The CCC has again released adverse findings after yet another investigation into local government, this time into the mayor of the City of Cockburn. He’s standing aside while the findings are investigated by an independent inquiry. I don’t really want to write about the findings themselves; they’re pretty self-explanatory. But a story that has come up during the saga raises a troubling issue about the ability of the powerful to quash democratic protest.
Residents of Cockburn have been collecting signatures for a petition calling on the Local Government Minister to sack the councillors. According to a report in Cockburn’s local community newspaper this week, staff at the council have been contacting shopping centres asking them to remove the protestors.
As noted here and here in comments, there’s an extremely interesting development in Queensland state politics today - Indooroopilly MP Ronan Lee has defected from the ALP to join The Greens.
Lee has been something of a maverick during his time in Parliament, causing both Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh a few headaches, and having switched factional allegiance from one right wing faction - the Old Guard (”Labor Unity”) to the other - the AWU (”Labor Forum”). He might have expected ministerial promotion, particularly if Anna Bligh had had the determination and the support to put the broom through Cabinet that is needed - rather than just talking about “renewal” - but has had to content himself with the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Attorney-General. Lee has been a very active local member, as his website demonstrates, and a position of some independence with regard to his party (Lee’s election paraphernalia and office signage have radically downplayed his ALP affiliation) must have assisted him in retaining a very marginal seat in traditional Western Suburbs leafy Liberal heartland he first won in 2001. Lee has also been outspoken on environmental and transport issues, and recently took a swipe at Anna Bligh for not being serious about green issues.
Yeah weird choice huh. In short, nuclear is still dealing with some legacy issues, gas supplies are hostage to the vagaries of Russian intimidation and the EU ETS carbon price is pointlessly low meaning that they don’t stimulate renewable deployment.[back]
If you’d like to see a larger image of the photos in this post, click on them then click on “full view” once you’re inside the gallery.
Once you’re out of the inner city, the vista the suburbs present to your eye from the train window is a tad undifferentiated. Sure, you can pick where weatherboard gives way to brick, as you travel through time as well as space, but if you’re not paying attention, it’s not that hard to miss your station. And in Brisbane you’re out of the inner city pretty quickly - the distance of two stations does it. Unlike Sydney and Melbourne, you’re speedily in the realm of big quarter acre blocks with old houses perched and shifting on their stilts as they hug the verdant hills, knowing that they’re interlopers. But some - landmarks is the wrong word - icons compel your eye’s focus.
No one who’s ever caught the Caboolture or Sandgate-Shorncliffe trains would ever miss Albion station. The old flour mill is too delightfully out of scale and incongruous to miss. It dwarfs its surroundings.
It’s lain vacant for six years now - as with so many other noteable Brisbane buildings, the victim of a tussle between the Council and developers, eventually to be resolved mostly in the latter’s favour - with the token addition of a modicum of public housing (which will give the new residents something to whine about) and a claim about economic renewal. The increase in the value of the surrounding real estate usually goes untouted - at least by the planning authorities, concerned ostensibly with public purposes as they are. It’s this sort of thing that led to a lot of disillusion with the Labor administrations of Jim Soorley and Tim Quinn, and probably contributed to former Labor leader David Hinchliffe almost losing his ward in the election just a few short weeks ago.
I was having a chat last night with a friend and colleague about the theme of media decline. He’s a bit sceptical. I’m a tad sceptical about it as well, possibly for different reasons, and I won’t elaborate because I suspect that his ideas will turn up in a post sooner or later, but one thing I think we agreed on was that coverage of Australian politics in the print media is changing - and not for the better - for a number of reasons and in a number of ways. One case in point is the fact that the local media in Brisbane basically didn’t bother to cover our local elections in any depth, and only began covering them at all when the campaign was already well under way.
I’m not sure what the reason was - the fact that the result was regarded as a forgone conclusion may have been one. As it turned out, not only were they missing out on the chance to engage in some “public journalism” and analyse in depth issues that all the opinion research tells us are of great public concern - for instance the transport tangle - but they also missed what in any media terms would be defined as a real story - the swing against Labor in the wards.
Campbell Newman has won a resoundingly convincing victory in the Brisbane City Council election, taking over 60% of the primary vote, topping 50% in 24 of the 26 wards, and sweeping the Liberals into what looks like being a 16-10 Council majority in the wards on his coat tails with a swing against Labor city-wide of 5.5%.
Joe Hockey was first out of the starting blocks to make the predictable claim that Newman’s victory indicated a Liberal revival. As former Liberal Vice-President and election analyst Graham Young pithily put it, this is “baloney”.
A very comprehensive guide to the election has been provided by Antony Green.
Incidentally, I’ve just observed (but am not surprised) that the word “Liberal” appears to be almost entirely absent from the “Can-Do” website. It gets one mention now, but I’ve had a look at the site previously and it hasn’t been there at all. If, as appears likely, Campbell Newman romps it in for re-election to the Lord Mayoralty, it certainly won’t be because of any inspirational power the Liberal brand has. Those who aren’t Brisneylanders might be interested to know that whenever he’s been questioned about his status as the senior governing Liberal in Australia, he’s always disclaimed any responsibility for the party, generally dissed party politics and rabbited on about the best interests of the people of Brisbane being his sole concern. So it’ll be interesting to see if he wins big, and/or if the Libs take wards off Labor (a real chance), if it’s talked up as a partisan achievement. It probably will be, but there won’t be much basis for it.
It might be nice, though, if Newman lost in a backlash against the most annoying ads and campaign jingle ever.
Or because of his interesting promise to spend $400000 on erecting “Men’s Sheds” around town.
Elsewhere: More Queensland local government election news at Qld Decides and a lively comments thread at The Poll Bludger.
Update: There’s an interesting story at Qld Decides which suggests polling may indicate that Labor is in trouble from the Greens’ Drew Hutton in the inner city southside ward of The Gabba.
Further update: Antony Green will be live blogging the count on Saturday night.
The Poll Bludger has posted a very comprehensive guide to Saturday’s Brisbane City Council elections, about which I’ve previously written a couple of posts here. As usual, the quality of the information presented is superb, but I’d take exception to part of William’s analysis:
A poll conducted by Galaxy and published in the Courier-Mail the Sunday before last showed Campbell Newman set for a landslide re-election with a primary vote of 59 per cent to Rowell’s 30 per cent, translating into 63-37 on two-party preferred. However, a separate question on ward voting intention had the gap at a mere 52-48. I personally find a disparity of this size very hard to believe, and point to the fact that polls of Senate voting intention greatly exaggerate the level of split voting. I suspect the poll has picked up a real sentiment that Labor does not need to be given yet more power along with general satisfaction with Newman, and that this will translate into a strong Liberal performance on the wards as well as the mayoralty.
I’m not surprised by the disparity at all. Brisbane effectively has a natural Labor majority, and Campbell’s election was an artefact in 2004 of Labor’s time in office and a very weak Labor candidate - the lacklustre Tim Quinn who followed the very popular long term mayor Jim Soorley. Campbell didn’t win big, but has had four years’ worth of incumbency, with the added advantage of divided control lessening his accountability - anything people like he can blame (fairly or unfairly) on the Labor majority in Council. He’s also not running a Liberal campaign, downplaying his party affiliation constantly and branding his team as “Can-Do Councillors (and Candidates)”. I think Brisneylanders quite like having some checks and balances through a Mayor and Council of different stripe, and though I think he’ll lift the Liberal boat in the wards a smidgeon, the best bet is still a Labor majority, though it will be tight. The Greens’ chances in Toowong, The Gabba, and Central (in that order) are also a factor.
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.
Forget all that guff about some student politician becoming the senior governing Liberal in the land if Brisbane’s Mayor Campbell Newman loses his race for re-election on March 15. It’s nonsense anyway, and it’s moot to boot - “Can-Do Campbell� is sailing towards victory. Private party polling conducted late last year shows Newman with a near 60% primary, and insiders from each campaign camp don’t believe much has changed.
But that doesn’t mean the Brisbane City Council campaign lacks interest. With an integrated Council taking in most of the metropolitan area, a budget twice that of Tasmania’s, Councillors paid just less than State pollies, and a host of cutting edge urban issues to the fore, both the Labor and Liberal parties are playing for high stakes.
Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s “Minister for Everything�, Russ Hinze, pushed through legislative changes in 1982 which saw the direct election of the Mayor. Hinze failed to clear the way for the Nats to take over the city, but did see a succession of outsiders – most notably the Liberals’ Sallyanne Atkinson, Labor’s Jim Soorley and Newman himself – storm in from outside the ranks of Councillors to win the top job. Newman’s problem is that, while he beat Soorley’s lacklustre successor Tim Quinn by a narrow margin, the ALP still controls the Council, holding 17 of the 26 wards.
This uneasy exercise in cohabitation has seen the Libs take a minority of seats in Civic Cabinet, the Lord Mayor jealously guarding his budgetary powers, and Labor Deputy Mayor David Hinchliffe take on the American sounding title of “Majority Leader�.
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