Queensland

We’re off to the polls on 24 March. If you’re confused about what’s happening in Queensland with our State election, I’d like to help confuse you more.

The biggest complicating factor for the Queensland General Election, which is due before the end of March was the local government elections were due on 31 March. That left Premier Bligh with either dates of 18 or 24 February, or get mixed up in Easter or wait until May and by then she wouldn’t have a mandate.

The Electoral Commission Queensland has asked repeatedly for a six-week buffer between the two general elections. To her credit, Premier Bligh has respected that and shunted the local government elections to April or May and scheduled the General Election for 24 March.

Continue reading "The QLD election decoded" »

Roma, some 600km west of Brisbane, used to be a country town where you could drive your car onto the airport tarmac to pick up friends arriving on the few flights servicing the place.

It had a small motel many years ago when I lived there but most travellers stayed at pubs with names such as The School of Arts.

The population back all those decades ago when sheep and cattle ruled was nudging 5000. Compared to some of the neighbouring towns such as Injune and Wallumbilla, it was a big place.

Continue reading "Coal seam gas a blast of hope for rural communities" »

“Sometimes you just can’t account for champions.”

With these words, uttered after Queensland’s first try, Nine commentator and rugby league ego-in-chief Phil Gould summed up why Queensland won State of Origin III, and with it, an unprecedented sixth straight series

That first try was so classy. Billy Slater slipped the ball away when held by two players, Johnathan Thurston held the ball just long enough to create confusion, then poked through a beautifully-weighted grubber for Greg Inglis. There wasn’t much room in the corner. Inglis never needs much room.

Continue reading "Champion team sends a champion bloke out in style" »

Imagine you’re in a smoky, underground bar. Wearing your best beatnik outfit and sipping a glass of burgundy. Then read this poem by “Dash” for this week’s Poet’s Corner….

I’ve seen the ads on TV and I’ve read the news in text
How Queensland is beautiful one day and just perfect on the next
With golden sand where palm trees swing and boats do bob and sway
Where you can sit, sipping cocktails, and dream your life away

So I jumped into the car, I thought that’s just the place for me
Sitting with a can of beer beneath a tall palm tree
With my body tanned and thongs upon my little dainty feet
And mangos falling to the ground just there for me to eat

Continue reading "Punch on: Open thread 06/07/2011" »

NSW has the Snowies, Queensland’s got the Reef. We’ve got Byron Bay, they’ve got Noosa. Sydney has the Sydney Opera House, Queensland has, um, the Stockman’s Hall of Fame in Longreach. NSW has the tiny border town of Jennings, pop. 130, Queensland’s got the neighbouring town of Wallangarra, pop. 385.

Wallangwhere? Wallangarra, thank you very much, the town which is the symbolic home of the one Queensland commodity which NSW can never seem to match. Passion.

Wallangarra is where Qld State of Origin legend Billy Moore grew up. Actually, he was born in Tenterfield NSW, because the base hospital is closer than the one in Stanthorpe, on the Qld side of the border. But as Moore told The Punch this morning, “my Mum assures me I was rushed over the border before the oxygen had time to affect my lungs.”

Continue reading "Why Queensland care more, and NSW couldn’t care less" »

Monday is Queensland Day, a commemorative 24 hours that has a history older than most white-man milestones in our country.

It is older than Federation, older than electricity, but undervalued because we don’t quite know how to celebrate the best place in the world and aren’t big on causing a commotion about ourselves.

Queensland Day acknowledges the birth of Queensland in 1859 as a self-governing colony.

Continue reading "Queensland: Best place in the world. Discuss." »

As Campbell Newman yesterday outlined one of the more goofy political strategies Australia has seen, there was one stark impression: The bloke himself didn’t come across as goofy.

Newman, the Lord Mayor of Brisbane, was explaining to reporters how he planned to be the Liberal National Party (LNP) State Opposition Leader without having to actually be in the Queensland Parliament.

In about a year’s time he would run for a seat Labor has held for 22 years, and in the meantime a surrogate elected last night would be the official Opposition Leader. But actually, the Opposition Leader would be Campbell Newman.

Continue reading "A not-so-goofy plan to rule the state of Brisbane" »

It’s been a long time since I heard anyone bag Queensland the way they used to.

Wayne Goss (Queensland Premier 1989 to 1996) introduced a number of reforms to bring Queensland into line socially with the rest of the country and combined with a sudden growth spurt, largely from the interstate migration of people from New South Wales and Victoria over the past 10 years, the sophistication gap between north and south is disappearing.

We may not have a Mardi Gras, but froth isn’t spooned onto cappuccinos anymore and salads have moved on from crinkle cut carrots and snowpeas.

Continue reading "Cringe. Julia and Tim are off to the Palace" »

John Tsouroutis has taken a $1 million salary cut to join a crusade to make states look after themselves. He’s now on the relative hardscrabble of an adviser’s pay in the office of independent senator Nick Xenophon.

Tsouroutis was managing director of the TIO banking and insurance group from 2003 until 2008 when the commute from Adelaide to Darwin became too much for the family.

From his business career he knows how government can force individuals to insure themselves. Just take third party cover for motorists. He wants to make sure state governments do the same thing, rather than expect someone else to pay reconstruction costs after a natural disaster. Tsouroutis was on an elite salary with TIO and hopes to get back on one soon. But he’s got a big job to complete first.

Continue reading "Meet the man behind the man who could stop the levy" »

Queensland really dodged a bullet.

After the devastating floods of that fatal tsunami inundated the state, the waters had barely receded when it was out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Turns out Yasi’s bark was worse than its bite.

Continue reading "When disasters leave us lost for words…" »

4PM UPDATE: SEE BELOW FOR DAVID’S PICS FROM MAGNETIC ISLAND TODAY

Regular Punch reader and commenter David Pierce spent the night in his weatherboard home on Magnetic Island, 8km off Townsville, bunkered down against the fury of Cyclone Yasi with his wife and two children.

“My darkest moment came when the wind shifted and stuff was breaking up and hitting the house,” he told The Punch this morning. “The worst part was not knowing what was hitting the house.”

Fortunately, Pierce and his family got though the night. (Check the wind gusts at a nearby weather station on this link). And as he spends today cleaning up the debris in his yard, he has no doubt why Yasi’s human toll has been so low.

Continue reading "Survivor’s tale: over-warned is better than under-prepared" »

Update 6:05am : Cyclone Yasi has been downgraded to a category three storm, but remains dangerous. The “very destructive” core, with gusts up to 205 km/h, is continuing to move inland west of Cardwell towards the Georgetown area. The full extent of the damage isn’t known yet but the communities of Mission Beach, Tully and Innisfail, 50km north of ground zero, are the worst hit. There have been no reported deaths or injuries so far. Read more as news.com.au live updates.

Queensland, already suffering from the floods, is now taking another hit - and this one has been described as “more life threatening than any experienced during recent generations”. Join news.com.au’s live blog here:

Or go to news.com.au for the latest updates on Yasi’s approach, the projected path, and news from the ground.

Feel free to share any thoughts or words of support for Queensland here.

Middle income earners will contribute about $1 a week to a one-off levy on annual income with Julia Gillard today vowing Australia will “pay as we go” for urgent flood recovery work.

The Prime Minister announced a funding package of which two-thirds would come from spending cuts and one third from the levy of 0.5 per cent of taxable income for those earning more than $50,000 a year.

The Government will invest at least $5.6 billion in repairing damaged caused by floods in three states, with an immediate $2 billion going to Queensland, the worst hit state.

Continue reading "Gillard’s “pay as you go” strategy for flood recovery" »

When my parents lived in the Queensland town of Gympie in the ‘70s there was an unofficial but strict allocation of civic duties come flood time.

Gympie is an old gold town and the gouging for riches had perverted every natural water course, redirecting the flow through the main streets.

Shop walls displayed the heights previous floods had reached, and it was always accepted there were more to come.

Continue reading "You can’t take climate change out of the flood equation" »

Sometimes it takes a disaster to shake the complacency out of us. To rethink the attitude of ‘she’ll be right’ when clearly things are not right.

So isn’t it time to develop a national masterplan to help guide future planning and development in this country to try and stop the increasing loss of life and damage that the natural forces around Australia unleash?

If you look at the past decade there have many natural disasters, both fire and flood, which have destroyed so many homes. We have seen the fires in Victoria which swept through the hill communities of Flowerdale, Kinglake and Marysville in 2009 destroying over 2,000 homes and taking 173 lives. Back in 1983 Ash Wednesday fires in South Australia destroyed 2,400 homes.

Continue reading "We need a masterplan to deal with worsening disasters" »

It warms my heart to think of all the Australians donating cash to Queensland flood victims. 

What frightens the crap out of me is all those who’d rather give Aunt Beryl’s chest of drawers, the toaster with only one grill functioning, the shorts that Jayden grew out of and the packet of Sao biscuits that lay dormant at the back of the pantry.

As amazing as Anna Bligh has been this week, I’m sure there’s probably one thing she desperately wishes she could say but can’t.

Continue reading "Don’t crush Queensland with kindness" »

While devastating floodwaters recede in the north even as they rise in the south, Australians are understandably shocked by what has occurred in the past few weeks.

The extent of the tragedy and loss of life, property and infrastructure is indeed numbing.  It is heartbreaking.  And it is incomprehensible to those of us not directly involved.

But the downpour, while rare, is not of itself unique.

Continue reading "History tells us floods are natural" »

Enough is enough. The diabolical mess surrounding flood insurance must be resolved now before even more Australian families are sent to the financial brink at their time of need.

As we watch the flood devastation around the country, understand that up to half those affected will not be covered by insurance - even though they have a home and contents policy and think they’re protected.

The reason is the small print in their policy (be honest, how many have actually read that bit?) and the fact that many insurance companies have had their fancy lawyers draft definitions of “flood” which don’t actually payout on a flood situation.

Continue reading "Flood victims ripped off by greedy insurers" »

Jordan Rice was 13 years old when he died. His rescue was imminent but he refused the help, insisting his would-be rescuers take his 10-year-old brother, Blake, first.

When his rescuers returned Jordan was insisting they take his mother, Donna, first - but there was no more time.

The rope to which he and Donna desperately clung snapped and they were both swept away by the raging floodwater.

Continue reading "Love in the time of tragedy" »

Those of us who grew up in Toowoomba always knew two things. Not much ever happens there and it does not flood.

Resting on top of the Great Dividing Range, any rain would run off steeply down the mountain to the east and gently over the Darling Downs to the west.

All that changed just after lunch on Monday, with chilling and terrifying speed. And with deadly consequences. So many lives lost. And so many families heart-broken.

Continue reading "A town changed forever by devastating tragedy" »

Almost as soon as they can speak, humans starting asking “Why?”.

We hate feeling powerless. We hate the not-knowing.

So already there is plenty of speculation about what – or who – is to blame for the Queensland floods, which devastated Toowoomba and are set to wreak havoc in Brisbane.

Continue reading "As the water rises again, the questions begin" »

In 20 years, 25 per cent of the population of Australia will live on a strip of land between Coffs Harbour in NSW and Hervey Bay in central Queensland.

That’s a prediction made by many in both state and local government - including Queensland Premier Anna Bligh a couple of years ago.

The massive growth projections have both excited and worried local and state planners.

Continue reading "Could better planning have helped in Toowoomba?" »

It’s impossible to think of anything but the people of Queensland, particularly Toowoomba today. To understand the strength of the torrent have a look at this amazing video shot by locals.

In just 24 hours an already overwhelming situation has turned catastrophic; nine people have been confirmed dead and a staggering number of people are missing.

The degree of loss and devastation is unfathomable.

Continue reading "Open thread: Queensland flood disaster" »

While the majority of urban Australians get back to work after a rejuvenating holiday, Queenslanders begin the new decade trying to escape the rising floodwaters. The social and economic impacts from the floods are likely to be felt for some time. 

The floods in the Murray-Darling Basin have affected lives and livelihoods, crops have been damaged, though for many it has also brought much needed water and rejuvenated pastures.

All of this water may lead many people to assume that the environmental problems in the Murray-Darling Basin have been solved, but this is far from the truth.

Continue reading "Dams won’t solve the problems of flooding" »

From the beginning of 2010 onwards, the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has committed himself to “overturning Queensland’s Wild Rivers laws” as a key personal objective.

Immediately post-election, he nominated this issue as his number one legislative priority.

Last week he introduced a private member’s bill into Parliament to deliver on his pledge, with the hope of winning support from the lower house independents.

Continue reading "Wild rivers run deep" »

(Eds note: Peter Michael covered the Queensland abortion trial for the Courier-Mail)

It was like a morning after pill. That’s what Tegan said. That’s how they do birth control in Russia.

Except by the time she took them – five tiny pills over 48 hours – she estimated herself to be about five weeks pregnant. “I woke up with a period the next day. And other than that I was fine,’’ she told police brightly, in explanation.

It begs that hoary chestnut: When does life start? When sperm meets egg? When there is a heartbeat? When newborn child emerges from womb and opens eyes and lungs to the world? It does not matter. Not in this case.

Continue reading "This abortion trial should never be repeated" »

Those delegates from Labor and the Coalition who are hoping to win over Bob Katter ought to make sure they enter his personal space equipped not just with mouthguard and groin protection but a powerful sense of the past.

Nothing matters more to Katter than history. It is the key to his heart. He speaks of events that happened more than a century ago as though they occurred only yesterday – and as if he himself was there.

Katter talks of two photographs that hang in the Civic Club in his hometown of Charters Towers, in the Queensland hinterland. “One is of the mine managers in 1899 in Charters Towers,” he says. “They’re all there in their hats and three-piece suits and gold fob pocket watches. Those bastards drove us down in the mines and one in 31 of us never came back up again.” Us.

Continue reading "Troglodyte is not an insult: inside the mind of Bob Katter" »

On Friday my daughter turned 2. By the end of the month, she may have had more Prime Ministers in her life than birthdays.

That said, the result on Saturday night was a victory for the people. As much as the two major parties don’t like not knowing if they get the keys to Treasury, this is a great outcome for all Australians.

Throughout Australia, at the state level, we’ve been through this a few times more recently than the last time this happened federally. In Queensland – my most direct experience with hung parliaments – it started in 1995.

Continue reading "Hang time: Government limbo’s not entirely new" »

The people’s forum format is a bit like Twenty20 cricket. A strong start when you go in to bat second is critical.

Tony Abbott got his at Rooty Hill in western Sydney when he walked down off the stage and spoke to the audience from the floor. This week the Prime Minister was taking no chances, warming up the room by mixing it with the audience before her slot and kicking off her time talking about positive economic plans. The intent was clear: she was going to have a go, try a bit of tonking.

Not this time the stool on the stage, far from the crowd. A Prime Minister rolling into a town where the metro newspaper’s front page says the government is set to lose half a dozen seats in the state must, to stretch the cricket analogy, get on the front foot.

Continue reading "Julia and Tony learning the art of limited overs politics" »

Note: Kevin Rudd gave his first interview since losing the leadership last night, which Leo Shanahan looks at in the next post. With Labor struggling in Queensland, I spent the first few days of this week in The Sunshine State talking to voters in the seats of Griffith and Longman, and trying fruitlessly to interview the former PM. The anti-Labor sentiment in Rudd’s home state was identified by Newspoll yesterday and is born out in the piece below focussing on Rudd’s seat.

There are no posters, no balloons, no “Vote One” vans, no army of volunteers handing out leaflets for the candidate. On the day I arrived, even the street leading to the electorate office had been shut down, after a bizarre accident where a man suffered a heart attack, and while the ambulance was tending to him, a truck came around the corner and smashed into the back of ambulance.

The electorate office is stuck between a Blockbuster video store and a pet shop and it has a small yellow sign out front which reads “Kevin Rudd: Standing up for the Southside.”

It’s a lowbrow setting for a man who just four weeks ago was running a nation but who now, adding injury to insult, is not even in his electorate office but at home recovering from an operation on his gall bladder.

Continue reading "Looking for Kevin in the State that’s ditching Labor" »

It was a pretty cruel act: killing the Tree of Knowledge at Barcaldine. Take away your own personal political views and the history of the tree itself, but the wanton vandalism of applying poison to a living thing to make a point, is mindless and cruel. Poisoning anything – tree, dog, rat, possum – is cruel and heartless.

Maybe someone wanted to have a secret the rest of the world didn’t have.

Maybe it was someone who’d been groomed and trained to look at Labor election posters as flags of war – things to pull down, throw eggs at, gesticulate at or draw fangs and horns on. Maybe the person who killed the tree was a natural enemy of Labor - the child of a small business owner or a farmer.

Continue reading "The labour movement’s about as healthy as its tree" »

My name’s Lyall, I’m from Queensland and we are sunk! Kevin can’t help us, Anna is making it worse and the other guy who wants to be Premier…..thingamajig whatshisname – what the hell is he about?

We are officially doomed. Despite years of GST revenue, Queensland has no money and we’ll soon have no assets, yet we’ll still get huge loans (I want the name of that bank) to go into further debt which – according to politicians from both parties during the next election campaign – will be someone else’s fault and will at the same time be fully maintainable, as long as we vote for them.

Now Tony can call Kevin a fake Queenslander (we know he’s not because he says port and togs) but he had better not accuse me of same. I’m the real deal, growing up in the very Queensland suburb of Murarrie, home to the local dump, saleyards and abattoirs which created a beautiful aroma every afternoon at around 3.

Continue reading "Queensland: Beautiful one day, a disaster the next" »

By now the debate over whether Queensland should have daylight saving might have filtered down south so you could all laugh and point at us again.

Each year, around the time you lot are turning your clocks forward an hour for the Summer, we all endure the talkback about the inconvenience of living near the border or travelling interstate and moot the question again and again and again and again.

Should Queensland have daylight saving?

Continue reading "QLD’s got it right on daylight saving, the other states don’t" »

Tegan Leach has become the unwitting “it” girl for abortion reform in Queensland. Unwitting, because who would have knowingly decided to sign up for the sort of exposure that has been thrust on this Cairns teenager, all because she made a choice thousands of women have made before her to abort a baby she knew she was not ready to care for.

However, the charge she faces is that she allegedly did not do it through the proper channels.

Tegan is expected to sell her story exclusively to a women’s magazine when the dust has finally settled on this case and she is legally able to speak freely outside of court, for hers is a case that has opened a hornet’s nest of debate about the rights or wrongs of do-it-yourself drug-induced abortions in Australia and women’s ability to access them.

Continue reading "The story that has put abortion back in the dock" »

In Cairns, a young Queensland woman faces the prospect of up to seven years prison for something that over 14 000 women do every year in this state alone - for having an abortion. Her partner faces three years prison for assisting her.

Once-was-feminist-campaigner and now Premier of Queensland, Anna Bligh is at pains to try and convince us that the charges are not related to abortion, but rather to do with the way in which the abortion took place.

Premier Bligh has feigned concern about the case – “tragic” she calls it. The Premier is a hypocrite. Her government could act immediately to bring an end to the trauma that this young couple is facing. But not only have they refused to act – they have done everything they can to further add to the isolation of the young couple.

Continue reading "Bligh is a hypocrite on Queensland abortion law" »

Anyone reading David Southwell’s diatribe on The Punch last week could have been forgiven for thinking the whole of Queensland is a desert devoid of decent espresso. 

Certainly the southern blogger successfully whipped up a froth of discontent amongst the state’s caffeinistas with his comments. 

The bitterness caused is directed not at Southwell but at anyone who feels the need to take cheap shots at a slice of Australia that’s brewing up micro-roasteries and specialty coffee houses faster than a Mini Mazzer spews forth espresso-ready beans. 

Continue reading "QLD brew might surprise southern coffee snobs" »

It’s “proof” to climate change believers, “just weather” to sceptics – but to everyone it’s the arrival of summer. In winter.

View The Punch - August weather in a larger map

Weather records are often trivial matters, a question of a few tenths of some obscure measurement here and there. Last month’s heat highs streaked away from the norms like Usain Bolt taking on a field of suburban club runners.

Unless you work for Channel 10, weather people typically aren’t an excitable bunch. But the Bureau of Meteorology is calling the August heat “highly unusual” and “exceptional”, and this week issued a Special Climate Statement, its first since the heatwave that fried the southeast in February. The interactive map above shows some – just some – of the dozens of records around the country that were burnt.

Continue reading "Interactive map: Australia’s scorching August" »

Queensland is many ways a much more reasonable facsimile of civilisation than it used to be.

However I recently discovered a glaring deficiency that rubbed away all veneer of cosmopolitan credit.

The coffee was bad. Sometimes it was bad multiplied by awful.

Continue reading "Beautiful one day, decaffeinated the next" »

The other day, I was asked on ABC television about the conviction of Gordon Nuttall, a former Queensland Labor state minister, for accepting secret payments of $360,000 from a businessman. This is one of the most serious cases of corruption ever recorded against a minister of the Crown in this country.

Nuttall is not the first former Queensland Labor minister caught out over recent years – another has been jailed for blackmail, and a third for paedophilia. I responded by saying there was a culture of favouritism and relationships with big business tainting the Queensland Government, which needed to be fixed.

Barrie Cassidy, a journalist for whom I have some regard, then came back with his “gotcha” question (and continued on after the interview). How could a Nationals’ leader complain about corruption in Queensland considering the Fitzgerald Inquiry at the time of the government of Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s National Party?

Continue reading "Qld Labor inherits corruption mantle from Nats’ dark past" »

WOULD Queenslanders ever agree to their state being abolished? No way, you might say, particularly in the season that the state is in the box seat to seal its fourth consecutive series win in state of origin football.

Well, think again. A Galaxy poll in The Courier-Mail today shows two-thirds of Queenslanders think they’re being over governed. And more than half of those think the state should be first to go, followed by local councils and, finally, Canberra.

Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen would be spinning in his grave.

Continue reading "Abolish Queensland ... the government, that is" »