I wrote last week in Crikey about the importance of the Brisbane City Council election on March 15 – not just from the point of view of Lord Mayor Campbell Newman’s standing as the senior Liberal in government in the land but also in terms of the crucial policy issues facing a municipality with a budget twice that of Tasmania’s. But apparently local media have decided there’s not too much uncertainty about the result in the Mayoral horse race, because coverage has been very thin on the ground. Take two days in the Courier-Mail last week for instance – on Wednesday there was no coverage at all of the campaign, and the only story in Thursday’s rag related to a spelling mistake made by a Liberal candidate on a sign. There’s been zip on the ABC tv news.
All the while, of course, the two major parties and the Greens have been releasing policy, making announcements and vigorously campaigning in the wards.
I mention all this because, fortunately probably for the sake of democracy, there is a citizen journalism site covering the Queensland local government campaigns – Qld Decides – brought to you by the same QUT team who brought us youdecide2007 last year.
Much of the debate about citizen journalism and blogging and their effects on the mediascape seems to have as an unstated premise a vigorous mainstream media. As I argued in an interview published in Brisbane academic Terry Flew’s book New Media, where this is blatantly untrue is often in the coverage of local and state politics. While some bloggers might be under the illusion that they could become the national media, and parts of the national media under the illusion that bloggers and journos should have an antagonistic relationship, the real value added often comes from ferreting out local stories in market places where big media has decided not to bother. It’s happening more and more in America, although it doesn’t have the same profile of the “A-list” political blogs.
Odds are that a lot of readers of the Courier-Mail are actually more interested in and affected by decisions made about their suburb and their city than either Indigenous issues in the Cape or Britney Spears’ life choices, but you’d hardly know it from what actually makes it into the paper. And suburban and local papers often might provide more comprehensive reporting, but lack a critical eye or a forum for civic discussion. In some areas of regional Queensland, Qld Decides editor Jason Wilson reports, some local blogs are filling this niche, and filling it so well that the local pollies and media are sitting up and taking notice. Qld Decides might be a sign of the future of online citizen journalism. And if old media types don’t like it, well, they might like to reflect on why this niche is so wide open.
What do you mean he’s the senior Liberal in government? There are many other Liberal mayors around the place. What makes being the Lord Mayor of Brisbane above any other office of mayor in Australia?
Oh dear Alastair my very word you know that Queensland, goodness gracious me those Whitlamites are at it again, I can tell you in no uncertain, what would they say if – yes – thank you very much, yes that would be about it, eh? my very word, Brisbane, yes well and the Gold Coast and those fine farming folk, oh Queensland, you get out and about a bit and you’ll see, yes you’ll see
[Russ Hinze peers through keyhole, attempts to speak ....]
Alastair, Brisbane’s the largest urban council in Australia.
“the only story in Thursday’s rag related to a spelling mistake made by a Liberal candidate on a sign.”
OMG!! The MSM has adopted the Blogger’s Code of Conduct !!!
I suggest a good old fashioned sex scandal might help to get Brisbane City Council into the papers a bit more. Or at least a bit of sleazy corruption, which keeps the Gold Coast City Council reporters busy.
This is from QLD Decides:
It’s wall-to-wall Liberals here on the Coast at the moment, as they desperately try to take control of the council. Tom Tate, who heads the ticket, owns the Island Resort in Surfers, where he hosted the first meeting of a secretive developers group. The entire GCCC should have been sacked for that, but instead they are just “re-branding” themselves!
PS: Is it just me, or does Campbell Newman look a lot like Vladimir Putin?
PPS: Can’t help wondering if the election coverage in QLD is linked to the Murdoch media’s control of papers up here.
PPPS: Spring Hill Voice is a good example of a local political blog (“plog”?)
Thanks for your response Sam. When you say biggest – in what way? Does it have the most councillors? Or does it just have the largest population? If it is the population only, then would it be fair to say that the Premier of NSW is higher up than the Premier of QLD?
Interesting article in the NORTHSIDE CHRONICLE about Bob Tucker a former president of the Liberal Party here in Queensland. Seems Mr Tucker’s company won a tender to market some Council land near the Brisbane Airport. Apparently he sold 5 lots to a company run by his son.
Advice from the Council chief legal counsel said it was doubtful Mr Tucker’s (senior) company had secured the best price for the land as the “contracts have mostly been presented for signature at minimum price levels and overwhelmingly to purchasers … closely associated with TCC and the Tucker family.:
The Council referred the matter to the Crime and Misconduct Commission who in turn referred it back to the Council who, after an investigation, cleared Mr Tucker.
Sounds very dodgy.
Alastair, can you tell us any other councils where there is an Mayor who was/is an endorsed Liberal Candidate?
With regards to Precedence you should refer to the Commonwealth Order of Precedence which was Gazetted in 1982. The Lord Mayors come after “other Judges of the Federal Court and Deputy Presidents of the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission” and before “heads of Religious Communities”. The Lord Mayors have Precedence in order of the populations of their cities, so I would *guess* The Rt Hon Lord Mayor of Brisbane comes before the others. And they do come before the States’ Leaders of Opposition.
State Premiers, by the way, do indeed have precedence in order of the population of their States, so the Premiers of NSW and Vic do come before the Premier of Qld.
d
Wow Alistair,
you are a self confessed liberalite seeking to prop up a flagging BCC campaign with a nonesense point about the story. Sadly for you, it appears you have ‘been told.’ Now please, quietly crawl back into your corner.
Darryl, for example the Mayor of Rockdale is John Flowers, a Liberal. There are many others. This was discussed on Troppo a while back now. I’m sure it’s easy enough to find out. I personally don’t have time to go searching for this information.
Jughead said: “you are a self confessed liberalite”
Really? Where did i ever make such a confession? By the way I think you mean “Liberalite”. There is quite a difference.
holdon…. Someone reads The Courier Mail AND takes it seriously?
In addition:
Darryl thanks for the info.
Jughead take it easy on the drugs.
Ambigulous don’t give up your day job for an act in comedy.
jughead, can you please try to conform to the comments policy and not diss other commenters on the basis of what you think is their politics and generally conduct yourself here civilly?
On the Campbell Newman thing – obviously, orders of precedence aside, the point is the size and scope of the Brisbane City Council’s budget and responsibilities – as I said, the budget is twice Tasmania’s and the Council takes in most of the metropolitan area and is in charge of areas which in other states are State gov’t fields.
Daryl and Alastair, it is my understanding that the Lord Mayors are in order of precedence according to the size of the entire city, so the Lord Mayors of Sydney and Melbourne are above the Lord Mayor of Brisbane. This is certainly how Wikipedia lists them, but Wikipedia is not the authority on the matter. But that doesn’t change the Lord Mayor of Brisbane’s standing amongst Liberals, because Sydney’s Lord Mayor is an independent and Melbourne’s is from “Melbourne Living”.
Or to simplify things for Alastair: Brisbane City Council’s population is 1 million, or near enough as to make no difference. That’s bigger than any two of the population figures for the ACT, NT or Tasmania added together, and just under the sum of all three. The next Local Government along is the Gold Coast with half that. Then there’s the ACT (which doesn’t count).
Like it or not, Campbell is the big cheese of the Libs – and what a cheese he is.
Ok fair enough Mark. Thanks for the info. I did want to clear up a misconception around the place that the Lord Mayor for Brisbane is the only Liberal mayor in Australia. There are in fact a number of others. Sounds like the Mayor of Brisbane is a particularly important job, and one that the media ought to give proper attention to.
Thanks for the info Alexander, DaOoSG.
If the public don’t care for mayoral politics as it is, why will they when blogs attempt to cover it?
On the off chance that anyone bothers flicking through even their local rag, it isn’t for news. Jobs and garage sales, perhaps. Phonesex hotlines.
Alastair @ [12]: OK.
Let’s start a competition… Whenever someone writes a new post at LP, readers have to guess which nonsensical minor issue will become the hot topic du jour in the thread. Bonus prize if you can guess what percentage of comments will be side-tracked by it.
So far about 75% of comments here have been dedicated to thrashing out which minor Liberal cretin is the least insignificant pustule on the party’s well-whoop-assed rump. I’m sure Mark never saw that coming when he wrote his reasoned media critique.
Gandhi, perhaps if we keep this up we can make 75 per cent of the comments here relate to not even the tangential question of precedence, but to the completely unrelated question of how many comments in the thread are about something related tangentially or less to the original post?
Heh.
But rather than competitions, more on topic comments would be nice!
Sorry Mark, another off topic item:
You wrote @ [13]:
“jughead, can you please try to conform to the comments policy and not diss other commenters on the basis of what you think is their politics and generally conduct yourself here civilly?”
I’m sure most readers of LP would prefer posters to conduct themselves here civilly. But on “Teh Surge” thread @ [21] a poster wrote “You’re an idiot” and as far as I can see has not been admonished.
Just wondering what the rules are…. but look, it’s your blog: you folk can run it in any way you please!!! As we used to say in primary school, “It’s a free country!”
cheers
The Mayor of Brisbane is the highest in the order of precedence because of the size of its Council. You will notice that the Lord Mayors of Melbourne and Sydney are only responsible for their CBD areas because there are Mayors in other Councils such as Liverpool, Richmond etc.
In Brisbane, the Lord Mayor is responsible for the entire City of Brisbane boundary from Forest Lake right up to Deagon and from Pullenvale all the way to Wynnum Manly.
So if you say it once more it may be true
Unfortunately it isn’t. The Tasmanian budget is ~$3.8 bn. The BCC budget is ~$1.7 bn.
It is the Tasmanian budget that is ~ twice the BCC budget.
Thanks Alistar. We will duly enter John Flowers into the roll of endorsed-Liberal-mayors-who-don’t-control-their-councils.
I’m not sure that their are “many” others. It is not common for Liberals to have endorsed candidates for local government elections, certainly not outside NSW and Qld, and even in those states not outside urban areas. It is simple but tedious to check the EC results; so far no other examples have been found (although yes I missed Rockdale).
I repeat the call for the names of any other such examples. Remembering that we want endorsed Liberal mayors so, for example, Michael Harbison and Peter Nattrass don’t count.
Martin, if you’re so interested in the topic then I suggest you do the research. I’ve had a bit of a look but the information isn’t straight forward to find. It is difficult and time consuming to find out whose the mayor of each city and then finding out what party they belong to. From what I’ve seen there are many Liberal mayors, even more Labor mayors, several Green mayors and independent mayors. There are also even mayors from other minor parties.
Alastair, I am just asking. Where it is easy for me to do the research I can assure you that I will – and to that end will add Dr. Arthur Frauenfelder of Albury to the list. But precisely because not all EC websites list political endorsements it is easier to ask people with local knowledge than for me to trawl through newspapers etc looking to find records of endorsements. I’m interested but not that interested.
I’m not asking for anyone to do my research for me. If you know of examples then let us know. IF you don’t know or don’t want to share, fine.
“Michael Harbison and Peter Nattrass don’t count.”
Especially the latter, as he’s no longer in the job!
I’m happy to share information. As I’ve said it’s difficult to find out without spending a long time looking, time which I do not have.
After doing a brief search I did come across a couple more Liberal Mayors:
Nick Dyer, Leichhardt
Bruce Motley-Smith, Randwick
There are many more out there.
I stand corrected, Martin. It’s a claim that’s often made and obviously one I should have checked.
Ok, Bruce goes on the list, but Nick isn’t mayor any more (he was in 2005).
I’m getting really annoyed by the amount of off topic diversions lately. So this thread is closed. If anyone has anything relevant to the actual topic – the disappointing nature of the MSM coverage of the local government elections and the role of bloggers and citizen journalists, please email me at mbahnisch at gmail dot com and I’ll re-open it.