Palaszczuk’s war on retail
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10 November 2022
5:34 PM
We are approaching the crucial Christmas sale period – the make-or-break moment when businesses terrorised by the government for two years will have a chance to claw their way out of oblivion – which means that it’s time for the Queensland Premier to throw knives at them!
Annastacia Palaszczuk said today in separate tweets:
‘Queensland is entering a new wave so our COVID-19 traffic light system will switch from green to amber form tomorrow. Health Minister @YvetteDAth and Chief Health Officer are speaking #Covid19.’
‘It’s time to be alert – not alarmed.’
‘It is recommended that we wear masks in healthcare settings, on public transport and rideshares, indoors where you cannot socially distance, if you’re older or at risk, and f you are around a vulnerable person.’
The traffic light system is famous for being a failure, consistent with pretty much all other ‘Covid Safe’ policies where the only thing ‘effectively stopped’ was the economy.
Mind you, we can’t expect Palaszczuk to learn from her government’s mistakes. That would require admitting that the mistakes happened in the first place.
Remember people hugging and passing children over border fences? Remember ‘Queensland hospitals are for Queenslanders’? The things done in the name of fear by the Labor state government were truly evil – an example of ideology at any cost.
Imposing an ‘Amber’ status over Queensland is not trivial, even if its demands are voluntary.
Human behaviour is complex and fickle, easily disrupted by political leaders getting up on their soap box with careless words.
Masking people in Summer won’t impact Covid transmission. What it will do is negatively impact retail and hospitality right when the economy desperately needs to recover its Covid debts.
When you mask people indoors, you make them uncomfortable which in turn dramatically cuts the time they spend wandering around a shopping centre. Worse, some people will stay home. Incidental sales, which the retail world relies upon to survive, drop. This decline in revenue is the difference between profit and firing staff.
Where was the customer behavioural modelling for mask-wearing? Let me guess, there wasn’t any…?
The Queensland government is either especially cruel or uniquely incompetent to fuss around with the fragile state of the economy right on Christmas. Next they’ll be complaining that people are being sacked and that ‘capitalism is failing’ because of Climate Change – or some such incoherent nonsense.
Politicians, who spend their lives with a guaranteed salary, appear to care little for the economic system that they bleed dry via taxes. Some of us hoped that the horrific state of the economy post-Covid would teach them a lesson. That might have been wishful thinking.
Let’s not forget that those poor businesses that managed to survive the Covid lockdowns by taking out loans are being rewarded with rising interest rates and nightmare energy bills. A pragmatic government would leave well enough alone rather than ‘talking up fear!’ for no reason.
And it really is ‘no reason’.
Covid was never an emergency event. It was a moderate flu dangerous to a small percentage of people which inexperienced politicians and fame-seeking bureaucrats misused, creating an economic disaster that was wholly avoidable.
Palaszczuk isn’t the only one. Appearing like a ghoul in New South Wales, Dr Kerry Chant popped up to remind everyone to be scared over Christmas.
‘We are starting to see an increase of Covid cases and changes in the variants circulating in NSW, which tells us we are entering the next Covid wave. By looking at all the local information we have and what’s happening overseas we believe Covid cases will rise in the coming weeks.’
Why is NSW Health promoting this message when the World Health Organisation confirmed that there is nothing of concern in the new variants?
Could it be that governments are desperate to offload the unwanted vaccination stock purchased with public money that’s sitting around, ticking toward its expiration date? It’s not going to look good if they have to dump millions of doses into landfill.
‘I just want to reiterate really, the advice of Kerry Chant this morning, the NSW Chief Health Officer, that this is a timely reminder to get your booster, to make sure that you are up to date with your vaccination,’ said the Federal Health Minister, Mark Butler.
As far I can tell, Butler has had very little to say about the rising cases of serious vaccine injury and death across the world along with the increasing scrutiny on mRNA technology. It seems irresponsible for any government minister to continue pushing Covid vaccinations for young people while various question marks hang over their safety. The lack of curiosity regarding side effects is bewildering.
Politicians need to understand that it is essential that retail and hospitality be given every opportunity to recover over the Christmas period – or we really will have an emergency on our hands.
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