December 22, 2016

School nurses: The Premier of Queensland is a liar

In 1911, a conservative Queensland government appointed Eleanor Bourne to head up a new school nursing service -- spurred by concerns over a huge incidence of trachoma in the children of Western Queensland. 

Both vision and hearing were to be tested initially and other testing was soon added.  The service had a mandate to test every schoolchild in the State at least once.  As a result, many problems were detected early and referred to doctors.

The service was particularly important to  Aboriginals (native blacks)  as both hearing loss and eye problems are something of an epidemic among Aboriginal children -- and the parents are usually far too timid to do anything about it. Many blacks can see and hear today because of interventions the school nurses spurred in their childhoods.

So what did the Anna Bligh Labor government of Queensland do in 2011?  Abolished the service in its centennial year -- on "funding" grounds. There was next to no outcry as Leftist governments are always right, according to the media.

But it was a vicious and heartless decision so the new Labor Party leader Anna Palaszczuk promised in her 2015 election campaign to restore the service -- including vision and hearing tests plus offering nutrition advice.   But cynicism about a politician's promises is always justified so we read that late this year the service was revived -- but testing for vision problems only.

In between the Bligh and Palaszczuk Leftist governments there was however the conservative government of Campbell Newman.

So when the revival of the school nursing service was being discussed, who did the media blame for its abolition?  Campbell Newman, of course! Bligh was in power until 2012 so there is no ambiguity that Newman was completely innocent of the charge.

But believing anything you read in the newspaper is rightly regarded with cynicism.  More interesting is what Palasczuk herself said about the matter.  In January 2015, only four years after the abolition of the service, she blamed Newman.  I quote: "Ms Palaszczuk promised to spend $12 million over four years on restoring a school nurses program she says was cut back by the Newman Government"

So she is a barefaced liar.  With the abolition of the service being so recent, a claim of memory failure could hardly fly.

And such lies are Leftist form.  Leftists very rarely take responsibility for their stuff-ups.  All follies are blamed on the other side and the other side's triumphs are claimed by them.  

Note how the abolition of the White Australia Policy is routinely attributed to Leftist eminence Gough Whitlam when it was in fact abolished in 1966 by the conservative Federal government of  Harold Holt. 

And in the eulogies accompanying the death of Whitlam, I saw nobody admit that  Whitlam's eulogized free university policy was abolished not by the conservatives but by Bob Hawke, a Labor party Prime Minister.  But from all the talk at the time, you would have thought that it was the conservatives who had abolished it.  And so on ... 

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