CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Critics and opponents of Queensland Premier Steven Miles can say a lot of things about him, but they can’t say he isn’t creative.
The man that brough Queensland 50 cent fares for all public transport, and has started handing out 20% discounts on all car rego, has this week announced a government policy unlike anything ever considered in post-War Australia.
Speaking to the media today, Miles has said Labor will begin introducing state-owned petrol stations if re-elected in October, with the sites to be determined by where competition is most needed across the state.
This mean cost-price petrol, in rural areas, to break up monopolies that have been dominated by the price-gouging servo cartels.
Mr Miles said the state-owned fuel stations would operate on a cost recovery basis and would sell petrol and diesel, alongside electric vehicle fast chargers.
“Publicly owned fuel stations will charge a fair price for fuel, increase competition, and ensure Queenslanders have more choice when it comes to filling up,” he said.
This kind of old fashioned agrarian socialism could only ever be proposed by a Queensland state Premier with nothing to lose, as he claws to win back the regional working class voters that Labor once had locked in through trade union membership and the protection of rural manufacturing.
In his State of the State address on Tuesday, Mr Miles also announced Labor’s plan to ban petrol stations from raising the price of fuel more than once a day and a trial to cap price increases to 5 cents a litre a day.
It’s the type of political creativity that has both the LNP opposition and their media department at the Courier Mail and Sky News scratching their heads, as Miles begins exploring what can only be described as ‘Katterist’ politics.
As both a card carrying member of the CFMEU with communist sympathies and a social conservative, the safest seat in rural Australian politics belongs to the Federal Indedepent for North-West Queensland, Bob Katter.
With his son in the Mount Isa state seat for the same region, and a handful of other likeminded state MPs that form an ever-growing minor party, The KAP are a formidable force in rural Australian politics.
And right now, they like what they are hearing from the Queensland Premier.
“Ya see I think this young fella gets it….” said Bob Katter, before continuing to give a brief ten minute sound bite that was still too lengthy for print.
