Editorial: A gold medal for wasting time

The Queensland government is taking a truly cavalier approach to both due process and the use of taxpayer money in the absolute mess it’s making of the planning for Brisbane 2032.

It is astonishing to learn that two weeks before a review ordered by the Premier – at a cost to taxpayers of half a million dollars – presented its findings to the government, the state development department was ordered to start work on a new stadium that the review ended up totally rejecting as an option.

It is just the latest example of a truly cavalier approach to both due process and to the use of taxpayer money by this government that is deep into a third term and boasting a caucus where not one MP (other than the Speaker, who does not sit in partyroom meetings) has ever felt the sting of opposition.

The revelation that even more taxpayer cash is being spent on a validation report into the Nathan stadium option that nobody – but those MPs concerned about their own political backsides – actually wants just adds salt to the wound.

As we have said before, this is now such a mess that the Premier should just hit pause until after the October 26 election. It is not like our Games planning can get worse.

DEBT CAN BE GOOD – BUT NOT THIS TIME

Treasurer Cameron Dick doesn’t want us to worry about the huge surge in Queensland debt that he has revealed this week in an obvious effort to clear the decks of bad news before his big-spending voter-friendly budget in June, the last before this October’s state election.

But you should be worried, for several reasons. This is a third-term government desperate to win again by wooing voters with all sorts of subsidies and handouts. Premier Steven Miles has already promised “the biggest cost-of-living budget ever”, which presumably means another jump in the government’s already large package of cost-of-living-focused subsidies, discounts, concessions and business-support programs, which last year topped $8bn – a 21 per cent increase on the previous year alone.

All that subsidising – some of it defensible, some it nothing but bribing by another name – costs money, which is either redirected from other more essential things, such as building new schools and hospitals, or is borrowed.

But also, this a government saddled with a slew of multibillion-dollar capital works projects – from Cross River Rail to the Pioneer-Burdekin pumped hydro project – where costs just keep rising without any apparent ceiling in sight.

Add to that we have a Labor government here so beholden to its union masters that it waves through pretty well any and all demands for ever-better terms and conditions, at least to male construction workers, and it becomes apparent why it has to borrow more and more money.

That is of course not how Mr Dick sees it when trying to explain away a surge in government borrowings that is breathtaking – a number with so many zeros that it is almost incomprehensible.

Treasurer Cameron Dick. pic Lyndon Mechielsen / Courier Mail

Net state debt could reach $73bn by 2028, five times more than the $15bn now. Yep, $73,000,000,000.

Add in all the money owed by state-owned businesses – the energy and water companies – and the expected figure jumps to $188bn, from a current $110bn.

Mr Dick says “Queenslanders should not be afraid of this level of debt” – because, he says, it is needed to cover the cost of all the new infrastructure and services to cater for the state’s surging population.

Add to that a falling share of GST revenue, an utterly predictable slowdown in coal royalties from recent record highs and a promise not to raise taxes, then what other option does the state have than to keep borrowing – Mr Dick asks?

And in any event, he goes on, “these preliminary forecasts are consistent with the debt levels we were forecasting in 2020, on a proportional basis, with total debt equalling about a third of the size of the economy at its maximum”.

Perhaps the rating agencies that judge the state’s credit worthiness understand that explanation. For the rest of us, the there is one takeout: This is a massive debt.

But Mr Dick says it is all fine because “our ability to service debt is also growing”. But that raises another question: How will the government’s ability to service debt grow at a time of falling mining royalties? Presumably that will be revealed in the June budget?

Mr Dick is right when he says that “debt is not a dirty word” – that certainly can be true. There are plenty of times that government should borrow. And he makes the point that it’s not the level of debt that is important, but rather “what we are using the debt for”.

Again, he is not wrong per se. But he is wrong in this instance. Because in this instance he is using debt to fund short-term enticements to voters ahead of an election, and to play catch-up on ever-mounting capital works needed after years of Labor government neglect.

Mr Dick promises to work hard “in the coming months to make the debt number as low as possible”.

Let’s hope he has some success, but after all these years in office, a few months of perfunctory
cost-cutting is unlikely to cut even one of those zeros from the total.

One final point is to point out the irony of him lecturing the LNP over the future risks of any big-spending election campaign promises, when Mr Dick is today working on “the biggest cost-of-living budget ever”.

Responsibility for election comment is taken by Chris Jones, corner of Mayne Rd & Campbell St, Bowen Hills, Qld 4006. Printed and published by NEWSQUEENSLAND (ACN 009 661 778). Contact details here

Originally published as Editorial: A gold medal for wasting time