What is it with politicians and trust?

For sale: public trustee. Fixer-upper.

The public have lost trust in the Public Trustee.

It’s a service provided to people who have a disability that is considered to impede their ability to manage their own finances and affairs.

After a damning review in 2021, the government decided to commission a report on how to fix the service.

This report was published just before this year’s state election.

Both reports said that the government was not helping to improve the service. The government has interpreted this by announcing it’s going to be privatised to solve the conundrum which is “the competing tensions between maximising revenue and protecting the interests of its vulnerable clients”.

The sound you just heard was my jaw hitting the floor.

Both reports stated that the government needed to get its act together, not privatise it.

Since when does privatising a government-run agency solve tensions between making more money and protecting the clients it’s supposed to serve?

I may have reacted with shock when I heard the plans but imagine those who are running the Public Trustee.

They only heard about it yesterday at budget hearings.

Did you hear the one about the library with no librarians?

Not only is Jo Palmer in charge of an education system where over 2,000 students are waiting to see a psychologist, she’s now overseeing the plan to get rid of librarians.

Maybe that’s the plan – schools without teachers?

I have another idea. A state government without MPs.

It would ultimately descend the state into long-term decline, but in the short term it could be seen as an improvement.

(If nothing else, at least we’d still have librarians).