THE NEWMAN YEARS RISE, DECLINE AND FALL EDITOR ANN SCOTT CARTOONS SEAN LEAHY AND ALAN MOIR THE NEWMAN YEARS RISE, DECLINE AND FALL EDITOR ANN SCOTT CARTOONS SEAN LEAHY AND ALAN MOIR FEBRUARY 2016 Printed by Print on Demand (POD) University of Queensland: http://www.pod.uq.edu.au. Electronic version available on the TJRyan Foundation website: www.tjryanfoundation.org The ‘Word Cloud’ on the front cover first appeared during the January 2015 election campaign on 612 ABC. It is reproduced by kind permission of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword! 1 Ann Scott Who was T J Ryan?! 4 Roger Scott T J Ryan: A Centenary Note! 7 Tom Cochrane Beyond the ‘Common Sense Revolution’ in Crime and Justice Policy Making in Queensland! 12 Paul Mazerolle Nepotism, Patronage and the Public Trust! 16 Dr David Solomon The Newman government 2012-2013: drawing battle lines! 27 Ann and Roger Scott, cartoons by Alan Moir and Sean Leahy The Purge of the Public Servants (2012)! 46 ‘The Watcher’ Parliament under Newman in 2014! 55 Roger Scott, cartoons by Sean Leahy Newman government 2014: political battleground! 68 Roger and Ann Scott Political combatants! 113 Roger and Ann Scott Winners and losers: the election in January 2015! 134 Roger Scott The strategists - the relationship between Labor, labour and the electorate! 151 Roger Scott The LNP strategists: ‘Strong Choices’ and ‘Operation Boring’! 160 Ann Scott Vote Compass and the 2015 Queensland election! 163 Simon Kelly Can Do has been canned ... and other political branding tales from the 2015 Queensland election! 166 Lorann Downer Political leadership in contemporary Queensland! 169 Lorann Downer An assessment of the LNP’s post-election review! 175 Chris Salisbury Answering back: ‘Campbell Newman and the Challenge of Reform’! 181 Roger Scott Appendix: TJRyan Foundation Research Reports, 2012-15! 190 FOREWORD Ann Scott1 The TJ Ryan Foundation is a progressive think tank focussing on Queensland public policy. The aims of the Foundation are to stimulate debate on issues in Queensland public administration and to review policy directions of current and past State governments on economic, social and cultural issues. Its website focuses on evidence-based policy, and provides links to a range of online resources. The Foundation came into being at a time when universities were being urged to make their research more accessible to the general public, rather than hidden behind the paywalls of esoteric journals. In the world of public policymaking, decisions often have to be made rapidly, without the luxury of long-term, commissioned research projects. The Foundation strongly encourages engagement of our members in current policy debates. At the Labour Day dinner in 2013 the then Leader of the Opposition, the Honourable Annastacia Palaszczuk, announced that she had invited Emeritus Professor Roger Scott to become Executive Director of the, as yet nonexistent, TJRyan Foundation.2 The Queensland Branch of the ALP and the Queensland Council of Unions provided seed funding for the Foundation. The year 2013 was devoted to formalising the constitution of the Foundation, appointing a Board, an Executive and a large team of Research Associates. The TJRyan Foundation website3, designed by the Brisbane design company ToadShow 4 ,went live at the end of May 2014. The Foundation was formally launched by Ms Palaszczuk on 17 February 2014, at a function held at the Queensland University of Technology. The keynote speech, ‘Nepotism, Patronage and the Public Trust’ was given by the then Queensland Integrity Commissioner, Dr David Solomon AM. Professor Paul Mazerolle, Pro Vice Chancellor of Griffith University, and a TJRyan Foundation Board member, talked on the topic ‘Beyond the “Common Sense Revolution” in Crime and Justice Policy Making In Queensland’. Professor Linda Shields, also a Board Member, and at the time 1 Dr Ann Scott PSM is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland http://hapi.uq.edu.au/professor-ann-scott. She is also Research Coordinator for the TJRyan Foundation, and manages its website. She wrote her doctorate on ‘The Ahern Committee and the education policy-making process in Queensland’ (completed in 1984) http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:205100. She joined the Queensland public service 1985 working as a policy officer in a ranger of departments: Education, the Office of Cabinet, the Public Sector Management Commission, and the Queensland Police Service. She retired from her position as Director of the Office of Commissioner in 2004. She is author of Ernest Gowers: Plain Words and Forgotten Deeds, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 (http://www.palgrave.com/ gp/book/9780230580251); and, with Professors Mervyn Eadie and Andrew Lees, William Richard Gowers 1845-1915 Exploring the Victorian Brain, Oxford University Press, 2012 (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/william-richard- gowers-1845-1915-9780199692316?cc=au&lang=en&). 2 Full details about the TJRyan Foundation can be found on the website: http://www.tjryanfoundation.org.au 3 http://www.tjryanfoundation.org.au 4 http://www.toadshow.com.au 1 Professor of Nursing, Tropical Health, at James Cook University5 discussed ‘Health Care in a Newman Queensland’. A similar event was held to mark the first anniversary of the Foundation, at which Professor Geoff Gallop AC, Professor and Director of the Graduate School of Government at the University of Sydney, and former Premier of Western Australia, gave the keynote address on ‘Mandates, Promises and Surprises’. To mark the second anniversary of the Foundation, the Board decided to publish a compilation of the Research Reports that had appeared on its website over the previous two years. However, as the Foundation already had 38 Research Reports it was clear that this was not practical. The book, therefore, focuses on the political commentaries. The Foundation’s own existence spanned most of the years of the LNP government, whose landslide victory in March 2012 led pundits to predict that the ALP might be ‘wiped off the map’ for years. In 2012 Queenslanders might reasonably have anticipated a minimum of two terms of LNP government, perhaps even three. But extraordinarily the 2015 election, called by Premier Campbell Newman on 6 January 2015, tipped the balance sufficiently far in the other direction that the ALP was just able to form a government. The Foundation produces annual political chronicles. We were in the final stages of completing our report for 2014 when Premier Newman called the 2015 election. We followed the election campaign closely. Two of our Research Associates wrote post-election analyses. Dr Lorann Downer wrote ‘Political leadership in contemporary Queensland’ and ‘“Can Do” has been canned - and other political branding tales from the 2015 election’. Dr Chris Salisbury reviewed the post- election analysis by former Premier Rob Borbidge and former Deputy Premier and Treasurer Joan Sheldon, commissioned by the LNP. Dr Downer, Dr Salisbury and Simon Kelly were involved in the ABC’s Vote Compass project during the election campaign. More recently, Emeritus Professor Roger Scott reviewed Gavin King’s biography of former Premier Campbell Newman: Can Do: Campbell Newman and the Challenge of Reform. Their contributions are included in this book. Sean Leahy and Alan Moir have provided outstanding cartoons on Queensland politics for the Courier Mail over the years. Many of Moir’s cartoons were published in Smile, It’s Joh’s Place in 1982.6 Sean Leahy’s cartoons can be found on his website archive.7 We are most grateful to both artists for allowing us to reproduce their cartoons here. Dr Salisbury kindly checked the manuscript for typographical and other errors. His close knowledge of Queensland political history helped me avoid several significant errors, for which I am most grateful. I am responsible for any errors that remain. In 1915 Thomas Joseph Ryan was elected Premier of Queensland, heralding what Emeritus Professor Tom Cochrane describes as an ‘extraordinary age of reform’. In the first two chapters, Roger Scott and Tom Cochrane discuss the impact Ryan had on Queensland politics. A number of events took place in 2015 to mark the centenary of his becoming Premier. Ryan was instrumental in legislating to allow women to stand for parliament. It was notable that 100 years later not only was the Premier the first woman in Australia to become Premier of a state from Opposition, but she 5 Currently Professor of Nursing at Charles Sturt University: https://www.csu.edu.au/faculty/science/nurse/staff/profiles/ professorial-staff/linda-shields 6 Alan Moir , Smile, It's Joh's Place, Penguin Books,1982. 7 Sean Leahy’s website and cartoon archive: http://www.leahy.com.au/leahy/comic_dayarchive.cfm 2 appointed eight women to her first Cabinet, out of a total of 14 members, including a female Deputy Premier. Championing women was only one of T J Ryan’s many of progressive reforms. He lit the torch of reform that another ALP Premier, Wayne Goss, grasped over half a century later.8 Between 1989 and 1996 the Goss government implemented sweeping reforms, including implementing recommendations from the Fitzgerald Inquiry into corruption in Queensland. Professor Glyn Davis, in a tribute to Goss, wrote that a single animating value drove Goss as premier: the need for integrity in government.9 Goss was quoted as saying that he hoped he had left Queensland ‘a better place’. He had, and it was the memory of the dark years before this better place emerged that caused such disquiet on the part of so many observers who had been participants in the Fitzgerald reforms. Sadly, Wayne Goss did not live to see the outcome of the 2015 election. The following chapters also remind us how many of these reforms appeared threatened under the Newman government. 8 Wayne Goss (1951-2014) was Premier from December 1989 until February 1996.