Bligh follows Labor's lost ladies

DESPITE its huge majority, the Queensland Labor Government may follow Western Australian Labor into deserved oblivion at the March 21 election.

The economic downturn is only one of the obvious problems faced by Queensland Premier Anna Bligh as she seeks a fourth term for Labor. Male unemployment in the state has increased at nearly twice the national rate in the year to January - 2.1 per cent compared with 1.2 per cent. Like other Labor women - Victoria's Joan Kirner and WA's Carmen Lawrence come to mind - who have been left holding Labor's putrid parcel when the music finally stops and the electorate comes to its senses, Bligh may find that the punters are now cognisant of the systemic problems inherent in the Labor administration. The ongoing committal hearing of Dr Jayant Patel is one example playing out before the courts now. Another is the failure of the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission to act meaningfully in the case of a nurse who was raped in quarters provided by the state's Health Department on the Torres Strait island of Mabuiag. Not only did Queensland Health fail in its duty of care to the nurse, but its bureaucrats managed to dock her pay while she was recovering from her trauma in Sydney. The chief executive of the Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula Area Health Service, Cindy Morseu, was stood aside last week after outrage was expressed at the manner in which the rape was handled. Morseu was, however, involved in another disturbing matter in January which the Bligh Government is still attempting to brush under the carpet. Responding to a complaint from the Torres Shire Mayor, Pedro Stephen, Morseu terminated contract health worker Peter Armstrong's employment after he wrote an email critical of an article by Stephen that appeared on the front page of the Torres News. So abrupt was Armstrong's dismissal that Queensland Health sent a helicopter to airlift him from the area, leaving it without the services of a registered nurse. He has since been told that he has effectively been banned from working again in the Torres Strait region by Queensland Health, even though the department is desperately short of trained professionals, he wishes to return and he has been assured by members of the community that there is no ill-feeling towards him. Petty political correctness, Labor Party considerations and a considerable whiff of nepotism are likely to continue to block his return, however, and undermine the health resources of the area. With Bligh proroguing Parliament last Monday for the election, it's unlikely this unfortunate health worker will receive any justice until the polls are decided. Even then, his claims are likely to be frustrated should Labor be returned. Suspending Parliament for the election has also blocked the tabling of the long-overdue report by the Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee into allegations about the ongoing Heiner document-shredding scandal contained in nine volumes presented by Sydney QC David Rofe. It appears, however, that the committee was deadlocked and the Labor chairman, Paul Hoolihan, may have voted twice - as a member and as chairman using his casting vote - to establish a majority and block any action on the long-running disgrace. Needless to say, it was this "majority'' that also found in the Heiner case it was not necessarily illegal to shred material known to be needed as evidence, although such shredding was held to be illegal in the case of Pastor Douglas Ensbey who was convicted of an offence of destroying evidence. Without the full release of the Rofe material, it's difficult to escape the conclusion that the Hoolihan majority decision was made on political grounds, which would be in keeping with the pattern of behaviour established by the successive Goss, Beattie and Bligh administrations. As The Australian's Queensland bureau chief, Tony Koch, reported on Friday, the State Government relies on "impotent'' structures such as the Crime and Misconduct Commission to get it off the hook. With the Government taking a year to act on the rape issue and its inquiry into the death of Cameron Doomadgee at the Palm Island watchhouse still running after four years, it's little wonder that Queensland, under Labor, is still the butt of Deep North jokes in the rest of Australia. Whether the voters have reached a tipping point in terms of dissatisfaction with the dysfunctional Labor Government will be shown in three weeks' time. But the rapid decline in support for the Government reflected in polls taken since the election announcement would indicate that the electorate will not be a pushover. And while taxpayers from other states watch in awe as the Federal Government's double-trouble act of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan shower their fellow Queenslanders with cash, the recipients might care to ask why their state's problems were not fixed during the past 11 years of Labor government.