Failures loom large 20 years on

QUEENSLAND is a generally more tolerant, less insular place than it was two decades ago when the Goss Labor government was elected.

There have been aberrations in that progression, as the rise of One Nation and its appeal to those disaffected by economic globalisation showed. But Hansonism flamed out for want of genuine fuel: Queenslanders were not bigoted or xenophobic as its agenda suggested they were.

Wayne Goss came to power with high expectations that he would implement an agenda heavy with social policy change but, as with most other aspects of his administration, he hastened slowly. The reforms the Criminal Justice Commission were pushing at the time, including the decriminalisation of prostitution, were ignored or put off.

However, one reform that was quickly introduced was the legalisation of poker machines, which Goss himself nominates now as his biggest regret from his time in government. So he should, not so much for allowing pokies in the first place but for failing to cope with the social ills they produced. Gambling addiction remains a problem that successive Queensland governments have yet to respond to adequately while they become addicted themselves to the tax revenue pokies generate.

In other areas of policy reform, the story is one not so much of unalloyed success but of hesitant progression. Education reform is a case where the reality has failed to match the promise. Year 12 retention rates were about 67 per cent in 1989 and, although static and running behind Victoria, are at about 75 per cent now. But over the same period Queensland's literacy and numeracy rates slipped to distressingly low levels before showing only recent improvement after the Government was embarrassed and cajoled by Canberra into action. For a state that has been mostly under Labor stewardship over the past 20 years, this is little short of scandalous. Premier Anna Bligh is right to put improvements in school attainment at the front and centre of her policy agenda. As the present Labor leader, she has much to make up for.

The Goss government's success in gaining World Heritage listing for Fraser Island was a seminal development but one of its truly lasting legacies was changing public attitudes towards environmental protection. The grand old days of let-it-rip development are hard to live down in a state that had long gained considerable riches by taming the environment. The change in this culture was helped by a series of ministers, starting with Pat Comben and including Molly Robson and Rod Welford, who took the legislative fight up to those powerful interests who had the most to lose once the state started taking its duty to protect the environment seriously. More recently, however, the Government's environment policy has been formulated with at least one eye on the need to gain preferences from Green or green-tinged candidates at election time.

There are two areas - health and indigenous welfare - in which the record of government over the past 20 years has been one of consistent failure and another - child protection - where performance has been mixed at best. The public hospital system's struggle to cope with the ever-increasing demands placed on it is a feature of governments all over the developed world. But the combination of rapid population growth and an unresponsive, hidebound bureaucracy has ensured that the job of tackling Queensland's health woes has become one of managing failure. This is even more acute in the area of indigenous health. The gap between the life expectancy of indigenous and non-indigenous Queenslanders is 18 years, an avoidable tragedy that those in government congratulating themselves this week would do well to contemplate.

Issued by Courier Mail Decmeber 9th 2009

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