Tag Archive for 'transport policy'

The Borg’s (B)rough ride to the top

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 2 months ago
in Queensland, State/Territory Elections and Transport
. 21 Comments

From today’s Crikey email:

Queensland Liberal National Party leader Lawrence Springborg – often accused by his Labor opponents of being a policy free zone – was quick out of the blocks on Monday, making an announcement about trail bike tracks. The self-styled Borg, having intimated last year in his rebranding exercise that he’d soon have the solution to all Queensland’s problems in the key domains of health, education and transport, has retreated to a small policy, small target approach.

This stance is justified by the economic situation, and a whole lot of the rhetoric the Queensland Nationals have been spouting for decades about low taxes and the evils of debt. But actually the game is being played this way because the hard work of policy formulation simply hasn’t been done, and because the LNP’s idea of a successful campaign strategy is to wait for Anna Bligh’s Labor government to fall over of its own accord. All Springborg has to do, the thinking goes, is look bright and shiny and new, and the “unified conservative force” will find its own path to victory.

The Borg’s trail bike bonanza, though, didn’t exactly make a huge splash in the press. And what reaction it did get showed some elementary political steps hadn’t been taken by his office – such as alerting relevant interest groups and anticipating their comments. The trouble with bite sized policy is that while it’s supposed to sound positive and uncontroversial to the general public, there are always groups who care deeply about the area and who may bite back.

But probably of more significance was an apparently throwaway comment the Borg made during Monday’s launch. For reasons which are rather obscure, he started talking up the possibility of former Minister Mal Brough running for a Labor held state seat. This is quite bizarre – because Springborg and the Nats relished the opportunity at the time of the amalgamation to destroy Brough’s career during his ill fated incumbency as Liberal Party President.

Continue reading ‘The Borg’s (B)rough ride to the top’

Good enough for Melbourne, good enough for Brisbane, say LNP and Labor?

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Brisbane, Melbourne, Queensland, Transport and Urbanism
. 34 Comments

No one would every accuse the LNP leader Lawrence “the Borg” Springborg of being poll driven, would they? I mean… surely it’s a coincidence that the latest Galaxy Poll on state voting intentions found Labor leading strongest on transport and the LNP releasing a transport policy for Brisbane commuters the same day?

The said policy is an amalgam of the undercosted, weird (extra carriages on trains which won’t fit on the station) and possibly unfeasible, according to the government. But in the grand tradition of governments, Labor are claiming they were already thinking of the most apparently popular bit of the Borg’s train agenda, and may well steal it, but they wouldn’t be doing that because they were already… etc. The neatness of this trick is that the government can actually do something about what the opposition can only talk about, and at the same time it provides some dangerous incentives for the LNP to remain a policy free zone.

But, leaving aside the politics for a moment, The Borg’s initative is to have free fares for early and late commuters heading to and from the CBD by rail – from 6am to 7am and from 6pm to 7pm. The idea – supposed to reduce overcrowding on peak hour trains – is said to have been borrowed from a Melbourne iniative, which is what Labor are now saying they’ve been looking at for some time. Any Melbs folks care to tell us Quincelanders how it’s worked out in practice?

Getting back to the politics, Springborg combined his announcement with the launch of his own new form of transport – a campaign bus called “The Borg Express”. The visuals suggest part of his problem – the very self-centred (or if you prefer, leadership focused) nature of his campaign. I haven’t seen any qualitative polling on this, but I’d strongly suspect the LNP doesn’t have much of a brand, and the worst of both the Libs and the Nats might be haunting its image. The Borg has a lot riding on his own self-presentation, and the LNP must be hoping all the eggs in this particular basket don’t break as The Borg Express wends its way around.