2010: Bye bye Bligh?
December 17th, 2009 by Mark Bahnisch | Published in Politics, Queensland | 32 Comments
Back in August, I had this to say about Anna Bligh’s Labor regime in Queensland:
Anna Bligh’s credibility was one of the few things the ALP had going for it in the March state election. Her opposition to the dictates of ratings agencies was a hallmark message. The announcement after Labor squeaked back in that the fuel subsidy would go, that public sector wages would effectively be frozen and jobs disappeared through efficiency dividends, and, particularly, the plans for the sell off of state assets have seen the trust the electorate had in Bligh collapse.
I also wrote, commenting on her efforts to turn the situation around:
But the public aren’t inclined to credit her for decisive action — because the basis of trust that existed between citizens and their Premier has already dissipated.
At the time, I was met with some scepticism in comments. At the end of the year, I think it’s pretty clear that Bligh’s regime has the smell of death about it. Anyone who doubts that should have a look at Graham Young’s latest polling [links to posts on quant and qual respectively].
Bligh’s woes have been compounded by the departure of her chief of staff, Mike Kaiser. His replacement, Nicole Scurrah, is something of a policy wonk, and it’s difficult to see any semblance of a political strategy from the (shrinking) Bligh camp, beyond toughing it out and proclaiming the virtues of ‘tough decisions’. Hiring Bernie Fraser on 2 and a half grand a day to pacify the unions was a waste of money, and the partial backdown on the privatisations (now to be 50 and 99 year leases instead of full sales) has not stemmed the tide of public and union anger.
The last month or so has seen serious discussions within the party, caucus and unions about removing Bligh. It’s important to recall here that Bligh has alienated many on the left, both in caucus and in left unions, and also in the faction’s rank and file. There’s a host of intra-factional bad will, which is somewhat tangential to the broader consensus forming that removing Bligh is the only way to give Labor any chance at electoral survival, but which has its own effects.
Monday saw reports of moves to convene a special party conference to reverse the privatisation push. This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the machinations going on at the moment, some of which are described in an article by Andrew Crook in today’s Crikey [paywalled].
Crook accurately describes the AWU as key to what happens next, along with left moves to cushion the blow by giving Bligh the exit option of a federal job orchestrated by Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan. What we’re seeing is a confluence of very disparate political actors within the ALP attempting to map out a strategy, but united so far only by their determination that Bligh must go. At this stage it’s anyone’s guess as to what will happen, but if Bligh is still Premier in February, it will be something of a victory for her.
Crook mentions Attorney-General Cameron Dick as the most likely successor. Dick is, as Crook says, an astute operator, but counting against him is his lack of parliamentary experience (he’s a first term MP), and the fact that his own seat of Greenslopes would be in the firing line of the LNP should Labor’s stocks not recover. There’s long been talk of Speaker John Mickel bringing a reassuring touch of grey to the leadership, and some new speculation that my local member, Grace Grace, might be elevated straight into the top gig. Grace’s potential candidacy is also seen as countering the (accurate) perception that the state’s first female Premier could be removed by being dealt the death blow by a bunch of right wing boys.
All three leadership hopefuls can be presented as not closely associated with Anna Bligh’s regime, and any successful coup, or managed transition, would be conditional on the reversal of the privatisation decision. Deputy Premier Paul Lucas could not be similarly dissociated from the current leadership, but his willingness to shift his numbers in return for holding his spot would make him a crucial determinant of who emerges as Premier.
Peter Beattie is also said to have reversed his support for Bligh, and the glow of nostalgia now surrounding his leadership might make that more significant than it otherwise might have been.
The situation is highly fluid, but the tipping point where Bligh’s leadership is terminal has almost certainly been reached. Watch this space in the New Year.
Mark, from the press coverage I’ve seen it seems as though the union bosses are playing both sides of the fence. They are trying to sound angry to placate their members but don’t want to seem too angry because they are also bigwigs in the Labor party.
If they are actually plotting to remove Bligh do you think they are acting as Union bosses or Labor Party heavyweights?
Marlin, I think the special conference is something of a stratagem to contribute to the momentum for Bligh’s ouster. There’s no doubt that the union leaders are somewhat torn between their two roles, as you say, but conversely, I think there’s been a shift within some left unions who were previously supporting Bligh which will now play itself out.
Comrades North of the Tweed,
A bit of fraternal advice from your Southern brothers and sisters.
Replacing the leadership is no adequate substitute for engagement with your significant internal stakeholders, constituent unions and political friends.
Furthermore, the AWU do not necessarily constitute your friends.
Sincerely,
ALP, New South Wales.
Liam, there’s a similar dynamic in play in that so many different groups and individuals are united only by the desire to remove Bligh that what ends up happening may not be particularly rational or intended.
I think you’re right about the AWU, but on the other hand, Bligh’s support in the party generally has pretty much collapsed. Some lefties who were hanging on just for the patronage have now detached themselves, as the likelihood of any reward for sticking with Bligh becomes much less. So the situation develops its own momentum.
Don’t underestimate how much Bligh pissed off large elements of the left, though, and remember that a lot of that was on the advice of people from the AWU (and to a lesser degree Labor Unity).
I’d also add, if it’s not clear enough, that Bligh is in so much trouble in large part because of her failure to engage with her internal constituency.
Mark, when you say that Bligh is in so much trouble in large part because of her failure to engage with her internal constituency, do you mean mainly the asset sales/leases or are there other issues where you think she is also ignoring internal stakeholders and/or listening to the wrong people?
Both, marlin.
Aside from the internal factional machinations (and here the removal of Terry Wood as assistant state secretary was important), there’s a heap of stuff – lack of action on the laws about termination of pregnancy, the moralistic puritan stuff, the hopeless situation with the education portfolio; it goes on and on. There’s a general perception (and it’s accurate) that she does everything but consult, and relies for advice on a very small circle, most of whom don’t necessarily have the left’s interests at heart (to put it mildly) and don’t have the political nous to extricate the party from its current predicament.
It’s remarkable for instance, that there’s so much opposition to her within left branches in her own electorate.
Given what you’ve said Mark and I agree with you, what do you think Bligh’s thinking is? Does she appreciate how isolated she is becoming and not care? She can’t think that the electorate likes her so that will keep her safe, so I reckon she really must think that she can handle the internal dramas.
I think Bligh knows she’s in a lot of trouble, and there’s not much she can do about it, which is why the speculation about being parachuted out courtesy of Kevin might have something in it…
As only two voted for Labor’s anti-privatisation policy in Labor Caucus, let alone on the floor of Parliament (where they would have had not only an obligation, but a duty do do so, in my opinion) prior to the Queen’s Birthday weekend state Labor Party conference, there would be almost no-one amongst the current labor caucus who would be worthy of the support of Queenslanders.
It would be fantastic to see the end of Bligh and Fraser, but I see no realistic prospect that anything of worth could emerge from such a Labor caucus.
That is one of many reasons I have set up an e-petition calling for the resignation of this Government and for new elections.
Whilst my own normal preference in politics is somewhat toward Labor, the continued rule of any these incompetent, unaccountable despots is unacceptable to me.
Our only hope for ever having a decent state Government again in Queensland is to remove them all (bar, possibly the two who voted against privatisation in caucus) now.
I’m not in a position to follow closely these days, but as an ex-Quincelander I was absolutely stunned by the privatisation hari-kiri. Even the conservatives in QLD support public ownership of utlities. You might as well tender your resignation at the bottom of a white paper like that, and save the trees.
Aside from a few blow-ins at the gold coast and one or two inner-north seats no one even votes Liberal at state level – never have. Its Nats and Labor and they both agree on state ownership of key infrastructure. Thats QLD 101.
Who the hell has been advising her? Someone from Canberra? Or is the rise of grey boring instant noodle public policy graduates who were in-utero when Goss won?
It does seem very ’90s this privatisation stuff. Is debt the driver in this? If so when did the debt accumulate? And why wasn’t it sufficiently paid down during the long boom?
wbb, who knows? It’s just a cave in to corporate interests, probably. It doesn’t make any economic sense, as Quiggin has argued again and again:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2009/12/08/statement-on-asset-sales/
See also his previous posts on the privatisations.
Mark, I wouldn’t be writing Bligh off just yet. The alternatives you mention have hardly stunned us with their brilliance and Dick has categorically ruked himself out of the running, albeit showing some pretty god political skills in the rpcess. Bligh and the rest of the party didn’t touch abortion law reform because that would have had people not just unions out in the streets. I hear the same skulduggery as you but with Mickel as the successor not Dick. But I wouldn’t put too much store in what Andrew Crook says. His last post to Crikey was all about a stoush for the premier’s chief-of-staff job at a time when Nicole Scurrah had it all sewn up.
Mark – yes I agree privatisation isn’t a panacea for anything – just wondering what possessed them to go this route at this late stage of the ideological cycle. It’s not as if there isn’t a stack of other stuff to do. Makes me think that Beattie was seen as a bit of an economic stick in the mud by “Bligh’s faction” during all those years – and they’ve had this in the drawer ready to go for when he finally quit. Should have left it there.
Agree wbb. Its also true that the OZpol data would suggest long standing governments that renew via leadership change only get one more term out of that trick.
That’s if they’re smart enough to do it at all (looking at you, federal coalition).
But I cant help thinking Bligh could have made an exception to that if she hadn’t fallen for this cardboard cut-out, discredited, retro public policy proforma from the 90s.
“Bligh and the rest of the party didn’t touch abortion law reform because that would have had people not just unions out in the streets.”
except they did reform abortion law and that’s really, really badly hurt Bligh. We’ve got those two poor kids in Cairns being prosecuted via loophole in the law, and I can call it a loophole because once they charged those kids Qld hospitals stopped performing terminations. Then the government amends the law to close the loophole, but only for hospitals so the people actally effected are still going to court, in the first abortion prosecutions for 50 years.
They could have amended the law and not limited it to hospitals, which would have been completely non-controversial and actually upheld the intent of the law as it stands, but instead they went out of their way to make examples of these kids. Qld gets a left-wing female premier, from West frickin’ End, who used to work for a radical feminist women’s service, and *this* is her contibution to a woman’s right to control her own body?
Inaction on abortion law was expected, but this is a crushing disappointment and betrayal for lots of people.
d
With regards to the privatizations, I’m just wondering whether there’s some politically unpopular decisions that need to be made on those organizations (things like reducing staff numbers, closing uneconomic routes etc) that Bligh would prefer the private sector makes, rather than the public sector.
Given the opposition, Labor could still hang on if they choose the right head to replace Bligh and ditch the privatisation stuff. As I’m hearing it, it’s Bligh personally being held responsible for everything evil, from hospitals and dams to a lack of snow at Christmas. But there’s still some uncertainty over exactly who is in charge of the opposition.
Anna has to go, but you’d want to make an intelligent choice for her replacement.
Is QLD really ready for a “Premier Dick”?
Anna Bligh likes to appear to be “In Charge” and on the ball. But her commitment seems absolute to the crony capitalism of the National Party days, so the question becomes: Whose game is she insisting on playing? After all this time, nothing seems to have actually changed!
Example? Can there be any other explanation for why the deal to sell (give away?) Yungaba was done completely in secret and remains so?
Example: Acland coal mine is planning on more than doubling its’ output over the next little while. I think, on average, there’s something like 65 coal trucks on the road as it is – daily! – to carry what QRail cannot carry now.
What will it be like for the locals, the roads of SEQ and – get the garlic out! – the carbon emissions! But rest easy children, the boffins in the Treasury will be able to work out how cutting down more trees will actually compensate for more trucks on the road – and anyway it’s giving us Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!.
Example: the major sand mining company on Stradbroke Island has been breaking the terms of its’ lease by illegally selling (massive amounts of ) sand for years. Where’s the government oversight? (The info appears to have been a leak from within the company and taken up by a couple of locals in private court actions.) Where are the criminal charges? Where is the cancellation of the leases? Where is the millions of dollars in fines?
Just don’t ask whether we have more or less hospital beds than 30 years ago!
With little Ms Ruby Red at the helm there will be no public assets – ie a “Common Wealth” – only more coal mines, more petrol friendly tunnels, more dam decisions, and more debt – all poured down the tube at us by the smiling Cheshire Cat purring “God is Growth. Believe in the holy trinity: Labour, Capital and Coal. Put your faith in the path to salvation: Growth is good!”
Banjo Paterson had this one diagnosed:
“And from those beasts that did escape, The bushmen all declare, Were born some creatures partly ape and partly native bear. They’re rather few and far between – their race is almost spent – But some of them can still be seen in Brisbane’s Parliament….”
Please Anna, POQ to Canberra. Take over from Ms Bryce – anything, please just go.
@15 -
Yes, indeed. He’s been showing off his political skills on the nightly news for some time. Makes a bit of a contrast with Anna in her hard hat with her fixed smile?
Having said that, I think Mickel would be the better option.
But like I said earlier, this thing is so complex and has its own momentum… and if the alternatives are no great shakes, then at least they’re not the Premier who promised one thing at the election, and then did the opposite (with bells on, because as Lefty E rightly says, she went much further than the Nats would have gone).
If Bligh stays as Premier, Labor is on a hiding to a massive defeat – by a lazy and undeserving opposition.
@18 -
Yep, Rob, that’s a factor. Beattie more or less vetoed any redundancies from QR. Having said that, they were reducing the size of their workforce by “natural wastage” over time. Management wanted to up the pace. That’s no reason why the government should listen to them.
I suggest this discussion is a bit narrow. That there are many disenchanted and disgruntled is one thing, suggesting there is a sufficient resolve amongst a majority towards an outcome is another.
Most likely, there is a majority willing to be knife-holders. The issue for me is whether there is enough votes for any one particular outcome.
In politics 101, there is a view that oppositions don’t win gov’t, the incumbents lose it. And, the incumbents will ever only lose if the alternative is credible. One this, Bligh didn’t win office, there was no credible alternative.
I suggest the same might apply to the ALP leadership.
- – -
I don’t like the proposed privatisation at all.
I also don’t like a land-use planning minister calling in developments to reward his mates.
I also don’t like the total disregard for the environment in the gov’t decisions (on this, I suggest the ALP is worse than the LNP).
I don’t like a SEQ water grid that’s being developed so it can be sold off to a French firm – especially when ratepayers built the assets and get nothing in return.
I could go on and on.
- – -
The problem is not Bligh, I doubt there’s anyone more capable.
The problem lies in a series of ministers both incompetent and incapable of being anything other than yesmen/women to vested interests.
In effect, Bligh is doing a good job mushrooming the public to cover for bulk ministerial incompetence. And, because of the way the ALP selects its electorate representatives when it is in office, it will always be hamstrung with incompetence.
Cheers
Bligh will lose power (hopefully) because she has betrayed the public service, teachers and unions and she fails to understand that the public are sick to death of spin. Bligh perhaps does not understand the level of anger towards her. Walk into a teachers’ staff room and you will not hear much good said about her after the contempt which she showed teachers. Many teachers (generally ALP voters are preparing to either vote LNP or at least Green with the ALP last on the ballot. Other public servants are angry and the unions affected by privatisation are furious. I think the thing is that many people (like myself) who have neve voted conservative are now prepared to at least put the LNP above the ALP because we figure it can’t get much worse than Bligh. If it came down to choosing Bligh or the LNP the LNp would get my vote. I would prefer to know my enemy than to have a deceitful ALp government which betrays unions as they chase their own careers.
Mark,
In this instance, I am with Craig Johnstone. Crikey’s reporting on ALP factional stuff has been scarily inaccurate for most of this year, running rumour after rumour that have all ended up being unfounded.
Considering the quality of some appointments made to the Premier’s office post-election (think Lidija Ivanovski, et al), its not hard to see where the poor advice for Bligh would be coming from. Whats more, in a fourth (?) term government, I’d be willing to bet a lot of money that the good advisers have left, and the hacks, no-hopers and two-day-a-week electoral officers of 1998 have become the Senior Policy Advisers of 2009.
The same Brain Dead Talent Pool Syndrome affected Alan Carpenter in WA, is creeping in in Victoria and apparently now afflicts Qld too (by the sound of it).
The government’s dying, and only a real policy-smart Premier with Midas-like political skills will save it….got any of those?
PS – I got to agree with Dave. Crikey on internal ALP machinations has been almost invariably incorrect, probably because they listen to any amount of tips from scurrilously vested interests within the party without regard to their motivations.
Joe Samaras, I’m looking at YOU.
Yeah, she was on a winner pre-election when she told the ratings agency to go to buggery. QLDers applauded.
And then, of all whacky throwbacks – Privatisation. LOL – its just so retro!! Hey, I know a groovy new band called the Stone Roses, vote for me. Emails has just been invented, Ive got Windows 95, and I just saw another person with a mobile phone.
“Crikey’s reporting on ALP factional stuff has been scarily inaccurate for most of this year, running rumour after rumour that have all ended up being unfounded.”
Doesn’t that just about sum up all of Crikey’s stuff? Everytime I’ve read Crikey reporting on an issue I actually know something about, important facts have been wrong.
d
On Bligh’s failure to enact even minimal abortion law reform as mentioned by Craig Johnstone and Daryl Rosin, I would not be surprised if she were cynical enough just to leave the existing law in place in order to tie up the efforts of people who would otherwise be fighting privatisation or the Traveston Dam
In recent years our supposed democracy has become one in which so many straightforward things that should be done (or not done) as a matter of course by any sensible Government have to consume the weekends and evenings of people for sometimes months or years on end to achieve.
Who remembers all the time and effort consumed just to convince Anna Bligh not to proceed with her insane plan to entomb half of the Brisbane River adjoining the CBD at the North Bank under concrete high rise apartment buildings?
Any thinking political leader of good will would have yielded to the public outcry against this outrageous proposal in less than a day, but not Anna Bligh.
Whether she ever intended to proceed with the North Bank development or not, the time spent by community activists trying to stop this was time that could have been spent on a good many other critical struggles for conservation, democracy or justice.
No doubt leaving laws like the abortion laws in place has enormous future potential to tie up the time and efforts of activists.
The only sure-fire guarantee against such abuses by by such grossly irresponsible Governments is the introduction of Swiss-style Binding Citizens Initiated Referenda.
As an Independent Candidate, I intend to put that proposal to the voters of Brisbane and I encourage all other candidates to do likewise.
James Sinnamon
Brisbane Independent for Truth, Democracy,
the Environment and Economic Justice
Australian Federal Elections, 2010
Why Queenslanders must demand new state elections
In the March 2009 Queensland elections, called early and conveniently before the Auditor General’s damning reports on Health and Transport, Labor clung to power by concealing the likely privatisation of publicly owned assets and promising to maintain the state fuel subsidy. Regaining office, the fuel subsidy went, charges for registration and public transport rocketed and a $15 billion public asset fire sale was announced – although opposed by 79% of the Queensland public – to pay for the cost of government-engineered population growth – again, without consultation.
This is not democracy. This is not honest. It is not even polite. Help create a ground-swell by signing the E-petition calling for a new election. Not sure? Read why in this article.
One point that seems to have been overlooked pretty widely is Anna Bligh’s efforts at combating corruption. During her time as premier, several Labor party members, including ex-minister Gordon Nuttall were prosecuted for some pretty serious corruption charges, and no matter how fondly people might remember Beattie, he would have protected them from these kinds of criminal prosecution.
Anna Bligh didn’t make a big deal of this anti-corruption, maybe trying to preserve the goodwill of the party by sparing them a media circus. But it seems to have destroyed any support she might have on the right, and definitely from the AWU, stop her enjoying the support of her party.
Which is a shame, I think.