Regardless, I'm a little pissed off that the CMC - an (formerly) independent body established to fight political corruption has essentially become an extension of the QPS Drug Squad.
Newman stacks it with Liberal cronies. Some resign in protest. He stacks it with more Liberal cronies.
They refuse to investigate corruption in the Queensland Government and instead turned their efforts to winning "media capital". (Ties in with the "Strong government, Strong on crime mantra"
Nothing says "I'm doing my job" better than a Media circus and a couple of high profile victims to slap across the wrist.
Although, It would be fucking marvelous if the CMC could have spent the last 12 months doing their actual job - investigating political corruption - we might not have the Deputy premier / Health minister giving out $7 million dollar health service contracts to a Liberal Party donor without it even going out to tender.
To me, this just wreaks like a bunch of extremely high paid liberal bureaucrats kicking up a media circus in order to save their jobs. The (what seems like) fifty thousand media leaks over the past 2 weeks wreaks of a smokescreen and an agenda.
This rant sums it up for me politically.
Fitzgerald apparently is mightily pissed off, and so he should be. Newman successfully, and rather stealthily, took apart a corruption watchdog that the public strongly supported originally formed from the whole Joh mess.
Funnily enough, the federal government and most state governments have bipartisan support when it comes to either diluting the power of their anti-corruption bodies, or not implmenting one at all.
NSW is now the one state left with a working anti-corruption body in the ICAC. Hopefully the ICAC can last.
Of course, this isn't excusing Hunt and other football players. I have no pity for them. It's been an open secret for a long time that a surprisingly large number of football players of all codes abusing recreational drugs.
