…on a tax free salary as Queensland’s North American Trade Commissioner in LA, of course.
Whether the former media tart #1 can bring himself to follow the election campaign back here in the state that employs him is anyone’s guess. But he might be cheered – albeit with a healthy dose of schadenfreude – by the thought that he’s missed by a lot of people who were keen to see his back not so long ago.
As I remarked the other day, Peter Beattie always had a plausible story to explain service delivery woes. I was expecting the Bligh mob to make much of the fact that the Rudd government had only just been elected and federal help would take time to show results. Maybe the strategists have decided this conflicts with Bligh’s “strong leader” thing – a Beattie theme, of course. Peter wouldn’t have worried – he’d be bragging about dragging dollars in from Canberra, in the manner of every successful Queensland premier.
Rather, we seem to have Ministers mired in bureaucratic speak and a Premier who gives every impression of reading from a script she’s not entirely comfortable with.
Writing in The Australian, Sean Parnell rightly argues that Beattie wanted a Bligh win to be his legacy. But he gilds the lily a bit on the way. The truth is that the complex factional dealing that saw Anna Bligh installed in the Premier’s chair has crippled her leadership, depriving her of the authority to put her own stamp on the party.
That’s become increasingly obvious as the campaign has gone from shaky to unconvincing. Parnell is spot on with his conclusion – if Bligh loses, the campaign, and the sequence of events which led to it, will indeed “come under scrutiny”.
Elsewhere: A related post by me at Larvatus Prodeo.
20 Comments
Would Paul Lucas, John Michel or Terry Macenroth be any better?
Don’t get me wrong – I think Bligh is the best thing Labor has going for it in this campaign. But her performance is overly scripted, and not all that confident.
Talk about shadenfreude, the poem PissingOffPete left in the desk for Anna has an un- healthy dose:
“Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away. ”
No doubt all will recognise it, from whatever canonical highschool anthology you had, (to go with “Call of the Gums”), as Shelley’s Ozymandias: Pete’s missing first line- “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair”. Charming man, what. Or maybe he got the idea from Carr, via Hawker Britton: he wouldn’t have thought it up himself, and his accustomed Brains’N'Guts Trust ( Rolfe and Makenroth) had already scampered down down the ships ropes for more lucrative opportunities.
Pete actually did put his oar in at the start of the campaign in a slight op ed piece, (the Oz I think, on a back page). I thought at the time it would have been the start of a Beattie doing his Wizard of Oz act, we were in for a series of blistering bolstering Anna confetti, but it turned out to be half semi-incoherent explanation of the GFC, then a promo for what a great return we are getting for the money we are spending on him and his coterie. He didn’t actually specify how many queensland jobs he was pulling out of the LA air, but I suppose he’s confident queenslanders haven;t forgotten how to fill in the missing bits from PeterPatter.
Heather, on the other hand, is true blue: she’d separated form hubbie, here to support Stirling Hinchliffe’s campaign in Stafford.
Pete taking his jet club retinue of 16 Queensland companies on a 13-day trade mission to Colombia, Mexico, Brazil and Chile, starting last saturday.
But fear not, we’ll see him soon, appearing in the Nuttall case.
Beattie can’t campaign in the election, southbrisbane, because he’s a state employee.
I agree with the sentiment of Mark’s post. I think the major problem with the campaign thus far has been the ALP’s inward focus. Instead of casting the political net far and wide as they did in the Beattie’s populist era, this election has been about maintaining their majority, when they should be looking to expand it. The campaign strategy is indicative of the wider problem for the Party during Bligh’s tenure, the ALP are behaving like a party looking to survive in government, rather than looking to thrive with a new vision that’s different from Beattie’s tenure. One only has to look at the Q2 statement (released before the campaign) to realise its a poor imitation of the ‘Smart State’ Strategy.
Voters appear to be tired of the ALP because it is looking tired.
Yep, sunnycoaster, Q2 was a major floparama. Bligh hasn’t really conveyed any sense of where she wants the state to go. “Keeping the economy strong” isn’t really a vision. I’d have thought that was very important for her as a new Premier.
Q2 was supposed to signal “planning for the future”, but Beattie always had a story about what the future would look like.
#4
If Beattie could have campaigned, I wonder whether Labor would have wheeled him out. Undoubtedly his political and media skills would give a boost to the campaign. But he’d also undercut Bligh’s attempts to define herself as a new leader distanced from the Beattie government.
Oh, I think Beattie knew his time had past. I don’t think he’d think he had anything much to offer this time around.
Where Parnell is gilding the lily somewhat is in exaggerating Beattie’s level of control over the succession. And minimising the fact that he really had lost most of his popular appeal, and was in an increasingly weak position within the party.
Mark you are right. Beattie would at least pretend he would fix the Health System. Bligh has given up on that front. Note that Bligh doens’t mention Beattie at all on her website, and Labor only gets one mention!
Stirling Hinchcliffe was the only one game, or stupid enough to use the Beattie name in his campaign – Heather Beattie jetting in for his campaign launch.
I hear Bligh is using the DNA line in her ads. Not very original. That DNA line is stolen from Sony adverts for their HD TVs in the USA.
“HD – Its in our DNA.”
Here is a funny ad bashing Aussies from NZ
“DIY its in our DNA”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxVGMO07sws
“Jobs for the Boys – Its in Labor DNA.”
#10
Didn’t Rudd use that one too? Something about “Compassion and economic conservatism is in my DNA” “Costello’s just as evil as Howard- it’s in his DNA”
Must be a Queensland thing…
What happened to my puppy?
(Sorry, sorted. You can delete #12 and #13 if you want)
Mark Bahnisch in Larvatus Prodeo says:
Last week Mark speculated that the Borg had blown it. At least this week Mark’s electoral prediction is closer to the truth. But not for the reasons he adduces, such as Beattie absence from the campaign or Bligh’s “depriv[ation]…of…authority”. These are superficial aspects. More fundamental forces are at work.
Leaders are just not that important in deciding partisan alignments. So the fact that Springborg’s approval ratings are fairly low (37%) and well behind Bligh’s is of not very great significance. Preferred PM/PREM is a poor predictor of party preference. Mumbles puts “leadership” in its place:
Springborg’s undecideds are probably not all that much up for grabs one way or another. My prediction is that they will mostly fall into his column come election day. They are just suspending final judgement, in the event of a candidate meltdown. The electability test is more severe on Opposition leaders.
Mark Bahnisch says:
If current leaders are not that important to contemporary contests then previous leaders are even less so. Occasionally one finds a previous leader of world-historic proportions, such as Ronald Reagan, who can be lugged around on the next campaign trail to rouse the true believers.
But this is very exceptional and we can be quite sure that Petey is not in Ronnies class. The currently junketting former Premier is keeping a low profile for a good reason, both professional and political.
It is also a bit of a myth to argue that campaigns are vital ingredient in victory. It is possible that an Opposition can lose an election through a stuffed up campaign. (“cant even run a tuckshop” argument.) But the best campaign cannot beat a strong government, or save a government that is on the nose with the punters.
Leadership obsession and campaign race-calling is a fetish of the punditariat who need to talk about something that punters understand. Personality is something we all understand. And races are interesting, even if the conclusion is foregone.
I am sticking to my prediction made at the beginning of the campaign of a 51-49 victory for the LNP – “close, but not a nail biter” at least in terms of 2PP.
Whether that distribution of preferences translates into enough seats to form government is of no interest to me. Queensland politics is only interesting to me if electoral preferences bucks the general trend implied by standard cyclical theory of partisan alignment.
But I doubt it. Queensland used to be different and interesting in its own way, here beautifully recorded for posterity by a notorious local identity. Now, under the juggernaut of coastal strip development, its becoming just another boring megalopolis. Thats progress, I guess.
Wherefore dost thou use fancy words when thou art ignorant of the meaning thereof?
Irony, J-D.
It’s somewhat uncharitable to ascribe ignorance to others…
Re@4: Not that I’ve been counting, but I’d be surprised to find that pieces by Beattie in qld newspapers happen all that often, I guess the fact that this one, saying just what great value he and LA his team are giving to Qld, just happened to turn up at the start of Anna’s campaign was completely accidental. Pete probably didn’t even know there was an election on, it was only when heather said she was going to back to stafford for a bit and he said “oh why’s that ” that he had an inkling. Nothing at all like taking part in a campaign, not a a bit of it.
I’ve just driven through Stafford, and never seen a forest of posters in front yards like Hinchcliffe’s, zillions of ‘em. I dunno about whether he’s game or stupid per JL@9, but at least he’s giving it a lash.
Q2? Could there have been a clearer telegraph that Bligh’s was an idea free administration: who in their right mind would try and sell a second hand strategy from a creature like Kaiser, a leftover, from the engine room, of the Iemma trainwreck? Madness.
You gotta feel sorry for her, maybe, a tiny bit, cos for a minute there, mid 08, she had her finger on a slogan which could have grown legs: “from bricks to brains”, but I guess that was just another casualty of the GFC. But, lets get real, was that ever gonna play in Peel Street?
Mark, do you really think it’s uncharitable to ascribe ignorance to others? Why? Everybody’s ignorant.
Anyway, if it is somewhat uncharitable, that must mean I am somewhat uncharitable. Is it uncharitable of you to ascribe lack of charity to me? It might be uncharitable and still be accurate. Maybe I am somewhat uncharitable. I know I’m not perfect. Maybe it’s another of my imperfections that I now think that you don’t know what irony is. I guess I’ll just have to live with that.
J-D. A lot of words there.
My only point was to say that “wherefore art thou?” is a common misconstruction of the speech from Romeo and Juliet. I’m aware it doesn’t mean “where are you”? Just saying… I guess I’m wondering why you felt it necessary to make the comment.
Mark, I didn’t feel it necessary–I just wanted to. I genuinely wanted to know why you had used the expression, and I still don’t understand. I also am aware that many people have the misconception that ‘wherefore are thou?’ means ‘where are you?’, but the effect on those people of the way you used the expression is to confirm them in their misconception.