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Comment by testrun | Hacker News Reader

That same government is still in power. It is the Labor government in Queensland, for anybody that is wondering.

Yes. Our biggest problem in Queensland is that Labor aren't very good, but the opposition (LNP) is much worse and are basically just an absolute joke - they were a complete disaster last time they were in power (and voted out in a huge wipeout the very next election), have a lot of far-right crazies, are incompetent and extremely ideological. Minor parties like the Greens are getting more traction because of it, and there's been a big independent movement in the last few years across the country so perhaps that will dilute Labor's power somewhat. But we'll have to see next election...

What did they do that was worse?

They went on big firing sprees around the public service, just absolute slash and burn style, huge spending cuts to the budget, reduction in services, and were getting ready to privitise a lot of public assets that bring in a lot of revenue (things that have been privitised in other states and have turned out to be disasters there, gouging people for essential services, like the power transmission networks). They under-invested in health, public transport, etc.

They'd been voted in I think because there was desire for change, and very quickly the public sentiment changed. Kind of like "oh crap, not like this"... It's very unusual for a Government to only have one term but they were booted out decisively. Since then the party seems even less competent... So they haven't been able to make much of an impact in the last few elections.

One more point is that the QLD Labour wing is much further to the right and much less progressive when it comes to coal and global warming. The vested interest in coal mining has limited a lot of the green energy push even as places like Brisbane and The Reef face some of the biggest challeges due to climate change.

That LNP government was absolutely amazing. They managed to go from absolute majority to losing an election in a single election cycle. Campbell Newman (the premier at the time) managed to pretty much piss off every voting bloc in the state. All done in three years. Cannot remember any other politician that was able to do that.

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