Cranky Queenslander

Currency Lad put it nicely when he described this budget as a shuffling of deck chairs. Many punters will see the glossy spin and get excited, safe in the knowledge that their union mates are sticking it to the man.

Those of us who open the cover and look at the cheap newsprint containted within, however, will see something different. I’m no analyst, so lets just take a quick look at a couple of key points;

Wayne Swan’s big issue was cutting government spending. Did he do that? No. How do I know? Well, look at the budget papers for last years budget, and then this years.  Down on page 6-3, you will see the total government spending estimate. Last years budget was estimated at 235.6 Billion. This years budget is 292.5 Billion. The current budget revises the actual spending from last year to 280 billion, so even taking that figure, the new government is upping spending by 12.5 billion dollars.

The other thing that irks me is the fact that Labor was all about the environment before the election, and is now nowhere to be seen on the issue. The Australian gives us a roundup of the environmental initiatives in this budget,and they are pretty woeful.

Where are the new solar power stations? The Hydrogen development? Why are we wasting money on "clean coal"?  Time for more letters I think, but first I’ll do some more reading to see what other clean energy options are already on the table.

Would love to hear your comments on these two issues, let me know what you think.

I was having a chin wag with someone the other day about e-waste, and how there are many organisations that produce vast quantities of it at a time. One such example is local councils, which from time to time need to get rid of tons of old computers and other equipment.

The trouble is, that some councils are more worried about saving a few rate payer bucks than doing the right thing. Recently officials from Toowoomba council were alleged to have said, in reference to the cost of having e-waste removed for recycling, that it was a lot cheaper just to dump it all in landfill.

I haven’t had a response back from the state and federal ministers I wrote to a little while back. Today I’m writing to the Mayor’s of Brisbane, Ipswich, Toowoomba, Logan and the CEO of the Gold Coast council. I’m asking them to take a leadership role in e-waste, ensure they offer collection points for it and perhaps go as far as giving grants to small recycling businesses to build local recycling infrastructure.

Here’s hoping they take the lead on the issue, and we can get the Fed’s to jump in and help too. With the massive budget surplus we should end up with after they cut spending and raise the odd tax here and there, we should be able to fund, among other things, e-waste recycling.

It seems the state governments law and order policy revolves around booking as many motorists for driving over the speed limit as it possible can. That being said, sometimes I wonder about the way it goes about it, and I always wonder if its worth the effort.

The other day I was driving down Hale street heading for Milton road. There were three, motorcycle cops parked on the off ramp to milton road, and two of them (yeah, TWO of them!) were standing in the middle of the road aiming radar guns at oncoming traffic.

Apart from the excessive number of cops required for this job, it was also a joke due to the fact that it was peak hour and traffic was choked and slow along this stretch of Hale street.

Still, they had managed to pull over a couple of people, and one lady looked like she wasn’t too pleased about the interruption to her day.

So if we are going to continue to have police wasting their day looking for speeding motorists, how about we put them somewhere that they can catch the real speed demons; You know the sort that do 130+ and change lanes three times per kilometre? Leave the guy doing 98 on Ipswich road alone.

While we are at it, how about we RAISE the speed limits on roads? 90 on Ipswich road is a joke, and the Gateway and M1 could be 120 in large part.

Then, get rid of speed cameras and radar guns, and put all those police on the streets patrolling. Have them pull over people who are driving recklessly, tailgaiting and running red lights. These are the people that cause accidents, and they only get the message when a police officer gives it to them in person.

Having all those extra police mobile and in our city means that when some punk decided to stick up the 7-Eleven, its more likely we can get some cops there in time to nab him. I would love to see more police in our suburbs keeping us safe than parked on the site of the freeway doing nothing.

How about stiffer penalties for people who recklessly cause accidents? The fools that clog up our major arterial roads cost thousands of us as we all get stuck in their mess.  Disqualify them from driving for 3 months and force them to do advanced driver training.

Yeah, I know, it will never happen. But a guy can dream can’t he?

While I am still trying to get my head around the full story of the Heiner affair, what is clear is that the cabinet of the day did something very very wrong in destroying documents holding evidence relating to the rape of a 14 year old girl.

Former Premier of Queensland Peter Beattie told Alan Jones shortly before he left parliament that the reason the documents were shredded was because the Heiner enquiry had been setup without giving privilege to those giving evidence. So apparently, the cabinet of the day got legal advice saying that they should shred all the evidence collected thus far, so as to protect those who gave evidence from legal action.

Just last year, shortly after Premier Beattie left parliament, Senator Joyce in an adjournment speech, attempted to table the Rofe Audit Report into the affair, and was blocked by a labor member of the senate (who I have yet to identify, does anyone know who that was?)

In his speech, he made the point that the Queensland Parliament could have passed retrospective legislation to give privilege to the Heiner enquiry, thus solving the litigation problem they were so worried about, and allowing things to proceed and justice to be sought for the victims of abuse that the enquiry was setup to investigate.

So now its time I sent out some letters on the subject. I’ve come up with three so far, and I would love to have some suggestions on who else I should write to, and what else I should be asking them;

Letter to Senator Joyce – Commending him on bringing the matter to the federal parliament and asking what future steps he plans on taking to further the cause of justice in this matter.

Queensland Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee – Asking them to investigate the matter and bring charges where evidence exists of criminal conduct.

Leader of the Opposition in Queensland, asking him to get on board and publicly push for a proper investigation into the matter. As a prospective leader of our state, he should be yelling most loudly about it.

Recently in Collingwood Park the unthinkable happened. Old coal mine shafts underneath the suburb collapsed, causing severe damage to more than a dozen homes. The collapse will likely result in some of those houses having to be demolished.

These are cherished family homes, built and bought by people who trusted the state government when it said it was fine to build there. I’m hoping these home owners are getting legal advice, because if this happened to me, I’d be wanting my day in court to have the government explain why they did this.

Its about time that our state government realised that it is elected to help the people, not profit from them. Sanctioning a housing development on top of an old coal mine without doing something like collapsing the old mine shafts first, is just a cheap money grab.

Cr Paul Tully has lost the plot with his comment that the state government should be commended for its response to the issue. You’re kidding right Paul? The state government should be condemned for continuing to sell off land without rehabilitating it first. It would also be nice if he published maps of the affected areas with a few clues as to where they are; Just put one street name on the map Paul, and we’d know whats what!

I invite anyone affected by the issue to leave a comment and let me know how you personally are dealing with it, and what the state government is actually doing to help you.

Following up from Saturday’s post about changes to tax on pre mix drinks, I did a little research, and found that the tax rates on various drinks are apparently as follows (correct me if these are wrong)

Rates are dollars of tax per litre of alcohol content. Figures taken from dsica.com.au, read to drink figure from the news.com.au article previously mentioned.

This raises several questions; Firstly, why are spirits taxed so much more heavily than beer is? Why is packaged beer taxed much more heavily than draught beer? Why don’t we tax wine on the percentage of alcohol like everything else?

More importantly, why has the Rudd government decided to tax read to drink spirits so heavily across the board, instead of having a sliding scale as we have with beer?

A few comments on Nicola Roxon’s move to raise taxes on pre mixed alcoholic drinks; Firstly, according to news.com.au, all she is doing is adjusting the rate of tax to match that of bottled alcohol. I haven’t been able to find out if the tax on beer and other things is all the same too, that might be a good excuse to write to Nicola.

As long as we are going to tax alcohol, it should be a fair tax across all forms. A simple dollar amount per litre of alcohol provides a basic incentive for makers to produce lower alcohol content drinks, because they’ll be taxed less, and be cheaper. This is the case now with pre mix and bottled alcohol.

Personally, I think this is just a grab for more tax revenue (which is odd, as we are running record surpluses). There is no evidence that the move will do anything to curb binge drinking. If the $8-$12 a go these drinks cost now isn’t deterring people, another buck a can won’t do much.

What might have done something, would have been to change the way we tax these drinks. Lets have a scaled tax on "ready to drink" products, including stubbies of beer and pre mix spirits. How about those that are less than a standard drink, we tax lightly, and those that are a lot more than a standard drink, we tax much more heavily.

Of course not; That might actually work, as well as lowered our tax burden. Can’t have that.