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When the dust settles, where to for Beattie's burgers?

CBD commuters in Brisbane will have noticed signs of disruption around William Street and Queens Wharf Road.

This follows the handover on January 1 of the Queens Wharf resort and casino site to the Destination Brisbane Consortium.

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Brisbane's $3 billion facelift: before and after

William Street will close for six years from Sunday, January 1, as work begins to completely transform inner-city Brisbane between George and William streets and let the city's new $3 billion casino and resort complex get under way.

Basking in a new year glow, State Development Minister Anthony Lynham happily declared the jobs-generating project officially underway. Contractors have commenced site-enabling works, which include "soft strip-out" of three adjoining, now-emptied government buildings soon to be demolished.

A focus of media attention in the last month was the coming demolition of the former Executive Building at 100 George Street.

Stories highlighted the building's rich internal history, tracking the public's last glances inside the old Cabinet room and Premier's office.

Little focus was given to the building's distinctive external features, and even less to the Beattie-era government logo adorning the top of the building.

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Perhaps few will lament the logo's departure. Still, it's worth noting that this highly visible and very recognisable legacy of the Beattie era will soon disappear from its prominent place in the city's skyline.

The logo was created by local architect and designer Michael Bryce, notable for designing the Queensland pavilion at Expo '88 and the Sydney Olympic Games bid logo.

Launched by former premier Peter Beattie in April 2000, the refashioned government logo was depicted as a modern, corporate identifier for a "new look" Queensland in the 21st century. It formed part, alongside his oft-repeated "Smart State" mantra, of Mr Beattie's effort to spark debate about Queensland's direction under his administration.

Over the next decade the new logo appeared on practically every government document, sign and structure in the state.

Former bureaucrats assert that the logo was widely disliked internally, probably owing to the presumably high cost of converting from the old logo. Others panned the massive rebranding exercise as Kafkaesque in its scope and pervasiveness.

More noticeably, the image was quickly derided by media and public alike as the "Beattie burger", supposedly resembling a burger and fries more than an image of land and sea overlaid with sunrays. But Beattie brushed off such criticisms with the observation that "it got people thinking".

Governments since Beattie's have been less concerned with symbols and, arguably, slogans ("Can Do" notwithstanding). In the same vein as halting the issuing of "Smart State" licence plates, Campbell Newman's government gradually abandoned use of the logo and reverted to a stylised version of Queensland's coat of arms as its corporate identifier.

Reportedly, cost precluded the removal of the large logo signs from atop the Executive Building. They remain a larger-than-life emblem of a political period that most Brisbane and Queensland residents would recall easily, standing in recent times almost in mock defiance of changes introduced by the Newman administration.

Beattie didn't conjure the idea of logos emblazoned on top of the Executive Building.

Former premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen opened the building in April 1971, and oversaw installation of rooftop signs bearing the state's coat of arms. Replaced by Beattie's modern logo almost three decades later, the signs have gazed out from the parapet of the Executive Building since, witness to structural rejuvenation and gentrification on either side of the Brisbane River.

This inner city transformation continues with the huge development coming to the river's north bank, and the replacement of government buildings and lofty logo signs with a dazzling integrated resort.

In many ways it's unsurprising that there is no mention from the government or the project developers about the fate of these logos. After all, since mid-2012 they've not officially been in use, and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was wise enough two years ago not to engage in symbolic change for the sake of it.

Tellingly, the logo's departure – and the building's, for that matter – hasn't elicited the ardent reaction that, for instance, followed when the G20-leftover "Brisbane" sign was slated for removal from South Bank for safety reasons.

As Treasurer Curtis Pitt said last month, mindful of the thousands of jobs in the offing, "it's out with the old and in with the new".

While the Queen's Wharf development will apparently protect the precinct's heritage buildings and values – including recognition of Indigenous cultural attachment – this protection doesn't extend to the old Executive Building, or the next-door Public Works Building or the Neville Bonner Building on William Street, all non-heritage listed and slated for demolition this year. Bonner's legacy in the CBD will continue, at least, with a pedestrian bridge across the river to be named in his honour.

Despite this imminent demolition, the Beattie-era symbolism persists – in both a virtual and physical sense – in the city's landscape, and indeed across the state.

The logo's complete removal from the government's web presence and structural assets was presumably too costly for Newman's administration to justify, at least within the unexpectedly brief time available to it.

Consequently, the "Beattie burger" logo remains in view in myriad forms, from government-sponsored websites, to signage at sporting fields and hospital wards, to decals adorning public buses.

None of these images, however, was as visible or emphatic as those logos perched atop the Executive Building.


Chris Salisbury is a political history academic at University of Queensland's School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry.
 

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