Opinion: Time’s up for Qld Labor’s own Dead Parrot Sketch

If Labor wonders why it’s headed for the Opposition benches, it’s because Queenslanders have finally tired of its own Dead Parrot Sketch, writes Mike O’Connor.

If you are not familiar with the Dead Parrot Sketch as made famous by John Cleese and the Monty Python crew, it goes something like this.

Cleese brings a parrot into the pet shop where he had bought it a few hours earlier and complains that it is dead. Plainly, it has deceased. Not so, says the pet shop owner. It’s sleeping.

If Premier Steven Miles and his merry band are wondering why it seems likely they’re headed for the Opposition benches in October, it’s because Queenslanders have finally tired of political versions of the Dead Parrot Sketch.

There’s the one in which the government tries to pretend that opening medical centres which have no beds or doctors is the same as building new hospitals. Most people know this is nonsense, and those who don’t find out quickly enough when they turn up for treatment and are sent off in search of a real hospital. The parrot is dead, not asleep.

Premier Steven Miles.

The government blames immigration, winter, road accidents and everything except the war in the Ukraine for an ongoing and scandalous shortage of beds and staff in the health system, when it is evident that the cause is a lack of planning and political leadership under Labor for the past nine years. The parrot is not dead, the government insists. It is sleeping.

We’re told that everything will be just fine come 2032 and that Brisbane will host an Olympic Games of which we will all be proud.

No we won’t. Most people don’t want them and the entire affair has been a shambolic, half-arsed, ego-driven exercise since day one. Little has happened except lots of meetings which have generated nothing but media releases.

Watching from our imaginary grandstand we can see this but we are told that all is sweetness and light. Our Olympic plans aren’t dead. They’re sleeping.

If you heard a whistle blow last week, it was the one announcing the imminent arrival of the latest gravy train to pull into trade union headquarters courtesy of Premier Miles and Energy Minister de Brenni.

The Dead Parrot Sketch from Monty Python

On board was a draft copy de Brenni’s plans to apply Best Practice Industry Conditions to the state’s renewable energy projects, plans which he said were close to being finalised.

BPIC is the sweetest of sweetheart deals struck to accommodate one of the government’s paymasters, the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union. This deal guarantees massive take home pay packets for its members and ensures it takes up to 65 weeks longer to build an apartment block in Brisbane compared to Sydney and depending on size, adds from $140,000 to $600,000 to the cost of an apartment.

The state’s renewable energy projects, those that actually have a business case and some chance of being built, backed by government subsidies and in semi-remote locations offer the potential for even richer pickings for the CFMEU.

Everyone knows that BPIC is a disgraceful rort for which ultimately we all end up paying, but Minister de Brenni insists otherwise.

“Our job is to deliver good wages for working Queenslanders – that is our purpose,” he says prodding the supine parrot and insisting it’s just sleeping

No it’s not minister. It’s to govern the state in the best interests of us all without fear or favour.

It’s not sleeping, mate. It’s dead.

The government can at least claim to have outshone the rest of the nation in one regard and can now proudly claim to run the most strike-prone state in the country with 105 days lost to industrial action on every worksite in the first three months of this year.

CFMEU Queensland boss Michael Ravbar, giving the parrot’s cage a shake, has dismissed claims of industrial anarchy as representative of an “unhealthy obsession with our union”.

All those non-CFMEU workers not earning $250k-plus and who have to turn up on hot days and when rain threatens reckon the parrot didn’t move. It’s not sleeping, mate. It’s dead.

Should Opposition Leader David Crisafulli gain government, he has the job in front of him to show the electorate that responsible government in Queensland isn’t dead. It’s just sleeping.