And particularly less-so in a state with such a winner-takes-all approach to power as Queensland. Throw in,Brisbane,at the scale of a small state with a party-driven City Hall,and you have a recipe for regular public shade-throwing.
Cue LNP Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner’s out-of-the-blue call last month to cut spending across his $4.3 billion budget by 10 per cent. The reason? To “prioritise keeping costs down for households”.
Part of this penny-pinching will see,for now,$5 million plans for cover over the axed:a public good both sides want (Schrinner put it on the cover of June’s) and the state made a condition for giving the council’s flagship Metro bus project the go-ahead.
That agreement is said to only list the bridge shade as a “proposed concept element” with no deadline. It is still expected to happen,just at a later date yet to be confirmed. Council officers are expected to notify their counterparts in Transport and Main Roads formally this month.
But beyond the bureaucratic cogs turning as you might expect,it’s the quotes from Labor Transport Minister Mark Bailey and Schrinner administration transport spokesperson Ryan Murphy which are maybe most telling.
Already rounds deep into public spats over,, and – to name a few – Schrinner’s show of belt-tightening ahead of his party’s effort to enter a third decade dominating City Hall has lit a match under Labor’s top state parliament brawlers due to.
Treasurer Cameron Dick,whose federal Labor MP brother Milton is another alumnus of the political training ground that is City Hall,used multiple speeches across all three days of parliament’s last sitting week to,saying he could not be trusted by voters.
Dick attempted to tie Schrinner’s cost-cutting and to the ghost of the Newman state government. Schrinner and the LNP are with chances to lump the state and federal Labor governments together.
And across local and state government,the major parties are largely on the same page when it comes to attacking the Greens – whose rise threatens their.
On Monday,the more-progressive party’s latest attempt to pull debate and potential votes in their direction – effectively a plan to by hitting landlords who raise them with sky-high rates – earned the LNP council’s now well-worn “Green/Labor coalition of chaos” retort.
Last month,Deputy Mayor Krista Adams labelled “batshit crazy” in a formal council press release.
While the two lower levels of government enjoyed a good bipartisan relationship – under then-Labor premier Peter Beattie and LNP lord mayor Campbell Newman,no less – the potentially fruitful relationship into another casualty of often-manufactured partisanship.
With long-declining public trust,dragging each other down for the scraps of a more divided and disillusioned community seems an odd choice.
Amid all this, from Deputy Premier Steven Miles and Schrinner trumpeted something to behold in August:agreement on plans to boost housing density in South Brisbane.
Granted the decision was,it’s amazing what gets done when the knives are away.
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