Queensland happy with Newman

The Courier Mail, the ABC and Federal Labour must be devastated. After weeks of Newman bashing the polls are still in favour of the LNP

Tellingly, Mr Newman’s personal approval with voters remains rock solid on 47 per cent — the same as it was going into the state poll on March 24. Dissatisfaction with his performance has actually eased slightly since he took office, from 40 per cent immediately before the election to 38 per cent over the three-month polling period from July to September. When preferences are factored in, the LNP is 20 points clear of state Labor, 60-40 per cent, two-party-preferred. This is broadly in line with the election result that delivered 78 of the 89 state seats in Queensland to the LNP on a two-party-preferred vote of 62.8 per cent, against Labor’s 37.2 per cent.

Queenslanders realize that the state is broke and the public service bloated so they will cut Newman slack as he slashes and burns years of ALP maladministration. I do feel he needs to explain what he is doing in a more proactive manner. It is not good enough to just rely on TV interviews and press reports to get his message across considering the ABC and the Courier Mail will present whatever he says negatively. The ABC is almost begging unions to line up for air time to can him. I’d like to see a weekly time slot devoted to what has been achieved over the last week and why it has been done to remedy the ALP’s stuff-ups. Judith Sloan in the Australian quantifies the bloated public service as she hears Newman is going to cut 1500 jobs in Health;

Gosh, I thought, 1500 jobs sounds quite a lot. So I decided to find out how many people are employed in Queensland Health. The answer is more than 80,000. Annual natural attrition would account for more than double the proposed job cuts of 1500, which represent a mere 1.9 per cent of total employment. But here’s the rub. A decade ago, employment in Queensland Health stood at 49,000. So in 10 years there has been an increase of more than 32,000 employees – an increase of two-thirds. But here’s a further rub. Whereas the number of nurses in effective full-time terms increased by 65 per cent over the decade, the number of managerial and clerical staff rose by 103 per cent during the same period. There are now nearly 15,000 managers and clerical staff in Queensland Health, a fair proportion of whom hang out in the head office in Brisbane.

Federal ALP, unable to campaign on their record of achievements, there being none, only have personal attacks in their magazine. It shouldn’t work and it’s good to see it isn’t. The voters aren’t stupid.