Des Houghton: David Crisafulli’s Queensland repair mission must continue in 2025
Will 2025 be the best of times and the worst of times for David Crisafulli, Des Houghton asks.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
David Crisafulli’s Queensland repair mission is off to a good start. He has seen off the poisonous ideologues in the Labor Party who almost destroyed our way of life.
Thank goodness voters sent them into the political wilderness where they belong.
The sheer size of Labor’s incompetence, made worse with cover-ups and lies, is slowly being exposed. The disclosures are an essential part of the cleansing process and must continue, despite the howls from Labor’s yapping dogs and the party’s media cheer squad.
The LNP promised adult time for adult crime and said it would put victims’ rights first, and it delivered on that central promise before Christmas. Health Minister Tim Niclolls has made an impressive start in reforming hospital and health care.
I will be excited to see what Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie’s housing taskforce achieves in the new year.
He wasted no time in giving churches and charities the green light to deliver affordable housing on their spare land, a move resisted for years by the cultural Marxists in the last government.
Bleijie and his taskforce including the Treasurer and Minister for Home Ownership, David Janetzki, Minister for Local Government, Ann Leahy, and Minister for Housing and Public Works, Sam O’Connor have an ambitious plan to deliver 10,000 community housing homes over the next 20 years.
“Unlocking faith-based land to provide social and affordable housing has been something we have been advocating for many years,” said Catholic Archdiocese spokeswoman Cathy Uechtritz, the architect of the plan.
The Uechtritz model may be a blueprint for the rest of the nation. Peter Dutton please note.
In quick time the LNP has also dismantled the GP payroll tax and abolished stamp duty for first homebuyers on new builds.
In a win for renters, the new government has changed the rules to allow first home buyers to rent out a room in their home without losing concessions and grants.
The LNP set up an Olympic Games Infrastructure and Coordination Authority led by Stephen Conry, who was chief executive at Jones Lang LaSalle for 13 years until 2022. Conry’s record of achievements in the business and property sector are impressive and would fill this page.
Crisafulli has promised hope for a better way and so far, he has delivered. However there will be rough waters ahead for you Mr Premier.
2025 may deliver your best of times and the worst of times; a tale of two clashing cultures, left and right, and a time that Charles Dickens may have called an age of wisdom and an age of foolishness, a season of light and a season of darkness.
We’ll see.
In these pages last week, ousted State Archivist Micheal Summerell shone a bright light into the darkness.
He said public service chiefs turned a blind eye to wrongdoing and blocked reform.
Engulfed by three years of scandals in the “toxic” public service, the Palaszczuk-Miles government needed a circuit breaker.
Palaszczuk called for a review by Peter Coaldrake, former vice-chancellor of Queensland University of Technology and chair of the Public Sector Management Commission that restructured the public service for the Goss government.
Summerell gave Coaldrake extensive briefings.
Coaldrake’s 2022 report made 14 recommendations to “improve the integrity and culture” of Queensland’s public service.
Labor ignored it.
“I found (Coaldrake) a very professional guy,’’ Summerell said.
“He was thorough, and he did his job.
“I think (Coaldrake) firmly believed his recommendations, if implemented, really would ‘let the sunshine in’.
“The recommendations have the power to change the culture in the public service.
“The (Labor) government’s response to the Coaldrake review was delay, delay, and take no action. (Coaldrake) must be as disgusted as everybody else.”
Coaldrake’s recommendation number six called for the establishment of “a technologically enabled complaints clearinghouse with capacity for complainants and agencies to track progress and outcomes”.
Parliament heard recently that the Queensland government receives over 75,000 complaints a year across public sector entities including integrity bodies.
It is a staggering number.
Coaldrake added: “Complainants in Queensland are often confronted by a highly complex and disaggregated array of government departments, public sector entities and integrity bodies, a confusing variety of entry points to lodge complaints, and a complaints process which varies from entity to entity with little or no interfacing or sharing of data between them.”
Summerell, who was unfairly ousted by the Palaszczuk government for his role in exposing the mangocube scandal, knows the public service intimately. He should be brought back by the LNP to help set up the clearing house.
Crisafulli should now put meat on the bones of the good work done by Coaldrake and Summerell.
KEEP THEM COMING
I must not let the year slip by without thanking readers who engaged me in some rowdy debates in the last 12 months.
I’m delighted I rubbed some of you up the wrong way. I especially want to thank those who sent the nasty, illogical, and poorly written notes riddled with vitriol and poor grammar.
They were most appreciated.
They were inspirational.
Keep them coming.
Thanks, also, to the courageous whistleblowers who sent tips about shenanigans in government departments and government-owned corporations.
IRRITANT OF THE YEAR
Anthony Albanese
Australia lost its way in 2024, and the Prime Minister lost his marbles.
Albanese’s biggest mistake was his meek response to the firebombing of a Melbourne synagogue and his initial reticence in declaring it an act of terrorism.
That alone may cost him the election.
Albanese was also deeply wounded politically when it was revealed he had his noise in the trough at Qantas with countless upgrades he did not pay for, including private family holidays.
Then came his poor judgement in spending $4.5m for a clifftop mansion during a cost-of-living crisis.
Imagine the outrage from the Left had Scott Morrison purchased a mansion by the beach?
And what of the nation’s future under the ALP? More public spending, higher personal income taxes, more attacks on small business, raids on our superannuation, high energy prices and weak productivity.
Australia’s longest serving treasurer Peter Costello warned: “Our budget is back in deficit, forecast to be there for a decade, our debt is heading towards $1 trillion, our productivity is falling, our per capita GDP has declined for seven quarters and structural reform is non-existent.”
Originally published as Des Houghton: David Crisafulli’s Queensland repair mission must continue in 2025
Scumbag got me! Scam I didn’t see coming until it was too late
If you think you’re too smart to be scammed, don’t be so cocky. All it took was one text ‘from my bank’ to get sucked in, writes Kylie Lang.
And the Bandt just keeps on braying
Adam Bandt publicly asking the Labor Party to share power with the Greens is making all of the right’s Christmas dreams – Peter Dutton as next PM – come true, writes Joe Hildebrand.
Parliament like a football team without skilled players
If you were picking our parliament like a football team, most would not have their job, as we’d be picking players who have never played the football of life before, writes Vikki Campion.
Bozempic, blockbusters and beauty trends: My hopes for 2025
We’re a quarter of the way through a new century that has galloped out of the blocks but it’s not too late for a little course correction, writes Angela Mollard.
Editor’s view: Proper commitment needed to finally fix deadly Bruce Hwy
An extra $259m for the Bruce Highway from the Commonwealth is welcomed, but we are demanding there be a proper commitment made to the people of Queensland who rely on this road.
The best Christmas present in 2025 is no more Albo
The Albanese Government’s excuses for the cost of living crisis have worn thin as another Christmas passes us by, writes Matt Canavan.