Opinion
That’s it. With the resignation of Annastacia Palaszczuk, that’s the last of the Branch Covidian dictators gone from Australia. Every single state premier who presided over the dictatorial regimes of lockdowns, and forced vaccines and masks, is out of politics.
Although, scandalously, each of them was allowed to slither out of office rather than face the judgement of voters. Let alone run, tarred and feathered, screaming through the streets, as they deserved.
In what many thought was just an update on the looming cyclone off the north Queensland coast, Ms Palaszczuk pivoted and tearfully announced her resignation.
It was a bombshell to many, including some in her own office and most Labor MPs.
Palaszczuk’s demise, though, it was a matter of “what took so long?”, rather than “shock resignation!” As far back as September, it was obvious that Plucka’s position was untenable. Like the rest of the Class of Covid, the one-off boost from the pandemic had long evaporated, as even the easily-spooked sheep slowly cottoned on that they’d been duped. It was widely expected that she wouldn’t return from a long, overseas “holiday” as premier. But Plucka turned out to be a little thicker than Dictator Dan and Sneakers McGowan, hanging on like long Covid.
In the end, it took the powers behind Labor’s throne, the big union bosses, to tell their puppet to take a walk.
Just last week she shut down criticism from former Labor ministers that she should consider resigning to give the party a chance at retaining government for a fourth term.
ABC Australia
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, she pulled the trigger.
In reality, she had a factional gun held to her head.
The Australian can reveal Ms Palaszczuk was urged by powerbroker and union leader Gary Bullock and Queensland ALP president John Battams to consider her future in a “frank” conversation days before her tearful resignation on Sunday.
The third-term Premier had also been warned that union leaders planned to raise concerns with her at their quarterly meeting with cabinet ministers this week […] make no mistake: she didn’t want to go. This was not a veteran leader who had run out of puff, who professed to lack the will or physical ability to soldier on. Palaszczuk was put on notice by the only people capable of getting through to her – the bosses of the industrial left and Queensland Council of Unions, the faceless power behind her throne.
The unrest inside the labour movement had been building for months, as successive polls showed Palaszczuk’s Midas touch with voters had lost its shine, with her personal popularity diving and Labor facing defeat at next October’s state election.
But, what the union bruvvas want, the bruvvas get. Especially in Queensland, where Palaszczuk shamelessly bloated the ranks of the public service, ensuring a rusted-on powerbase. Live by the union muscle, though…
QCU general secretary Jacqueline King – who, at a rally last week, publicly admitted to disquiet among unions about Palaszczuk’s leadership – set out a confronting agenda for the regular quarterly meeting between union chiefs and cabinet ministers this coming Wednesday, a little-known feature of the governance structure under Palaszczuk.
The Australian
And what a legacy she leaves: a state with one of the highest per-capita public sectors, one of the worse-performing economies, and, of course, the legacy of Covid.
Similar to Daniel Andrews and Mark McGowan, Palaszczuk’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic will be remembered as draconian, confused and cruel. Palaszczuk, Andrews, McGowan, Scott Morrison, Gladys Berejiklian, Steven Marshall, Peter Gutwein and Michael Gunner – inaugural national cabinet members when it was formed in March 2020 – are all gone.
The Australian
It’s all grim news for Anthony Albanese, too. If, as seems likely, the Coalition is returned at the next Queensland state election, it will rightly be seen as the first crumble of Labor’s “red wall”. Add to that a resources-dependent state being belted by Labor’s demented Net Zero policies, mortgage-paying families screwed ever tighter by punishing interest rates, and, finally, the especially massive rejection of Albanese’s “Voice” referendum by Queenslanders, and federal Labor are looking down the barrel of being wiped out of the handful of Queensland seats they still hold.
So expect to see Labor pandering to anti-Semitism even harder. Got to hold off the Greens, and hang on to those increasingly precious Muslim votes in Western Sydney, after all.