TheMissus,

I totally accept your point about the 'Queensland' Government almost completely disregarding the wishes of those outside South East Queensland. However, in the last few weeks, they have not even paid any regard to the wishes of those inside South East Queensland.

They are certainly working their hardest to destroy the quality of life in South East Queensland (for the benefit of their land speculator and property developer benefactors) by encouraging population growth. Now they hypocritically attribute the problems of health, public transport to the very population growth that they have continued to encourage. See:

"Exposing Queensland Government population growth duplicity" at http://candobetter.org/node/1168

... and:

"End Queensland Government encouragement of population growth" section of
"Why I am contesting the Queensland state elections as an independent" at http://candobetter.org/node/1121#PopulationGrowth

In reality the problems are due to their incompetence as well as their encouragement of population growth.

The Courier Mail editorial "Heavier price of progress for some" of Wednesday 15 July 09 at http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25782554-13360,00.htmlprovides provides further illustration of how that that newspaper remains a key barrier to the proper functioning of democracy in Queensland.

Essentially, although it acknowledges some of the harm caused by the construction frenzy in South East Queensland (SEQ) it nevertheless excuses it as a necessary price for 'progress'.

The Courier Mail is very good at blaming the problems on others (and often rightly so), but will never acknowledge to its readers its own role in bringing Queensland, particularly SEQ to the deplorable state that it is in today.

As an example it tries to imply that the construction chaos is in response to loud impatient demands of Brisbane residents, themselves, for a solution to Brisbane's traffic problems:

"There is another side to this. In recent years Brisbane residents have become increasingly strident when it comes to complaining about rapidly deteriorating road conditions, and demanding something be done to tackle gridlock. ..."

In fact, the Courier Mail, itself, was more strident than most in demanding that money be splurged on ever more road construction (despite alarm felt by many that the global petroleum production could soon begin to decline inexorably). Some time during the 2007 election campaign, the Courier Mail managed to corner Kevin Rudd into promising to fully fund the upgrade to the Ipswich motorway.

Then in 2008, when the Rudd Government tried to back away from that commitment, the CM denounced it savagely on front page articles until it gave in. (I have the articles buried away somewhere. I will make references to them available on http://candobetter.org/CourierMail when I find them.)

It is almost certainly largely because of the Courier Mail's own knee-jerk and strident pushing of such hobby horses, that South East Queensland's transport is in the terrible state that it is in as noted in the Auditor General's report at http://www.qao.qld.gov.au/downloadables/publications/auditor_general_reports/2009_Report_No.3.pdf

BTW a very good blog to keep track of the Courier Mail and other Murdoch-owned publications is http://stopmurdoch.blogspot.com

I messed up the link to the Courier Mail editorial by not having a gap before the next word. My apologies. The link should have been:

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25782554-13360,00.html

My post has also been posted as a short article to http://stopmurdoch.blogspot.com/2009/07/who-is-to-blame-for-seqs-transport-woes.html

I realise, this is very late notice, but there will be a protest against privatisation outside Transport Minister Rachel Nolan's office in Ipswich at 2.00PM today.

The protest will be at:

Booval Professional Centre, 125 Brisbane St, Ipswich

For further information, see:

http://saveourpublicassets.org

... the web site of "Save Our Public Assets" a group formed to fight the Bligh Government's planned asset stripping of Queensland.

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Another protest will be held at Anna Bligh's electoral office on Saturday 15 August:

Meet @ Lizard Statue, Boundary St, West End
Time/Date: 11am Saturday, 15 August
March to Bligh's Office (90 Vulture St)