Journalist Des Houghton of the Courier Mail had an opinion article published 24 Nov 2018 titled 'Failures across health, education and transport suggest Labor Government is doomed'.

I have attached a copy of the article in PDF format in case you cannot view the article (could only screen grab the pages on phone). The link is here - I can read the article on my phone, but on a laptop it goes to the subscription page:

failures-across-health-education-and-transport-suggest-the-labor-government-is-doomed/news-story

From what I took from the article: Houghton delivers a scathing attack against the Palaszczuk Labor Government with its bad decisions, mismanagement and abuse of revenue.

The article mentions Queensland as having the worst unemployment rate and appalling record in building infrastructure as well. I would not be surprised if among other punitive measures, that Labor's 2017 Land tax & Absentee Surcharge amendments in May 2017 as well as its second round of changes to Land tax laws again in late 2017 has caused this.

Houghton's opinion is that Palaszczuk's government has peaked and may well be in decline.

He states Palaszczuk and Jackie Trad have "succeeded only in promoting the Bill Shorten/ACTU socialist gospel of victimhood, envy and division".
I believe this is the type of mindset that answers why Palaszczuk's has attacked 'Absentees' who are deemed 'rich' and therefore should be penalised with the massive taxes - i.e. the Land Tax & Absentee Surcharge.

Another interesting observation by Houghton was a literacy and numeracy report that was released by Labor on an NRL Grand Final weekend in an effort to hide those poor figures.
This demonstrates how the government avoids negative attention using smoke screens. It brings to mind the sneaky way Curtis Pitt glossed over the Absentee Surcharge in the 2017 Budget in an effort to also suppress/hide details so that most people would miss the details and the fact that Aussies were included in the Absentee definition.

Hopefully the Palaszczuk government is rapidly 'on the nose' by most Queenslanders by the next election. If Liberal wins the next QLD State election then there may be hope of legislation reform and the removal of these terrible taxes.

ARTICLE TEXT: 

Failures across health, education and transport suggest the Labor Government is doomed

November 24, 2018 12:53am
Des Houghton The Courier-Mail

YESTERDAY’S revelations we are paying $468 a year too much on our power bills will come as a hammer blow to working families. It’s also a hammer blow to the reputation of the Palaszczuk Government.

We reported customers were being “scammed” by state-owned power companies. The Government uses the power companies as a milch cow to pour $2.3 billion into Treasury coffers to featherbed the bloated public service.

ScoMo is right. The State Government’s failure to sell assets is to blame for high power prices and our woeful economic performance.

The PM told reporters state-owned Ergon had a monopoly in regional Queensland where exorbitant power bills were crippling primary producers and small businesses – and the families the ALP Government pledged to protect.

 Scott Morrison is not the first to point out Queensland is lagging behind NSW and Victoria. Queensland is an economic basket case and we have to sell lazy government assets to repair the deficit.
If Campbell Newman’s ill-fated 2015 election campaign had turned out differently, I’m sure the Cross River rail tunnel would have been completed by now and work would have started on the duplication of the M1 highway to the coast.

The profits from the sale of power utilities, ports and other public assets would have funded the work. Queensland Rail, too, should be broken up and sold.

I suspect no one other than union fat cats really cares about who owns power companies, ports, railways or highways.

Morrison’s warning to Queensland to repair its debt followed similar calls by the Infrastructure Association of Queensland. It said the state was unattractive to investors as it urged the political classes must not shut out future debate on electricity asset sales.

Right now Queensland is a political and social disaster as well. There comes a time in the life of every government when we ask ourselves whether it has been a success or a failure.

Has it met the expectations of the voters? Has it provided safe and speedy hospital care and do the trains run on time?

  
Has the Government been able to reassure parents their children will progress to high school and university with the necessary literacy and numeracy skills?

Has the Government been able to cushion working families from soaring power and fuel prices? Has it been able to stem the rise of violent assaults, house break-ins and car thefts? And has the Government been open and accountable?

Does the Government operate independently without the interference of forces outside Parliament? Does it operate cronyism rules to enrich the groups who fund it?

Has the Government succeeded in creating the right commercial environment for business to prosper and create jobs? Does it hide dubious expenditure behind “commercial in confidence” masks?

If we look at the evidence dispassionately in all these areas we can only conclude that the Government of Annastacia Palaszczuk, now a year into its second term, has been an unmitigated failure.
It has flunked every test one could devise to mark a successful government.

We may not even see it yet, but I suspect the Government led by Palaszczuk has peaked, and may already be in decline. It can only wave rainbow flags of distraction for so long.
  
Our unemployment rate is the worst in the nation. The state’s record in building infrastructure has been appalling, and it is in hock to unions who openly defy the law.

And please don’t read this as an attack on Palaszczuk the woman. She doesn’t offend me at all; it’s her government that stinks like cheap cologne.

Under Labor, the State Government has veered sharply to the Left. Palaszczuk and her deputy Jackie Trad have succeeded only in promoting the Bill Shorten/ACTU socialist gospel of victimhood, envy and division. It’s a doctrine that appeals to the leaners and their media cheer squad.

Our state schools missed every performance target across literacy and numeracy.
The Government tried to hide the official report, and others, by releasing them on NRL Grand Final weekend.

State-sponsored union gouging persists. State electricity workers who can earn up to $206,000 a year get double pay if it rains and their clothes get wet. Seriously.

While the timetables are still in a mess with services cut, Queensland Rail drivers can take home more than $210,000 thanks to generous overtime payments.

Deliberate understaffing is to blame and the State Government refuses to pull the rail unions into line.
Investigator Phillip Strachan’s excellent report to Parliament in January last year said one of the “underlying issues” that caused the timetable meltdown was “Queensland Rail preferring to operate with a 5 to 10 per cent undersupply of train crew, driven largely by a practice of providing overtime opportunities”.

In reality the job of train driver should barely exist at all. Automated trains work perfectly safely in the US, Europe and Asia.

Meanwhile, the Palaszczuk Government is riddled with contradictions when it comes to sleaze. It moved quickly to expel elected members in councils accused of corruption, yet turns a blind eye to union thugs convicted of unlawful strikes and trespass. And several ministers are under an integrity cloud.

There was worrying news in the latest health performance data with nearly every hospital in Queensland failing to meet benchmarks for emergency care and surgeries.

 “Bed block” means ill children are being turned away at Lady Cilento, the name by which our public children’s hospital will forevermore be known.

Shamefully, not one hospital and health service met the 25-day median wait time for elective surgery last financial year, with some blowing out by hundreds of days. The median wait time for surgery in the central west region was a shocking 259 days – its target is 25 days. It’s a far cry from the Newman government days when Lawrence Springborg was health minister.

In 2015 we had the best elective surgery waiting times in the country with an average of 27 days.
Shadow health spokeswoman Ros Bates listed other problems in Health she said show a system in crisis.

Ambulance “ramping” was back and there are fears of more cutbacks to regional maternity services. And the state has yet to fully explain how four children were given cancerous tissue from the tissue bank.

To escape from the sweaty city, Brisbane families traditionally head to the beach for a bracing surf and a beach picnic. I tried it the other day. Because of a small prang somewhere, the highway had become a parking lot.

We did get there more than two hours later to notice the outlaw motorcycle gangs were back.
By now, many Queenslanders will be deeply regretting they did not give Newman a second term.