Opinion: Spare us the race card, Treasurer

IT IS HYPOCRITICAL of Jackie Trad and the State Government to throw stones on the subject of racism, given their own past sins, writes Steven Wardill.

THE race row that erupted in State Parliament this week must rank as one of the most divisive and duplicitous controversies of recent times.

Shadow treasurer Tim Mander lampooned Treasurer Jackie Trad as “Comical Ali” over her optimistic appraisal of the Queensland economy in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Racism charge

Mander backed

Twitter war

Mander is far from the first politician to draw parallels between an opponent and Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi spin doctor who drew global ridicule during the 2003 Iraqi war for his propaganda.

Among those who have drawn Comical Ali comparisons, for example, is another leading figure of Trad’s Left faction, Anthony Albanese.

Albanese has thrown these references at the likes of Warren Truss and Mal Brough during some of his more colourful contributions in Canberra.

The difference in the Queensland case is that Trad is of Middle Eastern origin.

She’s the daughter of Lebanese migrants, and she lived briefly in Beirut as a child.

It is not the first time Trad has faced barbs in Parliament’s bear pit that appear to take aim at her heritage.

Treasurer Jackie Trad

Her Opposition counterpart Tim Mander

Member for Oodgeroo Mark Robinson branded her “Jihad Jackie” when the recent abortion debate got heated, as did Member for Mermaid Beach Ray Stevens during the Newman years.

When she took umbrage back then, premier Campbell Newman insisted she “harden up”.

After Mander’s latest contribution, Trad appeared genuinely distressed and labelled him a racist.

Then the Government’s media minions set about trying score political points from the issue by fanning the flames of the controversy.

Personally I don’t believe Mander’s Comical Ali comment was deliberately motivated by race.

It was nonetheless provocative and politically clumsy.

But it is hypocritical of Trad and the Government to throw stones in this area, given their own sins of using racial undertones to further Labor’s political fortunes.

In the months before last year’s state election, the Government engaged in an aggressive and egregious campaign of xenophobic dog whistling.

It was one of the lowest acts of playing to prejudices since the Howard government’s bawdy border protection rhetoric.

It is not a coincidence that both came amid the spectre of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and an election.

The original Comical Ali, named after Chemical Ali, insisted Iraq was not being invaded.

Repeatedly and deliberately, Queensland’s Labor Government took aim at the LNP for ordering train rolling stock from India.

Election advertisements were plastered with dishonest patriotic rhetoric questioning why the trains weren’t built in Queensland, despite no local company tendering for the job.

Trad herself has referred to “half-priced trains from India”.

The Government did that knowing the problems with the trains have nothing to do with where they were built or who built them.

Instead, it was done purposely to tap into bigoted stereotypes about Indians being shabby builders.

Similar applies to the Government’s opposition to a federal loan for Adani’s Carmichael mine.

While this was a lot to do with inner-city activists, it also captured those that opposed the company simply because it is Indian.

I’ve spoken to senior members of Queensland’s Indian community about these issues.

They’re appalled and hurt by Labor using their race for political purposes but not surprised.

The Government’s Queensland First procurement policy — under which local firms will be favoured over companies domiciled internationally — plays on the same ugly undercurrent.

Trad deserves an apology from Mander.

Ignorance is not an excuse.

But the deliberate dog whistling that Labor has engaged in on an industrial scale is worse and should also be atoned for.

Racism of any kind has no place in politics.

LNP blockade is rubbish

A $100 million world-first project that would create hundreds of jobs is in limbo because of the LNP Opposition’s refusal to back a waste levy.

There’s a risk the project could proceed in NSW, where there’s bipartisan support for a price on waste.

The project is the brainchild of Southern Oils, which has already invested $85 million into building an advanced waste-oil refinery in Gladstone and another $24 million in a biofuels pilot plant.

The company is getting international attention after announcing in March it could produce crude from four different types of waste streams, and then convert it to drop-in diesel that is indistinguishable to the fossil fuel variety.

The company now wants to establish a reliable supply chain of Queensland waste – including ­industrial and commercial waste, tyres and plastics – that it can turn into renewable crude, and then ­diesel.

While this Queensland success story doesn’t need public funding, it needs a price on waste to make the process cost effective.

The Queensland Government is introducing a waste levy on March 4 next year that ranges from $70 for a tonne of municipal waste to $150 for acidic liquids and asbestos.

However the LNP won’t say whether it would continue the tax in office.

Southern Oil boss Tim Rose says Queensland could be a world leader in the waste-to-energy sector with a bit of bipartisanship.

“But without certainty, without a clearly defined waste levy and waste strategy, and without a bipartisan approach, Queensland will miss an enormous opportunity,” Rose says.

“Quite simply we are better than throwing our rubbish into big holes while our politicians continue to squabble.”

Former state treasurer Andrew Fraser pictured earlier this year

Wunderkind tests waters

SPOTTED at State Parliament this week was former deputy premier and treasurer Andrew Fraser.

The one-time Labor wonder kid, who now sports a beard, was showing a few people around the parliamentary precinct.

Fraser, who went from Proserpine State High to the penultimate position in Queensland politics, has retreated from public view since the Newman landslide in 2012.

His former seat of Mt Coot-tha has also been abolished.

Could he be ready to come in from the cold?

While Fraser has his critics, there are times when Labor desperately needs his cunning and caustic contributions from one of Parliament’s front-row seats.

Dragging out schedule

THE family-friendly hours might have been introduced into State Parliament for the right reasons. But they have turned into a farce.

Under the arrangements introduced this term, our MPs get to finish at dinner time rather than debate legislation late into the night.

Sometimes sittings have continued until almost dawn.

However, the change has crunched the timetable.

State MPs were this week still giving their addresses in reply – the official speech they all give after the opening of a new term.

That’s almost a year after the election and with just one sitting week left on the 2018 calendar.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is China-bound. Picture: Dave Hunt/AAP

Week that was... and will be

Good week: Greens MP Michael Berkman, introducing two pieces of legislation, one that will wedge Labor on coalmining and another that the Government may have to support.

Bad week: Shadow treasurer Tim Mander, accused of racism after comparing his opposite Jackie Trad to Saddam Hussein spin doctor “Comical Ali”.

Quote of the week: “The person that named the business was a woman and she also batters fish and chips” — Katter’s Australian Party’s Shane Knuth explains why a takeaway joint named The Battered Wife doesn’t make light of domestic violence.

Next week: Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will lead a delegation of business leaders to China and Korea, leaving Jackie Trad to take over. The deputy, however, won’t chair Cabinet.