Google lists 16 synonyms for the word "tax". Politicians have used most of them over the years. Levies, tolls, excises, imposts have all been popular choices for those seeking to hide a sneaky tax. No one beats innovation in this field of linguistic camouflage, however, than those seeking to justify a tax to prop up dud renewable energy investments.   Read more

Smoking continues to be the drug that kills more Australians than any other. The best estimates indicate that smoking kills around 20,000 Australians annually compared to 6000 from alcohol and 2500 from illicit drugs. Australia probably leads the world in reducing smoking rates. We were one of the first countries to place restrictions on advertising and include prominent warnings on packaging. We are at risk of losing that mantle, unfortunately, because of a reluctance to legalise e-cigarettes. Read more

The US President is taking to court allegations that its recent elections lacked integrity. We like to think that our voting systems are comparably unimpeachable. We don’t have “hanging chads”, we don’t use complex software to tabulate results and our elections are run by a central independent agency, rather than a patchwork of 10,000 different bodies as in the US. Australians have an electoral system they can trust, but the Queensland Labor government has undermined that system with the undemocratic amendments they made to local government elections last November. Read more

There are lessons from all elections and this week’s state election is no different. The main takeaway is that voters can never be taken for granted. Last year, Central Queensland voted emphatically for the Liberal National Party. This year Labor took most of the spoils. Competition is a good thing for our region. As Central Queensland has become more of a political battleground more investment in our region has been forthcoming. Read more

I agree with Annastacia Palaszczuk. The last thing Queensland needs is a change of direction, but it is the Labor party that is trying to change the direction of Queensland. The Brisbane-centric, Labor-Greens Queensland government has been trying to conduct radical surgery to change Queensland’s identity. Labor has spent five years denigrating our coal industry, imposing massive new regulations on farmers and letting crime spiral out of control. Our identity as Queenslanders is entwined with what we produce. We are banana benders, we watch lightning crack over cane fields, it was a Queensland shearer that grabbed the jumbuck and our national airline starts with the letter ‘Q’. We mine coal, copper, gas, and bauxite. We make aluminium and zinc. And we grow cattle, cotton, grains and sheep. The lights would go out if it was not for the surplus of coal-fired power we create in Queensland. Read more

This past week I drove 2200 kilometres through Central Queensland. I visited five coal mines, farms and a few pubs for a drink and a meal. Two things strike you when you drive through Central Queensland. First, so much wealth is generated in our region. Second, the state of our roads do not match the level of prosperity that we generate. Central Queensland produces $40 billion of wealth for Australia every year, from a population base of just over 400,000. That’s an income per person of more than $100,000, double that of Tasmania. Our higher productivity is largely thanks to the coal, cattle, cane and cotton that we produce in the region. Read more

As passengers come into land at the Brisbane airport, few would realise that they are flying over a coral reef with more marine diversity than any single reef in the Great Barrier Reef. The Flinders Reef is just 30 kilometres off Brisbane. Yet life in Brisbane continues as normal while more and more regulation is imposed on farmers in North Queensland to “protect” the reef. How can reefs in Moreton Bay survive without imposing any specific regulations on the millions that farm, mine and work in the Brisbane catchment? Read more

Last Monday, I left home early to make a 9.30am meeting with Mayor Jack Dempsey in Bundaberg. Things were on track until, just after Miriam Vale, I missed the turn-off to the shortcut and lost about 20 minutes. I am good mates with Jack so he understood, and we still found time to catch up, but how is it that the back roads are quicker than sticking to the main highway? The federal government has spent over $10 billion on the Bruce in recent years. Our state is no longer cut in two when the Yeppen floods. Yet there remain large parts of the Bruce that goats would struggle to walk. The LNP’s promise to build a four-lane Bruce Highway is the right call so that we can have a world class road linking the north and south of our state. The most important economic thing we can do is to build things that last so that our efforts deliver jobs and opportunities to our children. In Bundaberg, I met with irrigators impacted by the negligent construction of the Paradise Dam. Read more

The construction of the Adani Carmichael mine should be complete in a shorter time than it took governments to assess Adani’s black throated finch management plan. How have we ended up in a country where it takes longer to think about doing something than it actually takes to do that thing? The Adani mine took a full decade just to get its approvals and it now looks like it will be built within about 18 months, pending rain, this summer. The New Acland mine has been waiting 13 years for its approvals. We educate a child in a shorter time than it has taken this mine to get going. Read more

Politics can be brutal. So it was no surprise this week to hear that the NSW Nationals party leader John Barilaro needed to take a break for his mental health. John had had a grueling fortnight fighting with his Coalition colleagues in the Liberal Party. Many senior Liberals were calling for him to resign because he had threatened to leave the Coalition over the National party’s concerns about proposed laws to protect koalas. Read more