It was far too late to do anything about it, but LNP alarm bells should have started ringing at the end of January when Lawrence Springborg was caught out by a relatively straightforward question: how would a Springborg government handle the economic crisis? Springborg not merely appeared to deny there was a crisis but stumbled over what he would do about Queensland’s budget deficit and rising unemployment.
Queensland National Party leaders will forever carry the burden of Joh Bjelke-Petersen. One verbal slip and they’re back in feeding the chooks territory. The ALP exploited Springborg’s ineloquence to the hilt during the campaign. Springborg left school at 14, worked on a farm, then went into politics. Labor would never say it aloud, but the implication is that that sort of politician belongs in the history books in 21st century Queensland. All of Peter Beattie’s self-serving rubbish about “the Smart State” has worked into the Queensland psyche.
And last week, just before the electronic election blackout — that quaint relic of b&w television and politicians in hats — started at midnight on Wednesday, Springborg served his opponents up with a ripper — a completely nonsensical statement about the Queensland budget. The ALP packaged it into an ad and got it on air before the blackout. LNP members cringed. Not merely did it undermine the LNP’s message on fiscal discipline — already the subject of a Labor hammering on public service jobs — but it instantly summoned the ghost of Joh. And that’s a toxic legacy, particularly in Brisbane. It may have only run for an evening but that was enough.
And on Friday, Springborg also spoke about how he wanted majority government or nothing. The remark looked high-handed and seemed to presume an LNP win. Politicians are best advised to avoid any comment on such matters.
Meantime, Anna Bligh was fighting the brushfires that broke out after she claimed, Rudd style, that she’d pick her own cabinet. Tourism Minister Desley Boyle contradicted her, then contradicted herself. Police Minister Judy Spence ummed and ahhed about the issue. Bill Ludwig weighed in to say Bligh would indeed follow Rudd in picking her Cabinet.
It’s the sort of fractiousness that suggests a certain friability within Queensland Labor — if their opponents could maintain the pressure, which they were entirely unable to. But the next three years might serve to open up some fault lines within the ALP. We all know what happened south of the border after Morris Iemma’s victory.
As Queensland slides of the political radar for another three years into a debate and analysis black hole there’s immense empathy for an electorate deprived of the joys of Australian democracy. Even Clive Palmer and his construction industry mate Jack Hutchinson couldn’t put their billion-dollar pocket money to better use other than a few Vote 1 signs and threats to sue the Premier. There’s every evidence that money certainly doesn’t buy political smarts in Queensland.
I agree with this assessment. The other factor might have been fear of a hung parliament and so The Borg’s silliness was doubly damaging. The primary vote was Labor 42.7% : LNP 41.1% according to Possum. Really closer than it looks when all done and dusted.
Well, Queensland failed to lurch to the right despite the editorials of the Murdoch press. In my local area I have access to three daily newspapers (Cairns Post, Courier Mail and the Australian) each of which gave the election to the LNP and portrayed the Labor Party as tired and out of ideas; even some of the local Labor elected members (who all retained their seats) were showing nervous apprehension of the predicted decimation: it didn’t happen.It shows that the perceived power of the right-wing press is not as pervasive as they themselves may believe.
Among the mistakes made by the LNP was the opportunism of Springborg’s advisers in trying to paint the state Labor government as having bodged the oil pollution clean-up on Southern beaches when the media, by contrast, were showing an appropriate, well coordinated and valiant response by all agencies in mitigating and alleviating the damage. The posturing and confected indignation of the Brisbane Mayor, Campbell Newman, was appalling and certainly didn’t elevate his standing as a community leader or help his LNP mates, in fact it probably lost them some of the swinging votes.