Partisan ‘academic’ and voice to Parliament advocate Dr Paul Williams recently wrote in the Courier-Mail that Steven Miles ‘appears to be spontaneously genuine’ and an ‘assured premier with a confident verbal delivery who looked like he genuinely cared’ among other things.

That the Courier-Mail would even platform this type of debased and unintelligible nonsense is egregious enough, but what is most dangerous about the pro-Miles fluff piece is that Dr Williams may actually believe what he has written to be true. It is, of course, no coincidence that Williams has come out swinging in the Premier’s defence following his uncontrolled giggles at a journalist’s question about crime in Queensland.

For academics to promote, advance, and encourage a premier with such a lack of skill, absence of humanity, and unpreparedness speaks volumes for the country’s level of academic discourse.

The reality is this; it’s simply untrue that ‘Miles appears disarmingly honest in answering journalists’ questions’ or ‘he gets it when folks talk to him about real poverty’.

Even Williams concedes that Labor lacks a population policy, and Queensland’s surge in taking on immigrants (set at a national level) and inter-state refugees (as COVID revealed, a policy that can be set at a state level) speaks volumes about a Premier who couldn’t care less how much poverty we are thrown in while taking on heaving numbers of more immigrants.

There is nothing ‘disarmingly honest’ about a Premier who giggles at a question about serious crime in Queensland.

Williams even had the temerity to claim in his fluff piece that gone was Miles constant awkward ‘giggle’, ignoring the fact he giggled all through this press conference and at a question on crime to boot!

Breathe easy, though. Dr Williams endorsement of Steven Miles will unlikely gain traction.

Every day Queenslanders taking a morning walk with their dogs along decaying streets, dodging gangs of marauding youths ransacking houses, and then watching as those victims of crime have insult added to injury when left in ambulances ramped for seven hours won’t be flicking through the Courier-Mail to find what Dr Williams is scribbling about our haphazard Premier.

For those left to deal with the aftermath of out-of-control crime—victims and entire communities living in fear – there is nothing to ‘giggle’ about. Queenslanders searching for a sound alternative will know that One Nation offers a suite of policies that put community safety first.