Tuesday 2 August 2011

Minister Robertson must apologise and then resign or be sacked

The below posting was posted on my Blog on the 28th July in anticipation of the release of the 'Flood Report'.

In my concluding paragraph I make mention of the possibility of a class action. The Lawyers as I pen this article, are busily gathering instructions for a class action. If this action proceedes and is successful, Queensland may well need a special levy to pay out the billions of dollars of compensation.

The findings have been adverse and the inept leadership of Minister Robertson will cost you and I many thousand of dollars. The least that Robertson can do is to apologise and then resign as per the Westminster tradition of Ministerial responsibility.

'It may well come to pass that the Brisbane flood of 2011 was a man made phenomenon created by human panic as a result of previous inept government decisions; the lack of adequate public infrastructure during the Beattie premiership.

It will be recalled that Wivenhoe Dam was built principally as mitigation Dam following the Brisbane flood of 1974. The Bjelke -Petersen Government did not want to get caught again without a flood mitigation structure on the upper reaches of the Brisbane River and fast tracked the construction of the Wivenhoe Dam.

Notwithstanding Beattie's Government 10 year popularity, it did little about building adequate public infrastructure in the South East . Water supplies, roads networks and other government services were all put into the too hard basket...lots of plans, forward strategy and bureaucratic process but no money to put the plans into action with a building programme.

It was more interested in retaining popularity than solving problems.
Wivenhoe Dam changed from a dual reticulation/flood mitigation dam to a dam solely for the storage of water for Brisbane. As a result of this change of priority the Wivenhoe Dam's water was preserved for domestic use as the Beattie Government did not want to face another period as it did in the 2007/2008 when Brisbane in particular was on sever water restrictions.

If the Beattie Government had governed instead of sitting on its collective hands and spinning its way out from one crisis to another and kept pace with the public infrastructure including adequate water reticulation, Wivenhoe Dam could have been near empty with the onset of 2010/11 wet season instead of near full capacity.

I believe the State Government may be skating on thin ice and the culpability of the Government will depend on the Floods Iinquiry's findings. If it comes down with adverse findings the possibility of a class action may exist with momentous implications for SEQWater and the State Government not to mention the state election due in 2012.'

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