Green Up Moggill

Philip Machanick, Greens candidate, Moggill

Transition Towns Kenmore Candidates’ Debate

18 March 2008

I was pleasantly surprised last year when I heard that the Transition Towns idea had made it to Kenmore. We cannot wait for governments to act in a time of crisis, a time that requires a major transformation.

Much of the failure of governments to act on the need for transformation is a failure of imagination. Someone needs to lead the way by showing what can be done, even if on a smaller scale than a government-driven transformation.

Here I would like to quote Margaret Mead:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

How major a transformation are we facing? The changes we will need to make over the next years and decades are as big as the changes since the nineteenth century, with its gas lit streets travelled by horse and buggy. The twentieth century changed all that with the development of commercial air travel and the car, with cheap fossil fuels driving not only transport but also the apparently marvelous clean form of energy, electricity.

But that era is fast drawing to a close, and we must be ready for a new era, or we will be left behind as surely as those who believed the horse and buggy was the way of the future in 1909.

This urgency is caused by a failure of imagination that has slowed the pace of change, until we are faced with an increasingly urgent task of coping with carbon emissions reductions, a task on which we are way behind.

Two key issues are converging to drive change rapidly: peak oil and climate change. 30 years after Henry Ford first mass-produced his Model-Ts, horses were still in wide use. That is the natural pace of large-scale change, and we must face up to the fact that this time, because we have been so slow to get started, it will have to be faster.

If we do not try to get ahead of the worldwide current of change, we will be swept away by it. Our fossil-fuel dependent economy will collapse; our coal exports increasingly falling out of favour.

The choice we are facing is as stark as it is real. Get rolled over, or get into the lead.

Let’s see how change plays out close to home as well as for the state as a whole.

Climate change threatens food supply; we know the general trend, but cannot predict precise changes in weather patterns. It is therefore crazy to destroy prime farmland with projects like the Traveston Crossing dam, and coal mines out to the west of us in Felton and the Darling Downs – even more so when the future demand for coal is becoming uncertain. Food supply is also threatened by high energy costs; farmers should be included in energy production through solar and wind farms on unproductive land, and second-generation biofuels production, that does not compete with food supply.

Travel will unavoidably become more expensive, especially with high-emissions technologies. There are two remedies for that in and near cities: improved electrified public transport to reduce the need to drive cars, and better placement of facilities and services to reduce the need to travel. Once you have everyone in electrified public transport, you can clean up the electricity supply. For Brisbane, the Greens propose a light rail system that would bring the city closer to the outer suburbs. We also propose two new solar thermal power plants for the state, as a first step to clean base-load power. Other obvious steps, back in Moggill, include local health facilities and more schools in the outer suburbs.

In an era of expensive energy, we may just score the advantage of rediscovering the concept of community, a neighbourhood where your kids go to school, you go to the doctor, you spend your leisure hours, you get to know your neighbours and the elderly need not be lonely.

What’s more, if we no longer had pure dormitory suburbs – and here I think of the ex-pineapple farms in Moggill – many more of us would work close to home. How good would that be?

In this new world, building roads like the Kenmore Bypass no longer makes sense: we will get around by public transport, and use our cars for leisure. How many people, in any case, like to drive their car in heavy traffic?

Another big source of traffic – and of unacceptable danger to children – is travel to and from school. The dangers of school drop-off zones is one of the most frequent complaints I hear. A comprehensive school bus system would not only take cars off the roads, but make our children a lot safer.

Back to health. There are many good arguments for large tertiary hospitals. You can’t build a team of top specialists unless they have enough cases to keep in practice. On the other hand, the increasing cost of moving people means that small local hospitals make sense. These smaller hospitals would cover emergencies and routine cases, with the big tertiary hospitals covering the more difficult cases. So we propose a small local hospital be built somewhere in this electorate.

The state Labor government has the balance wrong: they are moving the Royal Children’s Hospital to a smaller site, and have no plan for small local hospitals.

For the longer-term, we propose building on our world-class research to develop the clean energy technologies of the future that the rest of the world desperately wants. I’ve worked in top universities and research labs. The talent we have here is right up there. Why then do we allow great innovations in solar technologies to slip out of our grasp, to be commercialized in the US or China? Queensland is the sunshine state and, the state government tells is, the smart state. Why not put these two together and become the smart sunshine state?

One of the things you so often hear is that doing the right thing by the environment is all very well, but where do we find the money?

I have some ideas on that. To fund our little local hospital, let’s draw a line through the destruction of the Royal Children’s Hospital. We could build a pretty good local hospital for a fraction of the $2-billion saved.

To fund a transition to clean energy and to fund the great clean energy research we know we can do right here in Queensland, in our great universities, in the CSIRO right here in our own electorate, I’m eyeing an even bigger chunk of misallocated money. The state government is planning on spending over $30-billion on doubling our capacity to export coal by 2015. How crazy is that? Haven’t they heard there’s a worldwide movement to cap carbon emissions?

Let’s grab back as much as we can of the money that’s being allocated to crazy projects, projects based on a nineteenth century mindset, and use that money to build the economy of the future with real green jobs, jobs in delivering safe, clean, efficient public transport, energy-efficient homes, clean energy and communities we can all be proud to live in.

We don’t need the Kenmore Bypass. We don’t need the Traveston Crossing Dam. We don’t need to redouble our efforts to export coal. We do need to gear our economy, our lifestyle, our way of doing business for the future.

The smart sunshine state. That’s what the Greens stand for.

We are not talking much about the environment in the Moggill campaign because everyone knows that’s the Greens strong point. Still some may like reassurance so I present here some independent assessments.

A combined score card of the major parties in the Queensland state election has been issued by various environmental groups. The Wilderness Society has also issued one. Here they are (click on the pictures to see a bigger version):

Queensland Greens propose a city-wide light rail system to supplement the existing public transport network. Light rail has several benefits. It is quicker and cheaper to put in than heavy rail. Routes along which it runs become a focus for development, especially shops and businesses. By contrast, bus routes can easily change, reducing the certainty needed for planning for future business. Although parts of the system may run like a tram through city streets, we envisage that most of the network will be separated from roads. Some sections may run above the existing rail network in areas of high density.

In Moggill, we propose to take the light rail system through Kenmore South to Pullenvale and Moggill, with a possible extension across the river to meet the Ipswich line, depending on local consultation about a river crossing.

The alignment of the route is initially proposed to follow the Kenmore Bypass corridor, since this area was originally designated as a light rail corridor.

The actual route will be investigated taking into account environmental impacts and noise.

Before we would start drawing lines on a map, we would have an extensive community consultation to determine the ideal routing of the line, including options other than the Kenmore Bypass corridor.

This plan is part of the Greens commitment to helping you get around, without being stuck in heavy traffic. It is also part of the Greens commitment to real green jobs. It is also part of involving you in planning your own community, so let me know if you have comments or ideas of your own.

Please also remember the survey where light rail is one of the options on which to express your opinion.

The following survey arises out of many opinions I’ve heard while talking to people. There’s a limit to how many people I can talk to, so please let me know by taking the survey what you think.

You can also email me if you want to talk further.

The survey is anonymous with some checks to prevent duplicate submissions.

As always, I value community opinion.

Thanks for all the responses. Watch this space for follow-ups

Let’s use the best science to make Brisbane safe, says Greens candidate


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“In the wake of the Victoria Black Saturday disaster, it is important to consider whether fire management in Queensland is up to scratch,” says Greens candidate for Moggill, Dr Philip Machanick. “In consulting my science advisors, I am troubled to learn that some preventive fire strategies in Brisbane could be increasing risk of fire.”

There has been reporting in Victoria of the need to reduce fuel loads, and to avoid dangerous strategies in high-fire areas like planting big trees close to houses.

“Reducing fuel loads sounds like a good idea,” Dr Machanick continues, “but it is also important to ensure that you don’t end up making the problem worse by replacing the burnt fuel by vegetation that burns hotter and faster. The problem arises because frequent burn-offs of the same large area selects for fire-adapted vegetation. Why is this bad? Fire adapted vegetation uses a combined strategy of burning hot and fast to clear the competition, then growing back rapidly after the fire. This means that a poorly-managed preventive burning program can increase the risk of catastrophic fire.”

Addressing the Queensland situation specifically, Dr Machanick says, “I don’t know if this is the case in Victoria, but in Queensland, we have a lot of exotic African grass, much of which is highly fire-adapted. Around Brisbane, the city council has a preventive burning program that fails to take this fact into account. If you look for areas they’ve burnt, you can see singed trees with no indigenous undergrowth, only exotic grasses, ready to burn hotter and faster next time some dolt drops a smouldering cigarette butt out of their car window, or deliberately lights a fire.”

Dr Machanick takes The Australian to task for assigning blame to the Nillumbik Shire Council before all the facts are known, and publishing strongly-worded opinion pieces that say the best science was ignored, while survivors are still grieving. “It’s possible that mistakes were made, but the people who made these decisions have paid a heavy price. It is extremely insensitive to go hard on criticising them when we should be focusing on disaster recovery. This is the same paper that tells us routinely that we should ignore the best science on climate change. I hope this means they are coming around to the view that we should always use the best science.”

He concludes: “In the wake of the Victorian disaster, rather than the usual finger-pointing and blame shifting, I hope we can have some real solid debate on the best science of fire prevention and survival. We have to get this right because climate change will lead to more frequent, longer and hotter heat waves.”

Many more bicycles are sold than cars in Australia, a trend that has persisted over the last nine years. You wouldn’t think it from how little infrastructure is provided for bikes. Given the combined problems of climate change, peak oil and the obesity epidemic, getting more people out of their cars and onto bikes has to be a priority. Why it isn’t for the other parties is not for me to say; it definitely is for the Greens.

I plan on campaigning for a number of improvements in bike infrastructure, including continuing with current plans to improve the bikeway infrastructure. However, bikeways are not enough. It should be safe to ride a bike in suburban and city streets as well.

Here are some details. Watch this space as I pick up more ideas from the community.

• safe bike paths in suburban and city streets
  • bikeways are only part of the solution; local streets as well as the long-haul routes need to be safe
  • paint on a road is no protection from a vehicle weight 40 times your weight
• cycle and pedestrian awareness built into road design
  • for example if the footpath and cycle path are raised relative to the road surface, drivers crossing these paths have to be aware that they are no longer in a car-only space
• environmentally sensitive mountain biking
  • end the conflict between mountain bikers and conservationists in our green spaces
• include bikes in detour planning
  • when road construction or capital works impede traffic flow alternatives for cars are always added
  • bike paths sometimes simply disappear

Watch this space for brief reviews of science topics and pointers to places where you can find out more.

If the World is Warming, How can we have very cold weather?
Global warming refers to the long-term world-wide average. Redistribution of energy from one part of the planet to another may make some areas warmer and others cooler. For example, in the northern hemisphere 2009-2010 winter, some areas experienced extreme cold. However, if you look at the distribution of northern hemisphere temperatures, what happened was that the Arctic warmed considerably. Look at the image: the Arctic region shows strong warming, with Greenland considerably warmer than usual (more accurately, less chilly), yet Northern Europe and North America are large local areas of cooling. Possibly this effect caused cold air to move south, but in any case, the cooler overall northern hemisphere in the most inhabited regions has hit the news, a slightly misleading picture when you look at the whole map.

Dead Zones
A dead zone is part of the ocean where oxygen levels are too low (less than 2 parts per million) to support life, or anoxic. Here is a site at Montana State University that provides some information. For more, see NASA’s information on dead zones. Algal blooms can make part of an ocean anoxic. In an extreme case, about 251-million years ago, the oceans became widely anoxic, as part of a mass extinction event at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic though probably that event had different causes.

Life In Your Back Yard
Want to find out if there are endangered species or unwanted alien invaders somewhere, or just check out who or what your wild neighbours are? The federal environment department has a great tool for finding these things out. Click the “Interactive Map“ link, find your area of interest on the map, click Report and use the mouse to drag out a rectangle on the map.

How Green is the electric car?
Electric cars – in the early days of motoring, a mainstream option – are making a comeback, with variations such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids. But how green are they really? Here’s an article with more detail. Check out Tesla’s first sedan. A UK company, Riversimple, has some interesting ideas on how to build an ultra-efficient car using a hydrogen fuel cell. I remain unconvinced of the hydrogen economy because hydrogen takes a lot of energy to produce, but Riversimple has some interesting ideas, like leasing the cars rather than selling them as a way of avoiding the false economy of planned obsolescence.

Smart Grid
Something that will be talked about increasingly is managing energy use more intelligently not only to be more efficient but to fit swings in demand to swings in supply better, as a remedy for the intermittency of some modes of renewable energy. Look out for articles about the smart grid such as this one.

Electric Vehicles
Now that the Obama administration is talking up clean energy, there’s been an explosion of interest in electric vehicles, so much so that rather than summarize articles, I’ll list pointers to them here as I encounter them:

• Willie D. Jones. New Electric Power Train Promises 160-km All-Electric Range—on a Bus! IEEE Spectrum, April 2009

Biochar
Biochar is the idea of burning carbon-containing materials in low oxygen (pyrolysis), resulting in charcoal that can be buried in the ground, improving the soil while sequestering carbon and reducing nitrous oxide (potent greenhouse gas) emissions from the soil. Biochar can also be used to produce biofuels as a byproduct. Here’s a nice YouTube summary of Australian work on biochar:

“Clean” coal
Various projects claim to be cleaning up coal. Carbon sequestration is one of the buzz words. The theory is that you can bury the CO₂ deep underground. In practice, to do so on a significant scale would be very hard. The perceived need for carbon sequestration arises from the incorrect perception that a coal producing country like Australia cannot survive a transition away from coal, a claim that is hotly contested even by former coal supporters. Here are some contrary views:

• Quarry vision: why clean coal isn’t the answer, ABC Radio National, 25 March 2009
• Quarry vision: why coal is no longer important, ABC Radio National, 25 March 2009

• Mining stalwart sees no future in carbon plan, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 April 2009

Some obstacles: worldwide emissions would amount to around 30km³ per year even compressed down to a liquid. One power station would be a lot less but still a vast volume of toxic gas to handle. Pumping it out at high temperature through a high smoke stack dissipates it into the air, and turbulence mixes it into the atmosphere quickly. A cold leak at ground level on the other hand will not dissipate fast, and can kill people in large numbers, as occasionally happens as a result of volcanic processes. Here is a detailed critique I wrote of a “clean coal” proposal for Felton in Queensland. And here is a Coen brothers ad featuring their take on clean coal:

Forest management and climate change
The forestry lobby is big on the benefits of harvesting timber. Cutting down trees, they claim, is somehow good because new growth will sequester even more carbon. The reality is a lot more complex than that; logging old growth is almost always a net loss, and managing plantations for the best overall return on carbon emissions takes careful management. This Forest, Carbon, Climate Myths slide show covers most of the major issues.

Regenerating lost forests
Watch biologist Willie Smits explain how he re-grew clearcut rainforest in Borneo, saving local orangutans – and at the same time creating work for the locals. Ignore the car ads.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Some people think that the hard economic times ahead are a good reason to go slow on dealing with climate change.

Think again.

These are the same people who ran the world’s economy into the worst economic crisis since 1929.

The Queensland economy is heavily reliant on coal revenues. Coal is about 80% of the problem of climate change, and we are a big contributor not only through our own use but our exports. However, coal is not a huge employer. Modern mining is more capital than labour intensive. Less that 3% of all Queenslanders work in mining of any description. Many more work in tourism than in coal. We should be working hard to protect our great environmental icons, like the Great Barrier Reef. We cannot do that without international cooperation. But it is crazy to expect that cooperation if we don’t set realistic emissions targets ourselves.

The next notion is that it is somehow wise to rely on coal revenues, because fossil fuels will be with us for the next 200 years or so. That kind of estimate relies on use at current rates, an unrealistic starting point since we know usage is growing. How much? The authoritative BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2008 shows that energy use grew 2.4% from 2006 to 2007. One of the arguments of the pro-fossil-fuel lobby is that we mustn’t curtail use of fossil fuels because that would be unjust to developing countries, so let’s allow the growth rate to be higher to allow them to industrialise. I’ve graphed three scenarios for depletion of reserves:

• continued use at today’s rate, calibrated to get reserves to zero in 200 years (blue curve)
• continued escalation at 2.4% (red curve)
• escalation of demand at 5% per annum (yellow curve)

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Fossil fuels could run out in as little as 50 years. That’s good cause to pause and think.

What will happen if one of the faster depletion scenarios pans out?

First, long before any fossil fuels disappear from production, we will be subject to wild swings in price, as a combination of supply shortages and speculation push prices through the roof, only ending when the world economy crashes. Sound familiar?

Second, the various types of fuel will not deplete at the same time. Coal will be around a lot longer than oil for example. The trouble is we are increasingly being left with the dirtiest, least efficient forms of fuel. Converting coal into something like oil is expensive and emissions-intensive.

That brings me to the final problem. The faster emissions grow, the sooner we will be forced to make deep cuts. Why? Because in pre-industrial times, natural processes of carbon emission and absorption were in balance. While some extra CO₂ can be absorbed, not all can; about half remains in the atmosphere in the short term. After 1000 years, almost 20% of the excess we’ve emitted will still be there. What this means is that once we’ve hit a CO₂ level that is generally accepted to be the safe limit, we will have to move to world-wide zero-emissions. Anything less will continue to add to the level in the atmosphere. Worse, the biggest sponge of CO₂ is the oceans. Dissolved CO₂ forms an acid in water, and ocean acidification is one more threat to the Great Barrier Reef, already endangered by temperature rises.

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Rushing headlong into maximising coal exports therefore is a crazy approach. We will suddenly find ourselves on the wrong side of a worldwide moratorium on coal use. And if the current resistance to change is anything to go by, we’ll get there only after irreparable damage has been done. What will it take? Loss of the Great Barrier Reef? The collapse of the Kakadu and the Murray-Darling ecosystems?

All of these are not only great environmental resources and Australian icons but much bigger sources of jobs than mining.

What is the alternative?

We need a coherent plan to phase out coal, and to move to renewables. If we wait until the rest of the world moves, it will be like running out of road at a cliff, and pressing the accelerator. Phasing out coal with the big investment we already have in coal power plants cannot happen fast without economic disruption. That’s why a slow phase down has to start as soon as possible. Yet we see no action on that front, nor do we see any attempt at slowing coal exports. On the contrary, exports are being ramped up. Or at least capacity is; at time of writing, demand drops as a result of the worldwide recession were resulting in job losses on the mines.

That brings me to the great opportunity the recession offers. Governments are trying to spend their way out of it. Much of the work in ushering in a new green economy is necessarily labour-intensive. We can install solar hot water on every available roof. We can pump money into research to make new initiatives like hot rocks geothermal and solar thermal power viable. We can start working on a public transport network with mostly electrical vehicles, the better to be able to convert to clean power at a flick of a switch. We can work on making Queensland not just the smart state or the sunshine state but the smart sunshine state.

Wouldn’t that be great? We are already world leaders in sporting achievement and the biological sciences. Why should we not be world leaders in the new energy economy?

Coal is holding us back. We are world leaders in exporting something that, increasingly, no one will want. Why can’t we aim to be world leaders in what everyone is going to want soon: renewable energy technologies? Coal is dirty stuff as soon as it’s out of the ground. Why don’t we keep it there, until we figure out a better use for it – and a way of using it without wrecking the environment? Coal is a complex mix of chemicals, not just carbon. Once oil runs out, we will need a source of industrial chemicals, not just stuff to burn.

If Queensland and Australia are to take their place in the world as leaders, we need to think long-term. And protecting one industry at the cost of all else is not only failing to think long term, it is stupid. Surely we can do better than that.

When Kevin Rudd announced a 5% target for emissions reductions for 2020, you could almost hear John Howard laughing from the political grave. It’s small comfort to me that in discussing climate matters since then, a Labor supporter called Rudd “Howard” by mistake. Freudian?

The science the government has in front of it says you have to reduce emissions by 25% by 2020 to save the Great Barrier Reef. Of course Australia cannot achieve this on its own because it accounts for a relatively small fraction of worldwide emissions – even if you account for its role as the world’s biggest exporter of coal (about a third of worldwide exports).

Another thing not widely talked about is that carbon emissions accumulate. Around half are absorbed by the environment; the rest dissipates very slowly over centuries. That means that if we have not achieved a target by 2020 that stops CO₂ accumulating to 550 parts per million or more, we can’t just turn off the tap and expect the atmospheric CO₂ level to drop.

How soon will the rest of the world regard carbon emissions as a serious, urgent problem? That Europe has committed to a 20% cut by 2020 is some indication.

Why should Europe care more? Partially, it’s because Europe has a stronger tradition than English-speaking countries of taking science seriously. But another factor is Europe’s proximity to the Arctic. A growing number of scientists is predicting an ice-free Arctic summer by 2015. It was a big enough shock when it was reported in 2007 that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer by 2030.

So in a sense the self-styled sceptics are right. The science has enough uncertainties that we have to be cautious about accepting predictions without a wide allowance for error. The problem is, the majority of cases that are breaking out of the modelled predictions are on the worse rather than the better side. How is this possible? With the vast bulk of “sceptics” accusing scientists who predict anything remotely bad of being “alarmist”, the natural tendency of scientists to avoid alarming claims without overwhelming evidence is accentuated. So work predicting rapid ice cap loss for example is not getting the attention it should. Another example: concerns about the possibility of the urban heat island effect (UHI) skewing the temperature trend has resulted in NASA compensating for this effect. While it is true that a temperature sensor put next to an isolated hot spot would be bad for once-off measurement, if that hot spot is not constantly being hotter, it would not add a trend to the stats.

NASA eliminates local anomalies by a process called homogenizing, where temperatures of each station are in effect corrected for excessive variation beyond others in similar terrain.

Let’s look at how over-estimating the effect of UHI could have on the temperature trend. If NASA weights down temperatures from urban area, they could be underestimating the general increase in temperatures, because some of these areas could really be heating faster than their surroundings – not just because the weather station is near an artificial source of heat.

The UHI effect is but one example of how natural caution by scientists could be underestimating the effects of climate change. There are others, which I am happy to discuss, but this example illustrates the point.

In conclusion, here’s an ad GetUp is running.

On 5 October 2008, Labor state member for Indooroopilly Ronan Lee jumped ship and joined the Greens.

Labor supporters have been quick to label this as an opportunistic move; in a state where the Greens have battled to win elections at any level, it’s hard to see how this could be so.

I’d like to point out that the opposition Liberal National Party has a big problem. Inner city voters don’t like the Nationals, and the Nationals are in control of the LNP. To anyone who says Lee should have resigned his seat: I hope you said the same about the LNP.

Views on comment sites are interesting. Some claim he is just jumping ship to protect himself against the shift away from Labor; that being the case, why didn’t he join the second biggest party? There are many green-leaning Liberals in his electorate. It is hardly self-serving to join a small party that is struggling to win elections. At worst, it buys him another year in state parliament. At best, a lonely time in the next lower house with few if any members on his team. Anyone thinking he is taking the easy way out obviously has no clue how much harder members of small parties have to work just to keep up let alone to get ahead.

It’s a hard adjustment to accept that there are some politicians with principles. Had I been a Labor state member, I would have had difficulty holding down my lunch let alone staying in my seat when Anna Bligh said not so long ago that Labor had such great environmental credentials, Greens would have no problem preferencing them.

If you are elected on the basis that you have certain principles and your party claims to uphold those principles but clearly doesn’t, what do you do? Be honest and quit the party, giving up the perks of a parliamentary secretary and the possibility of being elevated to the cabinet, or stay on to become another Peter Garrett with a tight muzzle and a short leash?

Meanwhile the notion that the conservative side of politics stands for sound financial management has been ripped apart by the turmoil on Wall Street and, closer to home, the rates revolt in Brisbane where a Liberal (LNP now, I guess) administration is taxing unit owners out of their homes.

Anna Bligh has given the Greens a head start by claiming that her environmental credentials were so good, no Greens voter would have trouble preferencing the ALP. Tell the good people at the Mary River that. Tell the people at Felton who are threatened with having their farms ripped up for a coal mine that. Ms Bligh’s first response was that this was a stange move, as only governments can protect the environment. Let me repeat my two-word response to that: Peter Garrett. She has also shot herself in the foot by making contradictory claims. On the one hand, Ronan Lee had never expressed any environmental concerns to her. On the other hand, he wasn’t able to function as a member of a disciplined team. What does that mean? Either she was aware of his dissent from party positions, making her first claim nonsensical, or he was dissenting on some other range of undisclosed issues. And in any case, you do not appoint a loose cannon who is out of line with party principles as a parliamentary secretary, generally a precursor to elevation to the cabinet.

Interesting times, and Queensland politics is shaping up for a really interesting state election.