By Jim O’Toole
A bankrupt Queensland Labor Party has resorted to sending its motor vehicle compliance hitmen (colloquially known as Mermaids) into privately owned car parks at shopping centres fining pensioners and lower socio-economic groups for having a minor crack in a windscreen or a worn tyre that could be down in tread but quite safe.
While we could say the Transport Department compliance officers are only doing their job, we should say they are being directed by Labor Treasurer Cameron Dick to strip as much loot as possible from hapless motorists who can barely afford to keep their vehicles on the road. In a private car park? Any smart solicitor should be able to tear up these tickets.
Queensland Labor’s Treasury was forced to repay several hundred thousand dollars it ripped off Malanda motorists in November after tenacious Katters Australian Party member for Hill Shane Knuth took on the Main Roads Department and its dodgy, inaccurate speed camera which was set up on the edge of town.
Hostile Malanda residents about to round up Labor’s roadside cash cows
Fuel at $2 a litre in the Tablelands town of Mareeba, which includes a federal excise of 49.6 cents a litre plus GST, is just another Labor/UN attack on transport and the food supply chain. Coupled with registration and insurance costs, add on exorbitant car repair charges and tyres going through the roof it is almost impossible to keep a car on the road, and for a town council that refuses to introduce a local bus service, pensioners again feel the full brunt of the spiralling cost of living.
Local supermarket shelves are often more empty than full, red meat charges of $25 a kilo for inedible steak coupled with Coles and Woolworths’ ‘million mile’ fruit and vegetables after local produce is shipped 1800 klms south to Brisbane markets then suffers another 1800 klms return trip to shelves in the far north with a 100 per cent or more markup.
Any spare money the Labor socialists get their hands on is funnelled into the bottomless pit of the 1932 Brisbane Olympics preparations.
Don’t think voting for the Liberals in October will make any difference. They too support the Games that in all probability will never take place.
Note: The mermaids took a note of our photographer’s number plate. Unfortunately for them the car is 100 per cent roadworthy.