Turning Queensland into the Cuba of the South Pacific

The Australian Institute for Progress has criticised Premier Steven Miles’ latest thought bubble of government-owned service stations as an impractical, retro, Hail Mary pass in an attempt to squeak through the next election.

“Cost of living shows up in all the polling as being the critical issue for voters, so in an attempt to show he empathises the premier has reached back into Labor’s historical bag of tricks for government-ownership.

“We’ve been here before. Past Labor governments have thought they knew better how to run businesses than private entrepreneurs and owned all sorts of enterprises.

“It was only in the 60s that the last Queensland government-owned butcher shop was sold, having failed to make any dent on meat prices.

“In present day Queensland the government owns virtually all the power stations, but the price of electricity has risen 27% in the last 5 years, and Callide C, the power station that blew-up through lack of maintenance, has been offline for almost 2 years.

Mr Young said it mystified him as to why the government thinks it is a superior manager.

“Hospitals and schools are the two biggest providers of service that are their responsibility, yet just last week the AMA released a report showing our hospitals are in crisis, and we know from the results of the PISA tests that educational attainment has been in free-fall since the 70s.

“The other area of state government expenditure is infrastructure, where cost blow-outs due to sweetheart deals with the unions are pushing up government borrowings, as well as sucking resources from the domestic housing sector where they are desperately needed.”

Mr Young said the government had also put Mick de Brenni in charge of planning for industry sectors under the Clean Economy Jobs Act.

“This is the minister who in his previous portfolio of housing could barely build enough public housing to replace the houses that were being decommissioned.

“I can’t see a lot of growth in our industries under his stewardship.”

Mr Young said the government appears to want to make Queensland the Cuba of Australia.

“Cuba is a place where the government intrudes into every sphere. It is frozen in the 60s. The only people who want to get into the country are tourists – the residents are all desperate to leave.

“At this rate this is the future for Queensland – beautiful one day, broke the next.”

For further information contact Graham Young 0411 104 801 graham.young@aip.asn.au