How NOT to prepare for a Cyclone (or fidling while Yasi blows)

Guest blogger Mr Gee on political madness in Queensland:

"Despite the Premier issuing the following announcement yesterday she, and her band of ministerial keystone cops, are still pressing ahead with the preparation for community cabinet this weekend at Airlie beach, Bowen and Proserpine. (Not many of our esteemed Minister's staying at the 3 star motels in Proserpine with nearly all opting for the more prestigious digs at Airlie).

Ms Bligh said the extremely serious weather event now looked likely to cross the coast overnight on Wednesday and all residents should now be taking precautions, including stocking up on essential items.

"Latest advice from the Bureau of Meteorology is that this cyclone will be accompanied by significant flood in low lying areas from storm surge," Ms Bligh said.

"Those residents in low lying and waterfront areas in the Innisfail to Mackay region should be making arrangements to relocate on Tuesday.

"Advice from the Weather Bureau is that coastal areas in Yasi's path will begin to experience wind gusts beyond 100km an hour early on Wednesday.

"So I implore all of those people who feel they may be facing a dangerous situation to leave their homes in plenty of time and relocate to friends and family.

"If you have family or friends on higher ground, go to them.

"I understand leaving your home will cause anxiety but I would rather people were inconvenienced for a couple of days than place themselves in dangerous situations.

So lets go through some of the impacts of this decision to proceed with the cabinet this weekend designed, no doubt, to shore up support for the sitting member Jan Jarrett and to send a message that it is "business as usual" for Government - despite Queensland suffering the most significant flooding ever seen and the imminent threat of the largest cyclone ever to hit North Queensland with the obvious risk to property and lives:

• Many hotels and accommodation houses in the Whitsundays and Bowen are already evacuating residents because of the expectation of significant storm surges

• Public servants in North Queensland should now be focusing on either assisting vulnerable clients and communities or taking steps to get their own family preparations underway (including evacuations as necessary) - not continuing to rewrite the "spin" for Minister's to quote at banal community meetings

• Valuable resources such as Police and other essential senior regional government staff will be tied up in babysitting cabinet - rather than being available to provide assistance that will be needed elsewhere.

• Our Directors-General should be in Brisbane coordinating what needs to be done to get through the latest crisis - again not providing high level babysitting and chaperoning of our politicians

This is political bloody mindedness - and it could cost some people their belongings - or worse - someones' life - by not being adequately prepared by having to cater to a Minister's latest "whim" for useless information."

Of floods and politics

I started drafting this post days ago but just couldn't bring myself to blog about the politics of the Queensland floods while the disaster was unfolding.

Thankfully, politics have largely been left out of the media during the height of the disaster.  But now that the danger appears over a few observations hopefully won't offend:

• Tony Abbott and John-Paul Whatishisname must have been spitting chips for days - watching Gillard and Bligh getting seemingly endless TV, radio and press coverage (e.g. Bligh's tears this morning will be re-run time and again for days).  They sensibly didn't even try to compete but goddam they would have been fuming.

• While not competing made sense - Abbott staying on holidays throughout was stupid (although not too stupid as it turns out because the MSM left him alone on that one).  Showing up in Briz today (as I just see on the ABC he has) could be equally as stupid - if he gets time on the news tonight, everyone will be reminded that they haven't seen his mug since this started and see him turning up now as cynical politics

• In the same vein, the disaster will be a political boon particularly for Bligh but also for Gillard - look for an early bounce in the polls which I suspect will be more significant that BlueMilk ponders in this piece at Hoyden About Town.  The sad reality is that disasters and starting wars is great politics for an incumbent - if managed well politicians become leaders of a people facing a common 'enemy'.  It's one of the reasons Bush and Howard took us to Iraq and why Howard used (so successfully) the "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come" line (and all those others designed to demonise).  Religious nut-jobs have of course also know this since time immemorial.

• It will be fascinating to watch how the Qld and Federal conservatives try to find political capital out of this.  Certainly Tony Abbott's first two attempts - Let's dam Queensland and (bizarely) Let's stop the building the NBN - both seemed to have backfired or at least fallen flat.  Again, I note that the religious nut-jobs were the first to attempt to make capital

Finally, and nothing to do with politics - I hope the people operating the Wivenhoe Dam get some sort of medal after all of this is over 'cause it strikes me that it was their good management that saved Brisbane from far, far worse.

This is not funny!

I can think of a dozen funny lines I could have written about this headline but read the story.  Psychometric testing is standard practice for any business of size and should be mandatory for all aspiring politicians.

Myers-Briggs and the like are hardly "new-age" (well perhaps so in Murdoch's empire where head-kicking 101 seems to be the only criteria for promotion).  And while they would do a good job of weeding out at least the worst of the megalomaniacs, wankers, evolution-deniers, thieves and idiots, I'm not sure how such instruments could be calibrated to (safely) take account of ego - that essential ingredient in political success which is usually the last thing you look for in a good CEO or leader.

Come on in. Take a seat at the Cabinet table. Let’s talk water.

Regular contributor Dee writes:

Just before the QR Float takes over the media completely.

Patrick Lion caught my imagination today.

I guess it won't be too long before there are many vacant seats at the ALP Cabinet table, however, I'd put a small wager there is now, and will be in the future, standing room only with the many advisers providing high quality advice by way of large numbers of options.

They have wound up the mis-allocation of taxpayer's funds to new levels.

Patrick Lion's Courier Mail post is well worth a read: Come on in. Take a seat at the Cabinet table. Let’s talk water.

Bligh and Fraser sell Port of Brisbane … to themselves

Regular contributor, Dee, prompted me to cross-post this piece from John Quiggin

Bligh and Fraser sell Port of Brisbane … to themselves

According to the Brisbane Times, the Bligh government has just sold the Port of Brisbane to a consortium led by the Queensland Investment Corporation. This must have been a tough negotiation, given that the QIC website states

As a Queensland GOC, QIC’s shareholding Ministers are the Honourable Anna Bligh MP, Premier and Minister for the Arts, and the Honourable Andrew Fraser MP, Treasurer and Minister for Employment and Economic Development

Note: As with the QR sale, it looks as if the government has retained about $1.3 billion of debt in the Port of Brisbane Corporation, which now has no assets, so the net proceeds will be less than half the announced price of $2.3 billion.

I also love one of his tags for the piece - "bonehead stupidity".  It should be well worth following the comments on John's page during the day

My welcome to Townsville: Shame Anna, shame

Each day as the trial of 20 year-old Tegan Leach has got closer I've become more and more angry that, in this day and age in Australia, a young woman is facing judgement because she chose to have an abortion.

I was toying with what to post but then along came this from No Right Turn in NZ.  The heading in particular says it all for me really:
Like I said, Shame Anna, shame

Barbaric
Something barbaric is happening in Queensland: they're trying a woman for having an abortion:
Abortion is legal in Queensland only by a judge's ruling - and that ruling applies only to women who have gone begging to a doctor and effectively declared themselves insane. It does not cover modern pharmaceutical abortions, and it certainly doesn't let women control their own bodies. The upshot: two young people are now facing serious jail time because Queensland's abortion law has failed to keep pace with the times.

It is alleged that Tegan Leach, 20, and her partner, Sergie Brennan, 22, imported the abortion drug misoprostol from the Ukraine and used it to terminate Leach's eight-week pregnancy. They face jail terms of seven and three years respectively.

Meanwhile Queensland's "pro-choice" Premier Anna Bligh refuses to act, and says that any reform has to come via a member's bill. But she blocked such a bill just two years ago. Like most politicians, she doesn't want to take a position if she can avoid it. The consequences of her cowardice will be seen in the Cairns District Court this week.

Stop Press: The Borg cracks a funny

From a Departmental briefing summary of the morning’s Parliamentary Sitting, Thursday, 16 September 2010:

"Deputy Leader of the Opposition Lawrence Springborg to the Deputy Premier and Minister for Health: referring to a briefing note lost which was asking the Minister to approve a new departmental matrix so the Minister would stop losing briefing notes and correspondence, can he explain how he lost the very briefing note that would stop him losing his briefing notes."

Source: You know who you are!

Note:  From Wikipedia:

"... attempts to resist the Borg ... also demonstrated that it is possible to survive assimilation, and that drones can escape the collective and become individuals, or exist collectively without forced assimilation of others. They are notable for being a main antagonist race ..."

Of Anna and the Vultures

Guest contributor, Dee writes:

"The Queensland Premier claims "16 key achievements" in a list in the article "Three-year Bligh sails on" (Townsville Bulletin, Tues Sept 14) but ill-directed determination is a failure within itself and self-praise is not worth the paper on which the press release is printed.

The Courier-Mail of the same day nominates the list as "Anna Bligh's Sweet Sixteen".

The Bligh government in reality has at least 17 vultures that are feeding on its corpse as it flails around looking for a way out of the appalling situation that is only of its own making.

These vultures are:

• privatisation of taxpayer-owned assets;

• failure to pay proper compensation for Stolen Wages;

• failure to implement findings of the Black Deaths in Custody Royal Commission;

• complete policy failure and discrimination in communities suffering alcohol management "plans";
• failure to have alleged misconduct by police investigated by an independent authority;

• homelessness and abysmal levels of public housing construction;
• high unemployment in provincial areas;
• pay debacle for health staff;

• poor response to the Barrier Reef oil spill;

• large fuel price and fertiliser price rises for primary producers;

• huge rises in specific vehicle registration costs;

• privatisation of water infrastructure and huge rises in water prices;

• failure to remove medical abortion from the Crimes Act;

• corruption at ministerial level;

• failure to fund the Townsville cruise ship terminal at the correct level;

• failure to provide appropriate and sufficient mental health services;
• broadscale lead contamination of people and environment at Mount Isa; and
• contamination of water resources and environment due to failure to correctly control coal seam gas projects.

The government propagandists who have been to the US political skills school who have generated the idea that programs such as "I'll come to your region and govern for a week" or "I’ll spend a day in your shoes" can have some wondrous effect in tricking the voters into thinking that government cares about them, should spend their time more productively for the people of Queensland and fix the items on the vultures list.

There has to be an active commitment from this government to fix the list and the voters must be able to see and positively assess some real change in its outlook and its activities.

There is still time for the Premier to send this privatisation of taxpayer-owned assets policy back to the well-remunerated bureaucrats in Treasury for a thorough revamp into something different which is not a sellout and betrayal of Queensland taxpayers and voters.

After five and a half years - some truth is finally told

Well, five and a half years after his death at the hands of copper Hurley, we finally have some truth about how the police culture and system set about covering his little ass.

It will be fascinating to see whether the Top Copper will still be there in a month and similarly whether Bligh has really stuffed-it this time by recently reappointing him. (I have this strange feeling in my waters that this may well turn out to be her Waterloo and if not it will be because Niel Roberts is sacrificed instead)

Other interesting reading:

• The CMC Report can be found here



• Palm Island officer Chris Hurley promoted while fellow officers face sanctions from News.com.au



• Labor MPs attempted to pressure Queensland's corruption watchdog to wind back its criticisms of Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson from couriermail.com.au

Remember:
 

Could Mandy be in trouble?

The traditionally safe Labor State seat of Townsville has been drifting away from the ALP for a number of elections now as the demographics of the seat (and in particular, the inner city suburbs) change.

However, as this report from the Possum at Pollytics.com shows, Mandy Johnstone could be in real trouble at the next election over the asset sales issue.

Analysing the “leaked” results on the issue of union polling by ALP pollsters UMR, Possum shows a -9 point swing in the primary vote against Mandy in Townsville resulting in a Two Party Preferred result for the ALP of 47% of the vote.

Keep in mind though – the results relate to an election if it were held now and involve a margin of error of 5.5%

The full report is here