In the wake of his resignation on Monday, Peter Beattie’s record is being examined from conflicting viewpoints. I don’t think there’s any denying that purely as a politician, he was one of the smartest we’ve seen for a very long time. But both Graham Young in the blogosphere and senior Queensland journo Hedley Thomas in the MSM feel that his premiership is a legacy of missed opportunity. CPD Fellow Ben Eltham had a more positive assessment in yesterday’s special Crikey, which I’m reproducing (with permission) over the fold.
4. Confident Queensland: the Beattie legacy
Ben Eltham from the Centre for Policy Development writes:
Peter Beattie was a cunning political survivor who cut his teeth in the Bjelke-Peterson era of semi-democracy and rose through the ranks of the centrist ALP Unity faction as a tough campaigner and political operative. His legacy will be a newly confident Queensland that threw off its “deep north” image in favour of a dynamic and increasingly sophisticated sunbelt economy – but one which is beginning to struggle with growth pains.
Beattie’s media performance tended to grate on southern observers but Queenslanders loved it, and unlike many politicians he was a master at taking responsibility for crises and problem policy areas, saying “Ill fix it,” and spinning the issue his Government’s way.
On policy, his record is mixed. Like the Carr government in NSW, his chief day-today responsibility was media management, and many policy areas languished on the back-burner for want to the Premier’s attention. Inheriting a centralised government structure from the Goss years, he continued to invest more power in the Department of Premier and Cabinet. The Smart State was his most substantive policy initiative, and has delivered a significant broadening of Queensland’s historically narrow economic base into industries like game design, niche manufacturing and bioscience. But voters didn’t particularly like it, spurning their new “Queensland – The Smart State” license plates in favour of the classic green “Sunshine State” plates.
Economically, Queensland has prospered like never before under Beattie. When he announced his policy in 1998 to bring unemployment under 5%, he was given little chance. But mining, construction and property have powered a super-charged state economy that is still substantially cheaper to operate in than southern states. The State’s finances are sound, with little debt and an immense south-east Queensland infrastructure roll-out already working its way through the economy. However, as with Western Australia, the very growth that has pushed Queensland’s unemployment rate below 4% is causing significant problems, as the state’s antiquated infrastructure struggles to keep up with massive population growth in the south-east corner.
On the environment, perhaps his greatest achievement was to ban land-clearing in the state, a decision which is almost single-handedly responsible for Australia (just about) meeting its (generous) Kyoto target. Health on the other hand was a disaster. Queensland Health remains a feudal, almost socialist bureaucracy that relies on a workforce of foreign doctors and specialists to deliver care. In this context, a scandal like the one involving Dr Jayant Patel (“Dr Death”) was an adverse event waiting to happen.
Beattie also ignored Queensland’s water crisis until it was almost too late, essentially praying for rain. The resultant policy on the run was typical of his government, as the state’s new-found wealth was thrown at the problem in a series of big infrastructure projects which may or may not work.
In social policy, Beattie was more liberal than he appeared. He was an expert at playing the card of Queensland parochialism, building a giant new stadium at Lang Park while liberalising Queensland’s gay sex, liquor licensing and prostitution laws quietly in the background.
Ultimately, Beattie’s premiership will be looked back upon as a series of crises interspersed with massive election victories. His ability to bounce back from problems that might have crippled other governments demonstrated his undoubted political skills – but also the generation-long weakness of the right-of-centre Queensland parties. With the Queensland liberals crippled by infighting and saddled wit a series of incompetent leaders, the ALP attracted whole suburbs of so-called “Beattie Liberals” who voted for John Howard federally but couldn’t bring themselves to support state Liberals like Dr Bruce Flegg.
Grooming a woman of the left, Anna Bligh, to be Queensland’s first female Premier was Beattie’s final high-risk strategy. So far, the immaculately presented Bligh has largely been shielded by Beattie from the glare of media attention. Now he leaves her with his controversial council amalgamations in mid-stream.
Bligh is not the sort of strong leader that traditionally has appealed so much in rural and regional Queensland, the most decentralised state. But as south-east Queensland swells with southern immigrants, Queensland is becoming less exceptional every day. Ironically, the greatest achievement of Peter Beattie may be the shedding of Queensland’s image as the Deep North.
Is it to do with the times?
The electorate has placed ALP state governments and the Howard federal government in place as counterbalances one for the other(s) . Whatever one (feds) or the others (state) have done has been OK; the childlike faith in the “balance” not disturbed until very recently. Now they are fed up, having given the experiment some fair time, and having to start somewhere to chuck all the complacent varmintswho have rewarded their trust with complacency.
The fed election is the one in play, and this is where it starts. Don’t be surprised if the mood for change does not continue on to state goverments, too.
The article describes what many suspect would be the typical pattern of state governments in our Globalised, federalised pol-economy.
The one thing that really baffled me was the above writer’s assertion that Beatty Labor was effective on the environmental front. I’d really doubt it,not only because of rubbish like wastage-increasing “competition policy” or the pandering of all governments to “developers”, but the redneck attitudes that have developed toward ecology right across this greying, grasping, anti-intellectual, eco-rationalist, near- reactionary country over the last fifteen years.
Why, this very weekend the Fairfax press reported on Turnbull reneging on a previously assented-to “water auction” for NEW cotton areas ( NEW!!.. at THIS time in the countries “progress”!!!). Beatty was apparently grumbling loudly over it. That’s “ecologically- responsible”?
Particularly in view of the national weather prophets releasing their September report, saying Southern Australia was in deep drought and perhaps possibly requiring of flows down the system, later?
And when did he ever finally slap Cubbie Creek down?
BTW, as an “outlander” and probable untermensch, what’s the goss on this Traveston dam kerfuffle?
Is it like the Tasmanian Rainforests thing: a “parochial” issue for the local “big daddy” to manipulate. The reported hinted at this on a general level.
Look, nothing against Peter Beatty. They can only do what they’re allowed to and with adversarial Howard in, Globalisation rampant,and a neolib tabloid press, what hope for repairs to health, education and other REAL infrastructures.