Russell Trood (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Next Saturday the good citizens of my state of Queensland will go to the polls where they will elect a new state government. The contest will be between a discredited Labor government of eight years, which has utterly betrayed the mandate given to it in 2004, and an invigorated, unified coalition with a vision for Queensland’s future and, most particularly, a commitment to keeping its promises. All elections are about accountability. They are a referendum on essentially two things: first, whether the government has delivered on its promises from the last election and earned the electorate’s trust and confidence; and, second, whether that government has a vision for the future which can be credibly achieved.

The Beattie Labor government has completely failed to meet these tests. For eight years it has made promises to the Queensland people; for eight years it has failed to deliver them. It has not just failed, it has presided over an administration of the state’s affairs where waste, incompetence and inaction have been the hallmarks of public policy and where the maladministration has been so great that the delinquent management of the hospital system has left the lives of its most vulnerable and weak citizens in jeopardy. Few governments in the recent history of my state, and indeed yours, Mr Deputy President, have a more shameful record. How can we possibly have confidence that a re-elected Beattie government can give Queenslanders a safe, secure and prosperous future?

One might be inclined to forgive the Beattie government its multiple and manifest failures if in some way it could be said that others contributed to its incompetence or perhaps if circumstances had somehow conspired to undermine good policy. There can be no such salvation. The Beattie government is mired in its own failures. It has no-one to blame but itself for its situation. There can be no alibi, no excuses and no shifting of responsibility. Everything comes back to Labor’s shortcomings. For as long as it has been in office, the government has had every advantage to succeed with its policies. It has enjoyed the three things most precious to governments: the power, the money and the time. The power it secured through three election victories, with large majorities in a single chamber legislature; the money has rolled into its coffers through Queensland’s extraordinary growth and $7.21 billion in GST revenue from the Commonwealth; and, finally, it has had the time—eight years to plan, eight years to consult and eight years to legislate, where that might have been necessary.

What do we have after all this? First, we have a public hospital system in ruinous decline, where staff are leaving in numbers. We have a Queensland health bureaucracy which is centralised, secretive and bloated. We have waiting lists of 122,000 for our hospitals. We have priority 3 patients for breast and prostate cancers waiting for treatment for up to 89 days. At the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospitals patients are waiting four years to be seen. Three thousand seven hundred people are waiting to see an ear, nose and throat specialist, 2,000 need an ophthalmologist, 1,400 need a urologist, 35 of the state’s 84 maternity units have been closed and 40 per cent of visiting specialists have been lost from public hospitals.

Second, the system of state transport infrastructure is utterly unable to keep pace with the rapidly growing population. In the last five years, the Beattie government has slashed $400 million from its state road budget. The northern main road district has been stripped of 14 per cent of its funds. Only one new road has been built since Beattie came to power and that was a relatively short piece from Bald Hills to Strathpine. According to AAMI, Brisbane has the highest rates of congestion in Australia, and yet last year the Beattie government underspent its transport infrastructure budget by $279 million.

Third, we have a system of public water supply where, in the absence of drought-breaking rain, the people of south-east Queensland will face the harshest water restrictions in over 100 years. After eight years of inaction, the government has finally come up with a water plan for the south-east corner. Fourth, in child protection the Department of Child Safety itself has been forced to admit that 30 per cent of children in care who had already suffered abuse were abused again within 12 months. The list goes on: failures in education, in the Police Service and in Indigenous Affairs. And for all those Queenslanders who live outside the south-east corner, where is the plan to stimulate the regions to create prosperity in the north and in the west of the state?

None of this is any way to run a government. It manifestly fails the test of good public policy. Indeed, it is an abuse of the trust and legitimacy conferred by elections—and Queenslanders deserve better. Beattie’s efforts at spin, apology and promise should be rejected. Queenslanders should not be fooled by faux contrition and by a determination now being made to try and do better. The Beattie government’s use-by date has clearly expired. He should be held accountable.

When Queenslanders enter the polling booth on Saturday I encourage them to break with the tired and discredited past. The coalition has a vision for Queensland’s future—proposals to create prosperity, to solve the water shortage, to build the transport infrastructure we need, to generate wealth in the regions and, most important of all, to fix our run-down and failing hospital system.

Mr Beattie has been in government for too long—too long for good government and certainly too long for Queenslanders. I cannot help but recall the words of Oliver Cromwell to the Rump Parliament over 350 years ago, in 1653:

You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately … Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

That is the message all Queenslanders should be sending to the Beattie government next Saturday. I thank the Senate.