Whether you’re from the political right or left, be very afraid – the Newman Government is slamming us into violent reverse and already we’re reliving aspects of Queensland’s appalling past.
This isn’t Andrew Bolt-style rhetoric. It’s demonstrable that we’re regressing on many fronts – the economy, justice, democracy, civil rights, a lack of proper process in government and a complete and utter contempt for the doctrine of the separation of powers.
That’s a frightening list. Just one of those failings should be enough to cause a government to worry about its image – and therefore its policies.
But Queensland has a government that believes it has sufficient numbers to ignore public opinion and build a second Joh-style autocracy.
THE EVIDENCE
In 1977 that Bjelke-Petersen banned street marches, saying: “Don’t bother to apply for a permit. You won’t get one. That’s government policy now.”
It was draconian legislation that removed civil rights from a group of people but was seen by ‘law and order’ supporters as a positive move by the government to deal with long-haired, dole-bludging hippies who had no right to hold up traffic.
The message appealed not only to traditional right-wing voters but also to many blue-collar workers.
And it provoked protests from civil rights campaigners which further polarised Queenslanders, with a majority believing that strong action in the cause of law and order was far more important than the suppression of a minority’s rights.
It made Bjelke-Petersen more electable.
And now we have Bleijie-Newman seeking support from those same sections of the community with equally draconian anti-bikie laws.
We expect drug-dealing, violent bikies to be arrested, tried and sentenced but there were already laws applying to drug dealers and violent behaviour. They just needed to be enforced with determined police action.
What we have is a policy designed to make Premier Newman more electable.
When Bjelke-Petersen gave police extra search powers if drug offenders were being targeted some police abused the powers by inventing suspicions of drug offences when none existed.
Under Premier Newman’s new laws the police are able to stop and search people on suspicion of being a member or associate of one of outlaw motorcycle gangs. Already, innocent motor cyclists are complaining of police harassing them.
There is another link to the 1977 street march legislation. It was introduced to deal with anti-uranium mining protests.
Just 11 days after telling the Australian Conservation Foundation he had "no plans to approve the development of uranium in Queensland" Premier Newman announced he was ending the state's decades-long ban on uranium mining – thus breaking an election pledge.
There were no marches this time.
But it sent a signal that, like Joh, policy can be made on the run.
It takes weeks to formulate a cabinet submission. For instance, there needs to be consultation with organisations which have an interest in the proposal; past decisions need to be examined; and an investigation into how any decision might affect, or be affected by, the situation in other jurisdictions.
It’s obvious that Newman’s decision was not based on this sort of diligence. There was no consultation. So what was behind this rushed U-turn? Surely not the promise of donations from within the uranium industry!
We’ve already seen the results obtained by sandminer Sibelco, which spent $92,000 to help the Premier defeat Kate Jones in the Ashgrove electorate.
The Premier’s response was to allow Sibelco eight meetings with the government in the drafting of legislation which has given the company an extension of sandmining on North Stradbroke Island until 2035 – a deal worth an estimated $1.5 billion to the company.
But there were no meetings with anyone or any organisation representing the traditional owners of the island, the Quandamooka people, nor anyone else opposing the mining.
Former LNP MP Ray Hopper said in Parliament: “The Quandamooka people have been sold out for $90,000 so that the Premier could beat Kate Jones. That is exactly what has happened here.”
Lack of consultation? It was the same with the bikie legislation.
Civil Liberties Council Vice-President Terry O’Gorman said that one of the main criticisms that the Fitzgerald Report made of the Bjelke-Petersen years was that law and order legislation was introduced with no consultation and with input only from the Queensland Police Service and the Attorney-General’s Department.
That’s three pieces of legislation where there was a lack of consultation. How many more times has this occurred? It’s yet another example of Premier Newman taking us back to the Joh era.
When it comes to the separation of powers, Joh said he hadn’t got a clue what was involved in separating the executive arm of government from parliament and from the judiciary. He really did believe he was all powerful and could do what he liked as premier.
But Premier Newman is an educated man. He has chosen to wave two fingers to the concept of the separation of powers and to all Queenslanders.
The judiciary must be free from government interference in assessing how offenders should be sentenced.
The Premier has usurped this power in his ‘law and order’ bid to win voters by introducing mandatory sentencing for a variety of offences despite admitting while in Opposition that such a policy was seriously flawed.
When Bjelke-Petersen introduced mandatory sentencing for drug dealers the main result was that judges were forced to send a few addicts to jail for selling a bit of their fix to fellow addicts in an attempt to find enough money for their next high.
There is “overwhelming evidence from Australia and overseas demonstrating that [mandatory sentencing] fails to reduce the crime rate,” reports Balanced Justice, a group of concerned organisations led by Queensland Association of Independent Legal Services.
The Premier knows that the Crime and Misconduct Commission is a standing Royal Commission and as such there should be no perception that he might be attempting to influence the commissioner who, in effect, should be ranked alongside judges in the separation of powers.
Yet a meeting took place in the Premier’s Office at which the commissioner was given advice to grant an interview with The Courier-Mail regarding the war on bikie gangs.
The Premier’s representative at the meeting was Lee Anderson, who, when he was a reporter for Channel 9, reported on the Fitzgerald Inquiry. He told the Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee: “I do believe that the CMC in this particular effort and many others should be partnering the government to deal with matters like this.”
Jo-Ann Miller (Labor) told Mr Anderson during his interview by the committee: “I just find it extraordinary that you think that the CMC should be partners with the government.”
It may well be that Premier Newman could see this inquiry had the potential to embroil him in negative publicity so he and his government took the appalling step of sacking the members of the Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee.
The deliberations of a Westminster-style parliament should be free from intimidation or interference from the executive arm of government. Parliament exists so that we the people, through our representatives, can hold the government, its ministers and its proposals to account.
The Brisbane Times reported that Griffith University political analyst Paul Williams described the sacking as unprecedented in Australian political history, and tested the very boundaries of democracy.
The fact that the committee had been created on the recommendation of the Fitzgerald Inquiry and was designed to prevent the executive arm of government from having an influence on the standing royal commission makes the sacking all the more deplorable and alarming.
Fitzgerald had spent two years examining the effect of an out-of-control, corrupt government and wanted to ensure that this sort of behaviour should never be allowed to occur again.
He recommended that the commission should be answerable to the parliamentary committee rather than to the government; and that the committee rather than the premier and government should ensure that the commission carried out its duties.
The committee was a perfect example of how this concept should work, comprising two independents, two ALP MPs and three LNP MPs, with the result that the government could not control its deliberations. It was answerable to the parliament.
But, in concert with Attorney-General Bleijie, Premier Newman ordered his troops to sack the committee. In the early hours of November 21 the Attorney-General alleged in Parliament “that the PCMC’s own findings of bias by some of its members” was a reason for its members to be sacked.
When PCMC chair Liz Cunningham tabled the committee’s findings about the matter there was no reference to bias.
The Newman Government has ensured that the new committee has a majority of LNP MPs
Premier Newman has also put Queensland’s economy and employment into reverse with Joh-style policies.
For decades Queensland was almost totally dependent on the vagaries of world prices for rocks and crops – sugar cane, wheat, coal, other minerals and other crops - natural resources which came out of the ground and were sold without any additional jobs being created in manufacturing these commodities.
We were competing with countries with similar or better climates. If we wanted to better ourselves, to create better lifestyles and a future where our children had a better chance of employment we needed to move into the next economic revolution.
Countries which embraced the industrial revolution in the 19th century led the world. We need to lead the world in the current technology and research revolution to prosper.
For a decade Queensland was part of this revolution as Australia’s Smart State, building new technological industries, establishing medical research facilities, attracting companies such as Boeing and Virgin, creating Queensland Aerospace College and generating new, long-term, hi-tech jobs.
The Newman Government has ditched the Smart State initiative and is concentrating on what it calls a “Four Pillar Economy of tourism, agriculture, resources and construction”.
It’s the ancient National Party belief in jobs from rocks and crops, tourism and construction. In addition to cyclical ups and downs in mining, farming and construction, tourism has been badly affected by a high dollar.
The four pillars won’t provide enough support for an economy capable of competing with new-age jobs in other states and countries.
And the sacking of 20,000 public servants shows Premier Newman has the same disregard for employees that Joh displayed when he sacked 1,000 SEQEB workers.
The Labor Government put a stop to the rampant tree-clearing that had been encouraged and allowed by Bjelke-Petersen. Now, at a time when climate change means we should be planting trees as fast as we can, the Newman Government has ignored advice from its own experts and allowed increased opportunities for tree clearing.
Health? Queensland’s funding of public hospitals lagged behind the rest of the country under Bjelke-Petersen. The Labor Government recruited nurses. The Newman Government has sacked nurses.
Bjelke-Petersen should be reviled for the enormous harm caused to Queenslanders by his corrupt government and the corrupt leadership of his police force.
But in his maiden speech to Parliament Campbell Newman set the tone and style for his premiership by saying he recognised “Sir Joh’s many achievements”.
We who have learned from history are being doomed to repeat it by Premier Newman.
This isn’t Andrew Bolt-style rhetoric. It’s demonstrable that we’re regressing on many fronts – the economy, justice, democracy, civil rights, a lack of proper process in government and a complete and utter contempt for the doctrine of the separation of powers.
That’s a frightening list. Just one of those failings should be enough to cause a government to worry about its image – and therefore its policies.
But Queensland has a government that believes it has sufficient numbers to ignore public opinion and build a second Joh-style autocracy.
THE EVIDENCE
In 1977 that Bjelke-Petersen banned street marches, saying: “Don’t bother to apply for a permit. You won’t get one. That’s government policy now.”
It was draconian legislation that removed civil rights from a group of people but was seen by ‘law and order’ supporters as a positive move by the government to deal with long-haired, dole-bludging hippies who had no right to hold up traffic.
The message appealed not only to traditional right-wing voters but also to many blue-collar workers.
And it provoked protests from civil rights campaigners which further polarised Queenslanders, with a majority believing that strong action in the cause of law and order was far more important than the suppression of a minority’s rights.
It made Bjelke-Petersen more electable.
And now we have Bleijie-Newman seeking support from those same sections of the community with equally draconian anti-bikie laws.
We expect drug-dealing, violent bikies to be arrested, tried and sentenced but there were already laws applying to drug dealers and violent behaviour. They just needed to be enforced with determined police action.
What we have is a policy designed to make Premier Newman more electable.
When Bjelke-Petersen gave police extra search powers if drug offenders were being targeted some police abused the powers by inventing suspicions of drug offences when none existed.
Under Premier Newman’s new laws the police are able to stop and search people on suspicion of being a member or associate of one of outlaw motorcycle gangs. Already, innocent motor cyclists are complaining of police harassing them.
There is another link to the 1977 street march legislation. It was introduced to deal with anti-uranium mining protests.
Just 11 days after telling the Australian Conservation Foundation he had "no plans to approve the development of uranium in Queensland" Premier Newman announced he was ending the state's decades-long ban on uranium mining – thus breaking an election pledge.
There were no marches this time.
But it sent a signal that, like Joh, policy can be made on the run.
It takes weeks to formulate a cabinet submission. For instance, there needs to be consultation with organisations which have an interest in the proposal; past decisions need to be examined; and an investigation into how any decision might affect, or be affected by, the situation in other jurisdictions.
It’s obvious that Newman’s decision was not based on this sort of diligence. There was no consultation. So what was behind this rushed U-turn? Surely not the promise of donations from within the uranium industry!
We’ve already seen the results obtained by sandminer Sibelco, which spent $92,000 to help the Premier defeat Kate Jones in the Ashgrove electorate.
The Premier’s response was to allow Sibelco eight meetings with the government in the drafting of legislation which has given the company an extension of sandmining on North Stradbroke Island until 2035 – a deal worth an estimated $1.5 billion to the company.
But there were no meetings with anyone or any organisation representing the traditional owners of the island, the Quandamooka people, nor anyone else opposing the mining.
Former LNP MP Ray Hopper said in Parliament: “The Quandamooka people have been sold out for $90,000 so that the Premier could beat Kate Jones. That is exactly what has happened here.”
Lack of consultation? It was the same with the bikie legislation.
Civil Liberties Council Vice-President Terry O’Gorman said that one of the main criticisms that the Fitzgerald Report made of the Bjelke-Petersen years was that law and order legislation was introduced with no consultation and with input only from the Queensland Police Service and the Attorney-General’s Department.
That’s three pieces of legislation where there was a lack of consultation. How many more times has this occurred? It’s yet another example of Premier Newman taking us back to the Joh era.
When it comes to the separation of powers, Joh said he hadn’t got a clue what was involved in separating the executive arm of government from parliament and from the judiciary. He really did believe he was all powerful and could do what he liked as premier.
But Premier Newman is an educated man. He has chosen to wave two fingers to the concept of the separation of powers and to all Queenslanders.
The judiciary must be free from government interference in assessing how offenders should be sentenced.
The Premier has usurped this power in his ‘law and order’ bid to win voters by introducing mandatory sentencing for a variety of offences despite admitting while in Opposition that such a policy was seriously flawed.
When Bjelke-Petersen introduced mandatory sentencing for drug dealers the main result was that judges were forced to send a few addicts to jail for selling a bit of their fix to fellow addicts in an attempt to find enough money for their next high.
There is “overwhelming evidence from Australia and overseas demonstrating that [mandatory sentencing] fails to reduce the crime rate,” reports Balanced Justice, a group of concerned organisations led by Queensland Association of Independent Legal Services.
The Premier knows that the Crime and Misconduct Commission is a standing Royal Commission and as such there should be no perception that he might be attempting to influence the commissioner who, in effect, should be ranked alongside judges in the separation of powers.
Yet a meeting took place in the Premier’s Office at which the commissioner was given advice to grant an interview with The Courier-Mail regarding the war on bikie gangs.
The Premier’s representative at the meeting was Lee Anderson, who, when he was a reporter for Channel 9, reported on the Fitzgerald Inquiry. He told the Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee: “I do believe that the CMC in this particular effort and many others should be partnering the government to deal with matters like this.”
Jo-Ann Miller (Labor) told Mr Anderson during his interview by the committee: “I just find it extraordinary that you think that the CMC should be partners with the government.”
It may well be that Premier Newman could see this inquiry had the potential to embroil him in negative publicity so he and his government took the appalling step of sacking the members of the Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee.
The deliberations of a Westminster-style parliament should be free from intimidation or interference from the executive arm of government. Parliament exists so that we the people, through our representatives, can hold the government, its ministers and its proposals to account.
The Brisbane Times reported that Griffith University political analyst Paul Williams described the sacking as unprecedented in Australian political history, and tested the very boundaries of democracy.
The fact that the committee had been created on the recommendation of the Fitzgerald Inquiry and was designed to prevent the executive arm of government from having an influence on the standing royal commission makes the sacking all the more deplorable and alarming.
Fitzgerald had spent two years examining the effect of an out-of-control, corrupt government and wanted to ensure that this sort of behaviour should never be allowed to occur again.
He recommended that the commission should be answerable to the parliamentary committee rather than to the government; and that the committee rather than the premier and government should ensure that the commission carried out its duties.
The committee was a perfect example of how this concept should work, comprising two independents, two ALP MPs and three LNP MPs, with the result that the government could not control its deliberations. It was answerable to the parliament.
But, in concert with Attorney-General Bleijie, Premier Newman ordered his troops to sack the committee. In the early hours of November 21 the Attorney-General alleged in Parliament “that the PCMC’s own findings of bias by some of its members” was a reason for its members to be sacked.
When PCMC chair Liz Cunningham tabled the committee’s findings about the matter there was no reference to bias.
The Newman Government has ensured that the new committee has a majority of LNP MPs
Premier Newman has also put Queensland’s economy and employment into reverse with Joh-style policies.
For decades Queensland was almost totally dependent on the vagaries of world prices for rocks and crops – sugar cane, wheat, coal, other minerals and other crops - natural resources which came out of the ground and were sold without any additional jobs being created in manufacturing these commodities.
We were competing with countries with similar or better climates. If we wanted to better ourselves, to create better lifestyles and a future where our children had a better chance of employment we needed to move into the next economic revolution.
Countries which embraced the industrial revolution in the 19th century led the world. We need to lead the world in the current technology and research revolution to prosper.
For a decade Queensland was part of this revolution as Australia’s Smart State, building new technological industries, establishing medical research facilities, attracting companies such as Boeing and Virgin, creating Queensland Aerospace College and generating new, long-term, hi-tech jobs.
The Newman Government has ditched the Smart State initiative and is concentrating on what it calls a “Four Pillar Economy of tourism, agriculture, resources and construction”.
It’s the ancient National Party belief in jobs from rocks and crops, tourism and construction. In addition to cyclical ups and downs in mining, farming and construction, tourism has been badly affected by a high dollar.
The four pillars won’t provide enough support for an economy capable of competing with new-age jobs in other states and countries.
And the sacking of 20,000 public servants shows Premier Newman has the same disregard for employees that Joh displayed when he sacked 1,000 SEQEB workers.
The Labor Government put a stop to the rampant tree-clearing that had been encouraged and allowed by Bjelke-Petersen. Now, at a time when climate change means we should be planting trees as fast as we can, the Newman Government has ignored advice from its own experts and allowed increased opportunities for tree clearing.
Health? Queensland’s funding of public hospitals lagged behind the rest of the country under Bjelke-Petersen. The Labor Government recruited nurses. The Newman Government has sacked nurses.
Bjelke-Petersen should be reviled for the enormous harm caused to Queenslanders by his corrupt government and the corrupt leadership of his police force.
But in his maiden speech to Parliament Campbell Newman set the tone and style for his premiership by saying he recognised “Sir Joh’s many achievements”.
We who have learned from history are being doomed to repeat it by Premier Newman.
RSS Feed
