RESPONSIBILITY DAY FOR PREMIER AND LNP

Media Release.

  
Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk says it is the time the Premier and his LNP Ministers and MPs took responsibility for their government’s broken promises.
“Today is Responsibility Day for the LNP,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
“It is now more than 12 months since Campbell Newman was elected Premier of Queensland and began breaking election commitments.
“People are sick and tired of the Newman Government playing the blame game and running away from responsibility.
“In the past year the Newman Government has delivered its first State Budget and endorsed the LNP’s still secret Costello Audit blueprint for asset sales, privatisation, and outsourcing.
“It is responsible for its own decisions, yet we continually see Ministers like Scott Emerson hide behind TransLink and now the Brisbane City Council when the savage backlash against his cuts to bus services gets too much for him to handle.
“We continue to see Health Minister Lawrence Springborg hide behind regional health boards when nurses and essential health professionals are sacked and services are cut.
“But decisions by regional health boards are decisions of the LNP government and the Minister has direct responsibility. Mr Springborg is also responsible for the $3 billion worth of cuts he is imposing on regional health boards over four years including sacking around 4,000 from Queensland Health.”
Ms Palaszczuk said the Premier was responsible for not having launched a single major capital works project to generate jobs, especially in regional Queensland.
“The only project the LNP government has started is a new Executive Building in the Brisbane CBD to provide new offices for the Premier and his Ministers,” she said.
Ms Palaszczuk said the past 12 months had seen a total lack of leadership from a Premier who failed to act against Ministers or MPs when action was needed.
“It has got to the situation where the seemingly untouchable Member for Redcliffe and the serious allegations swirling around him is the face of the Newman Government’s first anniversary,” she said.
“It was the Opposition — not the Premier — that forced the resignations of Bruce Flegg and Ros Bates and had a director-general stood down and later sacked.”
Ms Palaszczuk said the LNP must take responsibility for its string of broken promises to cut the cost of living including:

• the promised $80 annual ongoing saving on all household water bills which was now  a one-off for only the south-east corner.

• the promised car rego freeze changed which after the election excluded CTP.

•  the promised ongoing annual savings of $120 on power bills which had also changed  to a one-off cut.

 She said the “freeze” on household electricity bills for a year backfired by forcing the Queensland Competition Authority to recommend a price catch-up year with a recommended rise of more than 21% in power bills.
“The record of the LNP in the past year is a broken record – broken promise after broken promise,” she said.
“Many Queenslanders have been disappointed by the LNP’s string of broken promises and arrogant behaviour.
“The Premier said none of his own workers had anything to fear and then promptly sacked 14,000 of them.
“The Premier promised to govern with ‘humility, grace and dignity’ and we are yet to see any of those.
“He promised openness and accountability, yet we see secret LNP fundraising dinners at secret locations with secret guest lists, plus an LNP fundraising lunch built around a taxpayer-funded health blueprint,” she said.