Rudd's Foundation

LETTER TO EDITOR - 14 August 2007

Dear Editor

Over the past few months, Premier Beattie has unabashedly ripped the "local" out of Local Government while his Federal leader, Kevin Rudd, has stood limply to one side promising to "look very carefully" at the forced amalgamations.

It is not so long ago that Kevin Rudd, as Director-General for then‑Premier Goss, was ripping the heart out of rural and regional Queensland himself. Nicknamed "Dr Death" and "Toecutter" by his work colleagues, he set about slashing services that the city politicians thought we did not need: shutting schools, court houses, rail lines, and government offices all over the State.

Heads rolled in virtually every department as he systematically set about politicising the public service to suit Labor's agenda of transferring power from communities to bureaucrats like himself.

Under the guise of implementing much needed Fitzgerald reforms, Rudd succeeded in concentrating government decision‑making in the capital, nobbling the fledgling Freedom of Information ideal and ensuring accountability was mentioned often but implemented rarely.

The engrained culture of bullying, cover‑ups and managerial madness which has typified the Beattie administration since is the direct fruit of Kevin Rudd's three years of remodelling Queensland under Goss.

Beattie's forced amalgamation of democratically elected councils just builds on the foundation laid by Kevin Rudd. Local Government is seen as their tool to further concentrate power in fewer hands and to deny the citizens of Queensland the local representation that is essential to democracy.