Bligh and Borg go head to head

Queensland Premier Anna BlighLNP Leader Lawrence Springborg
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh and Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg have officially launched their election campaigns.

By Angela Dorizas

Launching her re-election campaign at the Queensland Conservatorium yesterday, Premier Anna Bligh promised to make Queensland “the solar state of Australia”.

Bligh announced a $27.4 million solar hot water scheme that will cut and estimated $300 a year off the average household energy bill.

She said solar hot water systems will go to public tender this year and be offered to households over the next three years at the cost of $500 each, instead of the retail price of $4500.

Bligh promised to buy land for a liquid natural gas pipeline into Gladstone and also committed to the renewable energy sector.

“Right now we generate just six per cent of our energy from renewable resources. We can and will do better,” she said.

“Industries like solar thermal and geo-thermal will power our future and power job creation.”

Bligh told supporters that she would also create 100,000 more jobs for Queensland.

“I stake my future on these 100,000 jobs,” Bligh said.

“I know that Queensland needs jobs, not cuts.”

In his third attempt at becoming Queensland Premier, Liberal National Party leader Lawrence Springborg also promised to create more jobs –  10,000 places – as part of his $726.9 million Rebuild Queensland package.

He said the package would be funded through scrapping the Traveston Dam and LNP’s $1 billion efficiency dividend.

“The Bligh Government asks where is all the money coming from?” he told supporters in Brisbane.

“We simply say where has all the money gone?”

Another key component of the Rebuild Queensland package is the $260 million Gold Coast Rapid Transit Project – a promise Bligh has also committed to, but without the 2013 target completion date Sprinborg has suggested.

Rudd and Turnbull offer support

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd welcomed Bligh to the stage yesterday, describing Queensland’s first female Premier as a “good person, a strong leader with a no-nonsense, practical, down to earth approach” and “someone who speaks her mind – and in my experience, speaks her mind forcefully.”

He also used the opportunity to criticise Springborg’s response to the global financial crisis.

“Virtually every political leader in the world recognises the size and seriousness of the global economic recession except Mr Springborg who says it’s “peripheral to what’s happening in Queensland”, and Mr Turnbull who says it’s all “overhyped”,” Rudd said.

“You can either sit back, wait and do nothing and leave people to face the full force of the global economic storm unprotected as the Liberals and Nationals recommend.

“Or you can act decisively, to stimulate the economy, to support jobs, to reduce the impact of the storm – as the Queensland Government is doing.”

At the LNP campaign launch, Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull slammed the Bligh Government for delivering what he called a trifecta of high unemployment, debt and strikes.

“They’re so incompetent they couldn’t sell fresh fist to starving seals,” Turnbull said.

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