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Queensland January to June, 2009

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Queensland January to June, 2009 Political Chronicles 603 Queensland January to June, 2009 PAUL D. WILLIAMS School of Humanities, Griffith University Overview The first half of 2009 saw some of the most remarkable developments in recent Queensland political history. A state election that recorded a number of firsts — including the unexpectedly easy return of the first woman premier in Australia — coupled with a declining economy, a tough state budget, the proposed sale of 604 Political Chronicles government-owned corporations, and the rapid surge in support for a troubled opposition despite its convincing defeat just weeks before. If nothing else, this period underscored the vagaries of state politics. January The Liberal-National Party (LNP) opposition, emboldened by its successful amalgamation in mid 2008, came out swinging at year's beginning. Opposition leader Lawrence Springborg kicked off his unofficial election campaign in early January with a curious policy launch at an Ipswich motor cycle store. But conservative forces were soon distracted when Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce sounded out pre-selection possibilities for the lower house seat of Dawson and, later, a Northern New South Wales district. Joyce soon abandoned the plan for want of support. Premier Anna Bligh was forced into her own backflip when she scuttled a move to allow drivers to claim the 8.3 cent per litre petrol subsidy directly from service stations. The Premier soon backflipped again, this time over plans to axe unprofitable Queensland Rail rural freight lines. Meanwhile, the Queensland economy appeared to stall, with 1,300 jobs lost in just two months (Courier Mail, 15 January 2009). The year's first community cabinet, in Townsville, thus doubled as a jobs summit. A government survey revealed the Smart State campaign — brainchild of former Premier Peter Beattie — left most Queenslanders cold, with only four per cent feeling involved despite the eleven-year, $400 million program (Courier Mail, 17-18 January 2009). Despite Beattie's urging to the contrary, Bligh continued to unwind the campaign. But worse was to come for the government when the issue of so-called "success fees" large corporations paid ex-politician-turned-lobbyists emerged. Former Deputy Premier Terry Mackenroth, for example, allegedly received $500,000 after lobbying on behalf of Brisconnections' Airport Link project (Courier Mail, 24-25 January 2009). A practice initially defended by Deputy Premier Paul Lucas, the Opposition declared it would outlaw such fees. The Premier's own members in her own South Brisbane branch then censured Bligh over the "devolution" of the Environmental Protection Agency's powers to the Coordinator-General, with claims that environmental standards were "slipping" (Courier Mail, 27 January 2009). Bligh closed the month with a visit to Canberra to urge the fast-tracking of infrastructure projects. With the touted "jobs squad" of top CEOs having overseen 1,680 lost jobs since the start of the global financial crisis (GFC), and with Queensland inflation falling from 5.0 to 3.7 per cent (Courier Mail, 28, 29 January 2009), the Premier was keen for some pump-priming. February Public anger soon boiled over at the "resettlement fee" the government had paid former Chief Magistrate Di Fingleton (previously wrongly jailed, then released with $500,000 compensation — see previous chronicles) in her new judicial role on the Sunshine Coast. When Fingleton complained her sixty-kilometre drive from Bribie Island was "onerous and dangerous", the government paid her $32,000 to resettle closer to Caloundra. When it emerged that Attorney-General Kerry Shine knew of the payment, the rules were changed to allow resettlement payments only for journeys greater than 100 km (Courier Mail, 31 January-1 February 2009). It was then revealed Queensland's richest man, Clive Palmer, had donated $500,000 to the Liberals and Nationals before the merger. When Premier Bligh and Treasurer Andrew Fraser made public comments questioning Palmer's potential influence over the new LNP, Palmer sued and demanded apologies. Interestingly, Palmer later said he Political Chronicles 605 believed he and the Premier would, after the election, "kiss and make up" (Courier Mail, 7-8 February 2009). And while Palmer's description of Springborg as "uncharismatic" hardly bolstered the LNP's standing, it did force the party to gag its major benefactor. Labor had to face its own questions of influence when the "pay-per- view" issue — where wealthy business figures paid up to $1,100 per plate to dine with government ministers — surfaced (Courier Mail, 3 February 2009). On returning from an emergency leaders' meeting with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Canberra to discuss the Commonwealth's $42 billion stimulus package, Bligh therefore announced a crackdown on lobbyists, with ex-ministers and ex-bureaucrats banned from government contact for two years. Other matters soon distracted, with 60 per cent of Queensland flood-declared and Jayant Patel — the surgeon at the heart of the Bundaberg Hospital saga that saw suspicious patient deaths (see previous chronicles) — attending his first day in Court on 9 February. Patel, facing fourteen charges including three charges of manslaughter, used an allegedly heavy workload as his defence. In May, Patel would be committed to stand trial, probably beginning in early 2010. Police Minister Judy Spence was then criticised for directing officers to crack down on crime in her Sunnybank electorate — a move that contradicted her previous denials of a Brisbane crime wave. On the defensive on a number of fronts — and with an election announcement clearly only days away — the government launched its anna4q1d.com.au website. Unlike any previous incarnation, this clearly "presidential" site made no mention of Labor or Bligh's team. In a bid to alienate the LNP from a progressive urban electorate, it was also the point at which Labor began referring to the Opposition as the National Party (Courier Mail, 14-15, 16 February 2009). It therefore surprised no-one when Labor launched its second television advertising campaign in two weeks. Where the previous campaign lampooned Springborg's garbled language — including his "de-necessary" comment in describing job shedding — this campaign employed a photograph of a head-scratching Springborg looking bemused over the GFC. At the same time, the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) began investigating Michael Dart, former Chief of Staff to retiring minister Rod Welford, over allegations Dart awarded a $131,000 sports grant to Mitchelton Football Club in return for pre-selection support from club president and ALP member Rohan Connell (Courier Mail, 16 February 2009). Warren Pitt, MP for the North Queensland seat of Mulgrave, soon became the second minister to call it quits, with local anger ensuing when Labor announced Curtis Pitt, Warren's Brisbane-based son, would succeed his father as candidate. More controversy followed when Burnett MP Rob Messenger asked in parliament why a $107,000 inquiry into waste water blew into a $2.6 million affair, and whether GBG Project Management, owned by Greenslopes MP Gary Fenlon, had benefited. Yet all that paled when, on 20 February, Treasurer Andrew Fraser handed down a mini-budget that cast dark clouds over Queensland's economic horizon. Where the 2007-08 budget's $809 million surplus had already been downgraded to just $54 million in December, this statement cast the state into a $1.6 billion deficit, and saw Standard and Poors reduce Queensland's AAA credit rating to AA' for the first time. With $4 billion already forfeited from coal royalties (and another $8 billion expected to be lost), unemployment was forecast to rise to seven per cent by 2010 (Courier Mail, 21-22 February 2009). Yet more anger arose from Bligh's pre-election "mail out" of 500,000 letters, including 100,000 to north Brisbane residents defending the controversial relocation of the Children's Hospital to South Brisbane. Most knew the 606 Political Chronicles campaign proper was imminent when a young female staffer in deputy LNP leader Mark McArdle's office labelled Anna Bligh, on a blog, as "ugly". McArdle soon apologised, with the LNP committing itself to a positive campaign (Courier Mail, 23 February 2009). As expected, Bligh on Monday, 23 February, visited Governor Penny Wensley to request a dissolution of the fifty-second Parliament — for a twenty-seven-day campaign and an election on 21 March — then delivered a media conference where the Premier justified the seven-month-early election on two grounds: that her Government required a fresh mandate to steer the state through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression; and — somewhat less credibly — that 144 media reports speculating on an early election forced her hand. A rather excitable Bligh closed with, "Queensland, you can trust me", then quickly began her first official campaign day in Townsville: North Queensland had long been seen as vulnerable for Labor. The LNP required a 7.6 per cent uniform two-party-preferred (2PP) swing to deliver the twenty seats needed to form government, or twenty-three seats if three LNP districts — Clayfield [0.2 per cent], Burdekin [0.9 per cent] and Mirani [1.2 per cent] — made notionally Labor by the 2008 redistribution are included. Few were surprised when betting agencies started Labor at $1.50 and the LNP at $2.55 (Courier Mail, 24 February 2009). Given the number of firsts for this election, the contest drew immediate national interest. It would, for example, be the first electoral test for Bligh as leader, and the first for an incumbent Queensland female premier. It would also be the first poll contested by a single, merged conservative party (and the first for a new major party since the state Liberals' emergence in 1949), and the first election since the GFC. It would also be the first Queensland election with a sitting Green MP, and the first for the Daylight Saving party DS4SEQ.
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