Queensland Election 2017: How Labor is actually robbing the workers

I’M not surprised Annastacia Palaszczuk is rushing to an early election. Her administration has run out of puff. Many of her fellow cabinet ministers are incompetent or under an integrity cloud, writes Des Houghton.

Des Houghton is never short of an opinion on Queensland politics.

I’M not surprised Annastacia Palaszczuk is rushing to an early election.

Her administration has run out of puff. Many of her fellow cabinet ministers are incompetent or under an integrity cloud.

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The union movement is an albatross around her neck.

And now we learn she’s spent all our lunch money.

Her key election slogan, Putting Queenslanders First, is a big fat lie.

She puts union fat cats first, while loading young people and working families with higher and higher power bills and car rego fees.

You pay again as she inflates the public service to provide a financial windfall for her union cronies.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: AAP Image/Darren England

And now her government is rushing headlong to spend secret sums on dubious renewable energy schemes.

So you will pay again.

Palaszczuk has committed Queenslanders to underwriting around half of the 18 large-scale renewable projects being built in the state as Labor chases the impossible dream of a 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030.

Energy Minister Mark Bailey, who has returned to Cabinet after a brush with the Crime and Corruption Commission, will not reveal how much taxpayer money is going to prop up renewables.

He says financial arrangements for projects like solar farms are commercial-in-confidence. What a cop out. Some of the renewable projects are being built in the state’s north and on the Darling Downs close to some of the biggest coal reserves on earth.

We derive only seven per cent of energy from renewables. Subsidies for renewables could top $900 million according to the Queensland Renewable Energy Expert Panel chaired by former Macquarie banker Colin Mugglestone.

Under Labor you pay and pay and pay.

CANDIDATE STUNG BY THE HORNET

IS this a first?

A Queensland state election candidate gets into the ring with a world boxing champion – and survives.

It happened to 44-year-old Dan Purdie when he and some mates went to the gym for their regular workout only to find WBO welterweight champ Jeff Horn looking for a sparring partner. They had not met before.

Purdie gamely stayed the distance for three, two-minute rounds.

“He got me a couple of good ones. He was fast and sharp,” he said.

He knows The Hornet could have put him on the canvas at any time.

“I could have been sent home wrapped me in cotton wool, that’s for sure.”

Purdie went home happy - and bruised.

“I’m going to be telling that story for the rest of my life,” he said

Purdie is a sergeant in the police force who will contest the new Sunshine Coast seat of Ninderry for the LNP.

Ninderry stretched from Eumundi in the north to Forest Glen in the South and takes in Coolum and Peregian Springs on the east.

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Originally published as Queensland Election 2017: How Labor is actually robbing the workers