I read this post and think; this is written by a thinking man with a heart! But here we discuss the actions of Politicians, rarely perceived or even seen to be exercising any attributes of empathy!

It brings to mind the false claim of Labors counterpart in the US, Bill Clinton, to have reduced poverty by actually increasing poverty, and removing single mothers from welfare dependency. He did this of course by taking them off welfare support, casting them into a sea of despair. The biggest losers, the children of these single Mothers.

The priority question here to ask is; what is the outcome of this abandoned social project on children? All welfare should be judged on health and safety of children in our communities. It's a dimple line to follow!

I agree in part with your article Graham? And to be fair, some of the Labor luminaries couldn't be trusted to run a successful chook raffle, let alone a multi billion economy! This is where they need to take a leaf out of Joh's book, and borrow like there's no tomorrow, to build publicly owned stuff!

And only stuff that can earn increasing income as far out as the eye can see! THere has to be as many as a dozen endlessly studied dams that are shovel ready, only needing financing?

And any number of energy projects as well? Like a still to be proposed, localized thorium publicly owned power plant for the far north? And better than ever more poles and wires!

Then we need to assist decentralization outcomes and public servants relocated well out into the far less expensive burbs and regions, where an up tempo NBN rollout, (doable) would assist that outcome, along with all of Queensland, its prospects and economy!?

And better than simply selling the allegorical farm, at fire sale prices, the seeming limit of, do it or else, liberal thinking?
Alan B.

Article should be headed "Queensland Labor is hurting its own voters", at first, I thought that was Federal Labor the author was referring too.

But in any case a lot of the article is referring to affordable housing in Qld.

Well all I've got to say on that is send or encourage them to move down to Tasmania, they need the population. The housing is very affordable, at least compared to mainland states and capital cities, and as one of the catch 22's of modern economies, more population stimulates more local demand, so chances of employment opportunities goes up. But without more population, the local shopfront industries such as retail, medical & building services etc.. just stagnate.

Current state Liberal government does not seem to be doing too bad a job either.

Whilst on Holiday down there, I noticed one of the most popular interstate car registration plates around the towns were from Queensland and the occupants of the vehicles were young to middle aged folks too. Despite Tasmania's reputation for having the oldest population in Australia.

The climate down there is warming up and is changing more rapidly than most folks think or "choose to believe" however one interprets climate change. So I don't want to hear whinging about it being too cold because that is rapidly becoming a thing of historical weather records.

It's a nice place with some of Australia's cleanest air and water, relatively speaking of course. Added to that, Launceston is Australia's most connected NBN city, thanks to the Gillard government and their initiatives.

Yes Rohjama, and the feesh and cheeps are not bad either! And I can't find a mainland chinese restaurant that knows what the L, scallop based buc bo farn is. Sigh!
Alan B.

QLD does not need any more housing.

Places such as Townsville, Mackay and Gladstone have 100's of vacant houses.

It is estimated that Gladstone has nearly 1000 vacant houses, (Mackay has about 1200) and it is ludicrous to keep building more suburbs.

The number of vacant houses is the result of an artificial boom due to mining, negative gearing, over-investment in property, as well as a government policy of purposely overpopulating the country with immigrants.

As QLD returns back to equilibrium after the mining boom, QLD now has a large number of vacant houses, as well as overpopulation and not enough jobs.

Labor's mantra is "don't worry mate, we will give you everything and someone else will pay for it." and they don't care if it screws the entire country as long as they get into power.