I FIRST met Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk in 2013 when she was the Leader of the Opposition.
As editor of the Fraser Coast Chronicle I was leading a campaign trying to help a group of 64 permanent caravan park residents.
They were at risk of getting kicked out of the Lazy Acres Caravan Park In Hervey Bay because the LNP wanted to sell it and a few other caravan parks it owned.
When the local LNP Member Ted Sorensen refused to help I reached out to Annastacia.
She came up to Hervey Bay to meet with us and the resulting front pages we did were held up in State Parliament a few weeks later.
I have no doubt that the residents we were campaigning for owe a large debt to the Premier because the Newman Government backed down on their plans to sell the caravan parks.
Since that first story I have crossed paths with her on numerous occasions at official events including the opening of the Ripley Satellite Hospital just a few weeks ago.
She has always spoken honestly and has never wavered from the same dedication to the community that she first revealed to me a decade ago.
How she has kept her drive and energy as the Premier for so long amazes me.
She has led from the front during the most difficult of times particularly through floods and COVID.
Now she is getting thrown under the bus by the media and the LNP because she dared take a small break to join her partner at a medical conference in Naples. Why be a politician, you have no privacy, there is always someone wanting to criticize you and if something you do is not popular you will be scorned and attacked.
The issue getting thrown up now is that she shouldn’t have left because we have a youth crime crisis.
Let’s get real, the problem with young people offending doesn’t rest with the government. It’s because for the most part the parents of these children never cared about teaching them respect and the fundamentals of living a rewarding life.
These parents are the ones we should be educating, instead of attacking a Premier who has put her personal life on hold and led from the front for the past decade.
JOKE OF THE WEEK:
The jealous wife
A long married couple were sitting at the table over breakfast one morning when the wife said to her husband.
“If I was to die would you get remarried?”. The husband replied that’s a silly question.
The wife then said, “if you did get remarried would she stay in this house?”.
Once again he refused to answer saying that was a ridiculous question.
She pondered for a while and then said: “If you did get remarried and lived in this house would you let her use my new golf clubs?”.
This time he paused and said: “No, of course not, she’s left handed.”
Ian Cook of Haigslea wins our Joke of the week prize which is a copy of The British Cookbook.
Send your joke to: editor@localnewsgroup.com.au
