Selwyn Johnston… Independent Advocate

With Queensland being a pivotal State for the forthcoming Federal Election it’s no surprise that both the Liberal and Labor parties are working the State over, with each party trying to outdo the other’s ‘promises’.

Two examples for the Leichhardt electorate were firstly the walk for the benefit of cancer treatment facilities at the Cairns Base Hospital. The fight for basic funding for the cancer treatment facilities has been going on for years with, to date, the public being the greatest financial contributors. The nominated candidates of both parties, dressed in their party livery, participated in the walk together with an entourage similarly attired.

Prior to the commencement of the walk the sitting member, on behalf of the liberal’s new candidate, announced an $8.3 million funding for the Cairns Base Hospital facility. Now while any contribution to these badly needed improvements are most welcome, it’s no wonder the public become a little cynical when a stunt like this is pulled. Unquestionably, it was a rare transparent act, so much so that the public could see right through it.

The second example of election largesse was the announcement by Minister for Transport, Mark Vaile, that two (2) billion ($2,000,000,000) would be expended to mitigate flooding and improve safety on the Bruce Highway between Cairns and Sarina, with some $800 million to upgrade the Cairns/Townsville ‘goat track’.

Mr Vaile said, “In the budget this year we allocated a total envelope of $22.3 billion to land transport infrastructure”.

“What we will be announcing for the Bruce Highway in Queensland today will be new funding out of that envelope of money.”

Precisely what that means is open to interpretation but clearly again we are most grateful for the money even though he admits the money has already been flagged in this year’s budget allocations and the “new money” tag might be a little presumptuous if not an outright lie.

However, the questions that this does raise are firstly, just how genuine is the government with these offers, being as it seems at least for the roads, money is already allocated, and secondly, what does it say about the quality of Leichhardt representation over the last eleven (11) years.

And just how genuine will they be over the next three years given that most of this funding will not be available until 2009… at the earliest!

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 7:17 pm and is filed under Promises... Promises!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.