Leaders need to be wary of being the patron saint of pandemics
Queensland has offloaded their citizens to Sydney — and then has the gall to call NSW plague town. Annastacia Palaszczuk has a lot to answer for, Vikki Campion writes.
Opinion
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In the nature of news made for 15 second attention spans, we know more about our politicians than ever before. Don’t agree?
Who was Gladys’s boyfriend and how long did they date?
Every personal transgression is repeated ad nauseam — yet what about the part that actually affects you — the policy? In Queensland, they didn’t even pretend.
They were not going to fall into a policy trap when they had a bogeyman.
ALP head office knew the patron saint of the 2020 plague Annastacia Palaszczuk was polling so well that many booths were decorated in pure Premier and the candidates not featured at all.
Usually during elections, politicians pitch to their record and release a policy or two but Queensland just repeated the same slogan: “We are safe because she is strong.”
Annastacia, the candle in the Halloween pumpkin.
Their only strong policy platform was border closure, but what were they protecting people from? The plague-ridden plains of Dubbo, while they opened up to the anti-vaxxer capital of Byron Bay?
When Queensland voted, South Australia had been open to Sydney for weeks and there was no outbreaks in Adelaide.
The real reason Queensland was safe is because NSW effectively subsidised overseas Queenslanders returning home, with Sydney taking 2450 stranded Aussies a week and Brisbane only 500.
Queensland is offloading their own citizens to Sydney, courtesy of NSW taxpayers — and then has the gall to call NSW plague town.
And those with the security of an aged-pension could overlook the financial toll of the border closure leaving their working neighbours on the brink of losing their homes.
The LNP, which failed to highlight this, lost seats where they had retiring incumbents.
One Nation voters abandoned their fervent love of Pauline Hanson for Saint Annastacia.
In Australia whoever governs in a time of crisis gets electorally-lucky, initially.
Weeks after ALP’s John Curtin formed minority government, Japan dropped bombs on the Pacific. Two years later, in the grip of World War Two, he was returned with two-thirds of the lower house — the ALP’s strongest vote ever. Then Menzies led the longest-serving Coalition Government in Australian history.
Since COVID-19, we have dangerously signed both the ACT and QLD over to champagne socialists, without reading the small print.
The ACT has just signed in an official Labor-Green Coalition whose last move was to hike up land tax 45 per cent unless landlords slashed rent by 50 per cent.
This is a coronavirus measure supposed to help workers furloughed due to COVID but the ACT is public service people “working from home” when actually taking their kids to the playground. Sadly in our centralised media environment, the impact of bureaucratic decisions made in Brisbane and Canberra aren’t reflected on our TV screens.
Any regional politician knows how hard it is to get journalists to leave city news rooms.
One colleague once offered to fly Canberra journalists to a remote locale but binned the exercise because no one would get on the plane.
Why leave the press gallery or Ultimo when they can stay inside the city, luxuriously fanned by the views of people who agree with them?
PHON’s James Ashby, who had Pauline Hanson out in regional Queensland where she actually runs candidates, was grilled by the ABC accusing her of not being prominent enough in the campaign.
When he took the return number from the ABC’s “rural reporter”, she confessed to working from Brisbane’s Southbank.
The issue was not that Pauline wasn’t in front of the camera, but that the camera wasn’t there at all.
Queensland’s regional economies, particularly tourism-dependant coastal towns, have been hit worse than any cyclone, but broke bank balances don’t make good footage.
While today’s media environment means voters are better-informed about politicians personal lives than ever, they also have far less respect for them because they are fed a constant diet of personal failings — every slurred word, speeding ticket or bad haircut.
What needs to be spoken about in the shade of an election is overshadowed by piffle.
Policy, in the game of click bait, is just not the page turner it once was.
But all leaders need to be wary of being the patron saint of pandemics. Co-dependency turns to resentment very quickly especially when coupled with a policy deficiency.
The candle blows out and the pumpkin rots.
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