A further sequel to the LNP/Courier-Mail early election mania – Springborg backer Clive Palmer’s 18 year old son, Michael, who’s the LNP candidate for the safe Labor seat of Nudgee, has had a bit more publicity for saying dumb stuff than 18 year old candidates in safe seats usually get. Palmer was slapped down by Tim Nicholls for demanding that Anna Bligh call an election for February 21. Apparently, after the frenzied LNP/Courier-Mail election speculation fest, they’ve now always been committed to seeing that Labor serves a full term.
That’s nice for them, because that’s always been the most probable outcome. Although I do worry about the sunstroke and skin cancer risks unnecessarily run by all those LNP rank & filers sweating it out campaigning on street corners over the Christmas holidays. Treasurer Andrew Fraser reinforced this on Friday in an interview with the Fin Review, discussing the preparations for the June budget and observing:
Anyone who trots out the line the election timing has anything to do with avoiding a June Budget is ill-informed, mostly stupid and probably politically motivated.
I don’t know if he was thinking of The Borg, who judging by the fact that Mark McArdle and Tim Nicholls have been doing all the running for the LNP in the media, is still on hols. Perhaps Lawrence never expected a February poll. Or it may be the ultimate small target strategy. But with Bligh taking a higher profile and announcing good things like a new park at the top of the Kangaroo Point cliffs on crown land overlooking the river and running around the shop spruiking jobs initiatives, they might like to contemplate actually coming up with a political strategy now that Labor’s kicking off its re-election plan.
…”Nudgee”?
You totally made that up.
Tis the ‘home of wild ducks’. As Palmer is about to discover.
Also the land of swarms of mosquitoes in my experience!
Nudgee is quite real, Helen, and quite near Nundah. And when in those parts, you can take the Deagon Deviation to Zillmere, and indeed, ultimately to Humpybong.
The latter of which hosted the first settlement in Moreton Bay. Imagine the Quinceland jokes if that had taken off!
Not a bad neck of the woods around Nundah and Northgate, incidentally.
Maybe the LNP has a cunning plan to woo Brisbane voters with the smiling faces, compassionate rhetoric and small l liberalism of McArdle and Nicholls? Hang on…
Nudgee: a suburb where Arthur Upfield dried out (at Childs’s Wine Saloon – BTW, that’s dinkum; Childs was a good mate) while writing/polishing his Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte novels. Bony lived in an adjacent suburb – Banyo (also the site of Brisbane’s RC Seminary).
In another adjacent suburb, Cribb Island, lived a family of Pommy Kids who, with drummer Colin “Smiley” Peterson from Humpybong, formed the Bee Gees.
Nudgee is/was also a very prominent Aboriginal sacred site, and it & neighbouring suburbs have preserved Bora Rings, as well as unpreserved ones still visible in differently coloured grass. It also has what was once Brisbane’s main RC cemetary. Not inconsiderate claims to fame.
Oops, sorry. I meant to type “not inconsiderable
“Palmer … [had been] demanding that Anna Bligh call an election for February 21.”
Or?
Or he’ll hold his breath until he dies. Then she’ll be sorry.