Opinion: Qld voters must consider issues of Labor integrity

If the Queensland election becomes a referendum on the coronavirus Labor will likely be re-elected. But there are much bigger issues voters should keep in mind, writes Des Houghton. VOTE IN OUR POLL

If the state election becomes a referendum on Queensland’s response to the coronavirus, Labor will likely win, and we will likely be stuck with lacklustre premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and her dodgy Government for another four years.

If, on the other hand, the October poll becomes a referendum on integrity and trust, I suspect Labor will be thumped.

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Allegations of corruption and cover-up have plagued this Labor Government from the outset, with several ministers jumping on and off the Crime and Corruption Commission merry-go-round.

Then the Government attempted to stifle press freedom by promoting new laws that would have prevented us telling you which of its ministers, and other members of Parliament, have been reported to the CCC in the caretaker period leading up to the election.

It was an attempt at official state censorship like it is practised in China. It was all the more worrying because the CCC was going along with it.

However Labor quickly realised the proposed Bill was an electoral suicide note.

Within 24 hours Palaszczuk had backflipped amid a public outcry.

Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath said in a statement the Bill would be withdrawn, but gave no assurances it would not be returned to Parliament in the next term should the ALP win the election.

So the threat to your right to know still hangs in limbo.

Voters must be getting a little tired of being treated like mushrooms while Labor cabinet ministers become embroiled in one scandal after another.

I believe the rush to block media reporting of ministers came after the chance discovery of a tape recording in which a minister incriminated herself in an investigation in an entirely unrelated matter.

CCC investigations into wrongdoing have even ensnared Palaszczuk.

However had that funding row with Katter’s Australian Party happened near an election, it would have been unlawful for us to write about it under the proposed new laws.

If the Jackie Trad cases had occurred close to an election, you would not know about them because the media would have been muzzled.

So your democratic right to know would have been expunged by the very Labor Government under investigation for wrongdoing.

With suggestions of wrongdoing and cover-ups leading all the way to the top, I’m wondering how long the voters will put up with Palaszczuk’s ship of fools.

Katter’s Australian Party state leader Robbie Katter ensnared the Premier in a CCC probe.

The Premier’s former chief of staff remains under an integrity cloud, with a CCC investigation into his extracurricular business activities dragging on for over a year.

The integrity clouds were gathering again this week over Labor, with astonishing revelations by The Courier-Mail of a cover-up attempt to hide away a billion-dollar blowout in the cost of the troubled Cross River Rail project.

Then came the refusal by Palaszczuk and her Education Minister Grace Grace to reveal which electorates would receive the lion’s share of funding for schools, presumably because they were ashamed they may be caught out pork-barrelling.

The Katter case was interesting because the CCC said the Premier’s remarks potentially exposed her to an allegation of bribery of a member of Parliament.

However the CCC then let her off the hook by referring the matter back to the Parliament, knowing full well Labor has a majority there.

Labor notions that it may trample the rights of the media in reporting political wrongdoing is the last straw.

How bad does it have to get before Queenslanders cry, “enough is enough”?