I heard Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on ABC TV news 7th or 8th Feb claiming “after 7 or 8 years of drought” in the context of talking about cattle deaths in floods around the Mt Isa – Hughenden region. This got me to looking at BoM drought maps and maps of recent rain to see exactly where Qld drought has been from 2011 to 2018. Here are two 4 year Qld drought maps showing the Premiers entire 8 year period.
How does the Premier get to be so detached from the facts of BoM maps?
I have a separate www page with relevant BoM maps of Australia for easy comparison of drought areas for each of those those 8 years. It was a bit of a shock to find that for year 1 – 2011 there was no drought anywhere in Australia. Then for year 2 – 2012 there was almost no drought in Qld. Then in 2013 there were sizeable drought areas in our subject area affected by recent floods. In no subsequent year were there any significant drought areas in our subject area. Let me know what you think of the Premier’s statement. I know the Townsville floods and cattle death floods to the west have stressed all involved. However we surely can not lose our grip on measurable factual data to this extent.