But the week ended with a massive swing to the Labor Party in the Stafford by-election. The next time State Parliament meets the Labor Opposition will have nine members following Dr Anthony Lynham’s win.
Everyone involved in the campaign deserves thanks and congratulations for the outstanding result.
Dr Lynham will make a big contribution to the Opposition and its efforts to hold the LNP to account.
The swing against the Government (more than 18%) reflects the mood in that electorate and in other parts of the state.
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After the by-election the Premier suggested voters had got it wrong by misunderstanding the government’s message. But voters are not the problem — the Premier is the problem. Far from misunderstanding what his government is up to, voters see the arrogance and poor decision-making that causes it to lurch from crisis to crisis.
Any promise to “listen more” by the Premier or his Ministers will be a hollow, scripted response. They said the same thing after the Redcliffe by-election in February and nothing changed.
Since 1994 when the first comprehensive Budget Estimates hearings were held, each portfolio committee has sat on a separate day. In April the LNP implemented a “trial” of vastly abbreviated Estimates hearings where seven portfolio committees sat simultaneously over two days.
This was an attempt to reduce the ability of non-government MPs, the media, and the public to exercise scrutiny.
Despite promising to be open and accountable, the LNP has moved towards more secrecy and cover-up.
And the Premier was the worst offender. Almost all questions from Opposition MPs went unanswered while on many occasions “Dorothy Dix” questions from LNP committee members enabled the Premier to read lengthy, prepared responses. These are all efforts to reduce scrutiny of how it spends taxpayers’ funds and how it governs.
Despite repeated Opposition questions, the Premier and his Director-General Jon Grayson failed to explain why they had not initiated a proper investigation into a leak to the media of personal information held by Queensland Health about Labor’s candidate in the Stafford by-election, Dr Anthony Lynham.
The leaking of sensitive, personal information of a Queensland Health employee should have prompted immediate action but the LNP Government did nothing.
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The 2014 Estimates hearings saw a long list of questions left unanswered by LNP Ministers who were more interested in giving lengthy but uninformative answers to waste time.
For example:
- The Premier refuses to detail how much taxpayers’ money has been wasted advertising plan to sell Queensland’s assets?
- A question seeking details of which services regional Hospital and Health Services were considering for contestability and privatisation went unanswered.
- No answer about what steps were being taken to address inadequacies around measuring productivity within the government as identified by the Auditor General.
- The Premier failed to explain where he would cut $54 million in the 2014 Budget to reinstate power bill concessions that he was forced to reinstate.
- No meaningful response to questions asking which schools the LNP would close if re-elected.
- Jan Stuckey could not explain why taxpayer funds were being used to produce and screen online videos promoting Sydney destinations as part of the Give Me Brisbane Any Day campaign.
- No answer to a question about a resolution passed at the LNP conference calling for the pecuniary interests of directors-general to be made available to the public. This issue arose because of internal LNP concerns about the business interests of Mr Newman’s own Director-General.
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The Premier also could not say how many more jobs needed to be created to meet his 4% jobs target.
In April this year when the Estimates process was cut back, the government promised that the Premier and Ministers would appear at the portfolio committee hearings for “two full days”. But in reality they appeared for less than one day — half the promised time.
The government also promised State Parliament would sit for an extra week to provide more accountability, but that’s yet another broken promise.
At the start of the week Labor released its policy to restore proper accountability to the Budget Estimates process. A future Labor Government would return Estimates Committee hearings to their previous status.
The importance of a workable committee system was highlighted by Tony Fitzgerald in his landmark anti-corruption inquiry.
A future Labor Government would:
- reverse the changes to portfolio Estimates Committee hearings,
- expand the Estimates Committee hearings from two days to seven, and
- ensure each portfolio committee met on a separate day.
In the wake of the Stafford by-election the Premier has promised to restore the Estimates hearings to the way they were.
But as with any of his promises it can’t be believed, and why was the change needed in the first place?
The answer is simple: LNP arrogance.