Over the past few months there has been much discussion in the media about the Queensland government’s plan to "privatise" and sell off the states “assets”. The public assets that are still yet to be sold are the Port of Brisbane lease, Queensland Motorways lease and the Abbot Point Coal Terminal lease. Queensland Rail National has launched its share pre-sale registration, but the share offering has not yet been made.

The largest outcry against the governments proposals comes from the special interest groups that will be directly affected.  Naturally the loudest and most vocally organised are the unions. They're mad as hell but sadly, for all the wrong reasons.

The intuitive concerns voiced by the public are often well placed. They sense something is not right about this whole process but unfortunately guided by a public debate that offers only false choices, who can really fault them for falling into the trap of blaming the market as the mechanism that will fail, as opposed to government and state intervention which already has. As pointed out in this article, the general concern from the public appears to be that “[they] are already deeply suspicious about privatisations after electricity asset sales led to higher retail prices.”

Secession in Australia, besides that of Western Australia? It seems unlikely, but there you go. A few days ago the issue of North Queensland seeking independence from the rest of the state was on the front page of the Courier Mail.

According to Bob Katter, North Queensland must become a separate state to save the region from economic ruin.