The Editor, Gladstone Today:
There is much talk about introducing a federal ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption). I think it’s also time to introduce a 6 month probation period for all politicians after each election along with a Key Performance Indicator Test (KPI). Most big businesses have them and they would never sign anyone up for 3 to 6 years without first having a trial period to observe their potential employee’s capabilities. If a politician failed his KPI review then there should be a by election before too much harm is done.
Senator Matt Canavan, at taxpayers expense, publishes demonstrably untrue nonsense nearly every week yet he is not called out on it. Eg re China he seems to want to upset our biggest trading partner. Much of the time it isn’t what he says but what he doesn’t say. He says China is building 100,000 megawatts of new coal fired power. He doesn’t mention that much of that capability is dormant most of the time because it is designed for peaking loads. It is only used when renewables can’t supply. Many run far below capacity. Also he doesn’t mention that per capita China emits less than half the greenhouse gasses emitted by Australians. He seems to have missed a very recent report by Reuters that China added more wind generation capacity in the last two years than in the previous 7 years. In 2022 China generated 46% more wind power than all of Europe’s wind power combined. Think where Australia’s renewables could be now if we hadn’t had 9 years of LNP’s deliberate delays protecting the fossil fuel industries while denying the obvious changes in our climate.
I am certainly no apologist for the Chinese government which is far from perfect, but look what it has achieved since 2012 when Xi Jinping came to power. 100 million people have been pulled out of poverty. Compare that to Matt Canavan’s LNP effort. There were 2,548,496 Australians living in poverty in 2014. By 2022 that number had risen to 3,319,000. The LNP took us backwards and what was their solution to fix the problem? They legislated to give the wealthiest Australians a tax cut that will cost the budget initially $20 billion per year and will ramp up to $31 billion per year by 2030. It will be disastrous if the ALP doesn’t scrap the cuts, and even worse if the LNP gets back in. Yes Australia needs an ICAC, and a KPI system introduced urgently to rid us of dud politicians.
Hugh Bridge