 2026-2027 and 2027-2028 now estimated to be deficits running to billions.

Steven Miles, with Indi Berrill, 7, in Cairns, promised free lunches for primary school students if Labor was re-elected. Picture: Adam Head

Mr Dick, however, seems to think that it’s all a bit of a joke, accusing the new LNP Treasurer Mr Janetzki of “cooking the books.”

Hilarious! This is a man who had the books bubbling away in the Treasury air fryer for months before the election now accusing his successor of financial malfeasance.

Dick went on to say that he had no regrets about running up massive debt and spending, because it had provided cost of living relief.

Feeling any relief out there? I didn’t think so. What you may be feeling is a sense of betrayal at the billions of dollars that could have been spent on our creaking health system, police service and roads now directed to servicing interest charges.

In the end it was all for nothing. Billions of our money spent and billions more baked into future commitments to keep Miles and Dick in their powerful, high paying jobs and it all came to nought.

Steven Miles spruiks Labor’s 50-cent fares in the lead up to the state election. Picture: Liam Kidston

Fifty cent fares, promises of free school lunches and government petrol stations, energy rebates for people who didn’t need them and a chicken in every pot with a free bottle of Bundy and a carton of XXXX thrown in. How to pay for it? Doesn’t matter. This is politics. Promise the masses anything which might help you to keep your place at the public money trough.

Displaying a level of arrogance and hypocrisy that even by Queensland political standards was staggering, Dick then declared that it was “about time the LNP stopped whingeing and started working, stopped blaming and started building for our state.”

Here’s a senior member of a government which routinely blamed former LNP Premier Campbell Newman, who hasn’t sat in the Legislative Assembly since 2015, or alternately former PM Scott Morrison for its many woes now complaining that the new LNP government is pointing the finger at Labor.

Cameron Dick hands down the 2024-25 State Budget. Picture: Dan Peled

Do politicians, you might well wonder, ever feel any sense of remorse when their blatant self-interest is revealed for all to see?

It would seem that there is no sense of shame felt for being thus exposed, the way forward being to throw out a few smart-arse one liners and to absolutely refuse to apologise for the financial havoc you have wrought.

By 2027-28 Queensland will have gone from having the lowest state public debt per capita to having the highest, higher than the economic basket case which is Victoria. Well done, lads.

There must now be serious doubt as to our ability to fund our share of the Olympics. When we finally decide where to hold them, some thought might be given as to how we will pay for them.

Politicians rely on people becoming bored by figures as they promise to spend a billion here and a billion there, hoping that it won’t register with voters that a billion is a thousand million. The fiscal chickens, however will shortly come home to roost.

What has happened is shameful. Miles and Dick should resign their seats and leave the parliament. They have zero credibility and should play no further part in politics.