The Premier of Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has today announced that her government’s Chief Health Officer, Dr Jeannette Young, will be the next Governor of Queensland.
She will be remembered for being the Premier’s compliant scapegoat, the human shield behind which Palaszczuk hid when making appalling policy decisions, trying to camouflage politics with an opaque veneer of “scientific evidence” and “best medical advice”.
Jeannette Young is the most galling choice Palaszczuk could possibly imagine in the wake of the greatest peacetime policy failure in Australian history: lockdown.
The Premier’s tin ear is matched only by her hubris with the elevation of a spineless bureaucrat allegedly “responsible” (if the Premier is to be believed) for devastating assaults on natural and constitutional freedoms.
Jeannette Young decided to close public schools because she wanted Queenslanders to be more frightened of the Wuhan Flu. It wasn’t scientifically justified, even in March 2020 when there was more speculation than hard data. She admitted the evidence showed schools were not a high-risk environment, but believed closing them down would help Queenslanders think the government’s scare campaign was more real.
“If you go out to the community and say, ‘this is so bad, we can’t even have schools, all schools have got to be closed’, you are really getting to people… It’s more than just the science and the health, it’s about the messaging… It’ll be awful, but we’ve got to do it.”
Not science; politics.
Not an evidence-based decision to deprive a generation of kids irreplaceable months of education, a God-given human right the state has insisted its citizens be entirely dependent upon them for, but a cynical exercise in gas-lighting.
She’s a confessed fear monger.
Science? Please, the woman’s mad ravings occasionally coincide with actual evidence, but that’s more good luck than the result of rigorous processes and checks on recklessness. This previously unknown bureaucrat actually banned the 2020 ANZAC Day military fly-over because ‘social distancing’.
What a spectacular failure in politicking that was! Far from reinforcing the message Palaszczuk’s government wanted us to have about the danger of catching the Wuhan flu from somebody sneezing beside our car in traffic, it made most of us wonder what absolute dill thought that was even possible, let alone from 10,000 feet away!
These are not medical decisions. They are Premier’s decisions. These are decisions any Chief Health Officer with an ounce of integrity should have resigned in protest over roughly mid to late last year when abundant global academic papers and data sites proved the persistence in lockdowns not even remotely beneficial or justified.
The role of a state’s Governor is the most important one in our democracy. In her the powers of our sovereign are reserved. That word is important. It means they are held back, preventing the Premier from ever truly having absolute power, which we can well believe corrupts absolutely.
The powers are vested in (belong to) the Monarch, currently our Queen. She does not in any literal sense ever interfere in Australian politics, and unconditionally always accepts the recommendations of the state Premier or national Prime Minister as to who the Monarch’s representative is.
Democracy only works when the people are virtuous and the leaders wish democracy well more than they crave power. The Premier or Prime Minister must choose for their Governor or Governor General someone who will do the right thing, not the easy thing or the popular thing, or worse: the premier’s bidding.
According to The Good Sauce’s own, Professor David Flint, a good Governor must also have no further ambitions, lest they be tempted to wield their influence for their own benefit. Can anyone say that of Dr Young, who is still only in her late 50s?
Given the highly political nature of appointing such a highly controversial figure, questions must be now asked such as what promises the Premier made to her Chief Health Officer in return for not rocking the boat since she declared an “emergency” in January last year.
More sobering a question is, in a state where the ruling party has no upper house and no accountability between elections apart from the Governor, what might Palaszczuk have in mind for which a new, pliable Governor might be useful?
What can be in no doubt is the complete contempt Annastacia Palaszczuk has for the valid concerns of Queenslanders for their basic freedoms, or the health of democracy itself.
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Dave Pellowe is a Christian writer & commentator, founder of The Good Sauce, convener of the annual Australian Church And State Summit and host of Good Sauce's weekly The Church And State Show, also syndicated on ADH TV. Since 2016 Dave has undertaken the mission of arming Christians to influence culture through events from Perth to Auckland, videos, podcasts and articles published in multiple journals across Australia and New Zealand. [more]
