Peter Beattie and Campbell Newman have a lot in common. Not least their honesty in the face of error. Who can ever forget Beattie's famous split watermelon grin with palms upturned saying: "We got it wrong, and we will fix it."
This week he was on stage at the Queensland Media Club doing his Barnaby Joyce imitation, following another session of sun spot removals.
Campbell Newman also returned to the spotlight with a mea culpa of his own in the weekend press. TV pictures of Parliament showed a cheeky Kate Jones waving the "I got it wrong" headlines with a full page picture of the former premier.
Mr Newman has claimed that the appointment of Tim Carmody as Chief Justice was his greatest error. Not so, for as we have seen, our legal system is robust enough to survive almost any misadventure.
The most egregious error was the closure of the Barrett Centre for Adolescent Mental Health. No apology or acknowledgement from the LNP Opposition when the logical solution of co-location with existing psychiatric services on the Prince Charles Hospital site was announced last week.
Alongside this was the stupidity of allowing local councils to make decisions on water fluoridation.
Nor am I persuaded that the Newman Government's review of Alcohol Management Plans was in the best interests of the key stakeholders.
For the rest, there were industrial relations policies driven by ideology, policies on crime and punishment driven by vindictiveness, and changes to political donations laws governed by only God knows what.
It is conventional wisdom that Newman lost the election because the people voted against asset sales. There's no compelling evidence for this. Nor is the narrative that they tried to do too much too quickly persuasive. Tracking polls by the unions showed Mr Newman was on track to lose Ashgrove three months after his election.
They lost office because they were a bunch of clowns passing as a reforming government, and they were unparalleled in the practice of p---ing people off. Pink jump suits are simply vindictive, and serve no purpose in rehabilitating the incarcerated. Changing political donation laws is just dodgy. This was recognised by their own Operation Boring, late in the term, where controversial policies were back-flipped and combative ministers chilled.
Things are not getting better for the LNP. While opinion pollsters are finding it increasingly difficult to accurately capture the public mood, last week's Morgan poll shows them going backwards. With a primary vote of 33.5 per cent, down five points from the previous poll, the lost support is going to the minor parties.
The Greens are up two and a half per cent, One Nation up two per cent, and Katter up one percent. The ALP only lost one point, and the two party preferred vote is 52/48 to the ALP. As preferred premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk is nine points ahead of Tim Nicholls. Just over six months since taking the top job, Tim Nicholls' honeymoon is over.
Dr John Harrison is senior lecturer in the University of Queensland's School of Communication and Arts.
For independent news coverage, be sure to follow our Facebook feed.
0 comments
New User? Sign up