Mandate theory is being given a work-out in Brisbane. Liberal Campbell Newman has been elected Lord Mayor, but 17 out of the 27 councillors are Labor. Neither side is taking it well. Newman says he is “the Boss” and his programme will be implemented. Labor spokesperson and former school teacher, Maureen Hayes wants to know if he understands the meaning of the word “democracy” and insists the Labor programme will prevail. At the moment both look like they want to bump the other out of the ring, and if it comes to that Hayes has the bulk of raw numbers.
There was a meeting today to sort out a working arrangement between the parties. The Liberals are proposing that positions in the civic cabinet be shared evenly between the parties with Labor also holding the position of Deputy Lord Mayor. Newman didn’t attend the meeting describing it as a “squalid political squabble”. Hayes said he should have been there because of his “large mandate”. There seems to be a lot of confusion about what exactly the role and responsibilities of the Mayor are, and who has the upper hand.
The ABC says that “[i]t is believed to be the first time in Australian history voters have elected a Liberal mayor but a majority Labor council.” That might be the case, but it is a function of the fact that the major parties only contest a few rare city council elections. Most Australians prefer the major parties to stay out of local government, and for the most part the major parties accommodate them. This is made easier because the functions of local government are almost apolitical, being mostly to provide services.
It is not unusual for a popularly elected Mayor to face a council that is hostile to them, but as a result of the lack of ideological conflict, this is generally not a major issue. It can be managed.
Writing in yesterday’s Courier Mail, an urban planning academic claimed that voters had deliberately elected Newman as Lord Mayor while keeping the wards with Labor. This assumes a collective conscious that voters just do not have. More of them voted Liberal at Mayoral and Ward level than voted Labor. It just so happens that by accident those votes didn’t fall sufficiently evenly across the wards for them to change hands in proportion to the citywide vote. It may also reflect the benefits of incumbency combined with the failure of Newman to run an effective marginal seats campaign so that he was only successful in winning one ward from Labor.
In a theoretical sense, none of this helps Newman. The City of Brisbane Act makes it clear that the Lord Mayor only exercises delegated power. As the head of the council he may have more opportunities than most councillors to make a difference, but he is still only the first among equals.
At the same time, electing the Lord Mayor from the whole of the city does imply that the legislative intent was to inject a broad-based mandate into a legislative body based on representative government.
What this means is that while Newman can’t assert an absolute prerogative to implement his programme, he does have a divided mandate with the council. They can argue plurality of seats, and he can argue plurality of votes. His argument is based on moral suasion, Labor’s on brute force.
In practical terms this might mean nothing. Voters will only retain confidence in Newman if he either performs, or is seen to be illegitimately frustrated by Labor. Even if he is frustrated, if that results in four years of inaction, voters might even sack Newman for someone who can work with Labor.
This practical analysis only works if you see the whole matter through the party political paradigm that has obtained to date. What if the real interests of Labor Party councillors don’t actually align with party interest? Think of it this way. This election tends to prove that incumbent councillors have a large margin of safety. If they do a good job they will be re-elected. There is nothing in this election to suggest that Newman and the Liberals will sweep any Labor incumbents out of office next election. Individual Labor Councillors are probably most at risk of losing if they have a fight with Newman, not if they work with him.
If they accept Newman is the Lord Mayor and then run with those parts of his agenda that are popular and only oppose those that aren’t, then the risk reward ratio is most heavily in their favour. In a sense the Liberals are in check. They need to negotiate everything with Labor, and in the absence of any friction will find it very difficult at the next election to win more seats from Labor. If Newman runs a successful administration with Labor collaboration it will be difficult for him to campaign against them as a team. He will only be able to improve his party position by running locally based candidates against particular incumbents on local issues, and then only if he is not implicated in the issues.
A further bonus is that with the Liberals providing the Lord Mayor, but little else, there will be less pressure on prominent Labor councillors to put their positions at risk and run for Lord Mayor. The Liberal Party lost talented men when Bob Ward and Bob Mills resigned their wards in successive elections to run for Lord Mayor because the party needed credible candidates.
Ironically, the Newman election may actually make it easy for Labor to ride out a couple of electoral cycles while maintaining effective control of the Brisbane City Council. While Campbell maintains his popularity, they can share in it. When he loses it, they can find a friendly candidate to replace him.
This isn’t much different from the way that ordinary councillors operate in non-party political councils. There is so little ideological difference these days between Labor and Liberal that it’s not too far-fetched to see it working in Brisbane. If it can work anywhere it would be at the level of government where ideology matters the least.
Note:
Crikey! claims that Newman’s victory was the work of the Queensland Liberal “Old Guard” of which I am apparently a member. There is only an element of truth in this. I certainly provided advice, only some of which was listened to, and so did others, but this win was primarily Campbell Newman’s, and no-one else’s. He’s his own man, (a control freak even according to his lie detector test on radio station B105) which he is proving at the moment.

THE media has given virtually no coverage (bar this) to one of the more extraordinary results in the weekend’s council elections in New South Wales and Queensland – the re- election of the Mayor of Maitland, NSW, Peter Blackmore.
Mr Blackmore is the former Liberal MP for Maitland who lost his seat the 1989 State Election. He has since served as the Mayor of Maitland City Council.
About two years ago he made national headlines when he was charged with serious sexual offences involving at least one under age girl. The NSW daily press, and of course, the Hunter Valley media, gave the matter wide coverage.
Late last year he was cleared of all the charges – a fact which received extensive local, but limited state-wide, coverage.
Notwithstanding the fact he has been cleared, one would have thought, given the nature of politics today, and the focus on child sex abuse, Mr Blackmore would have struggled to gain re-election as Mayor.
Nothing could be further from reality. In last Saturday’s poll, he secured over 16,000 votes, compared with his Labor opponent’s 8,600 and the 5,100 received by the Greens candidate.
That gave Mr Blackmore, in what is essentially a Labor voting community, 54 per cent of the primary vote!
Now it is possible Mr Blackmore attracted a sympathy vote, given that he was cleared after a long legal process. But it is also possible the voters of Maitland ignored the matter and voted entirely on his record as Mayor.
I have seem some extraordinary election results in my time, but the 2004 Maitland mayoral result is more extraordinary than most.

I’ve been enjoying the current ABC nature series on Sunday nights. They show the amazing special effects available to even documentary makers now and highlight the growing understanding of natural relationships. The name – “Wolf (or ‘Shark’ etc) Battleground” – which no doubt the marketeers thought would appeal to our violence-saturated audience, is misleading because in reality the series has emphasised the way animals cooperate, both within and between species.
The more science understands nature the more incredibly complex they find it to be. Animals often turn out to be much more intelligent than previously thought, and live as parts of highly complex natural systems. One of the realisations is that the relationship between prey and predator is much more complex than previously thought. Not only do predators keep prey species healthy through selecting out the weaker individuals, there is a very intimate knowledge of each other by different species.
So it’s a shame that just as we are finding out about the impressive complexity of interrelated natural systems and the intelligence of various species, we are rapidly destroying these life forms. Some scientists have argued that we are in the middle of the sixth great extinction, this one caused by humans. Our record here in Oz is particularly bad, in large part due to introduced species that actively kill or out-compete native animals. (The last time I took a walk in the hills outside Perth I saw a feral cat – it was at least twice the size of your city moggy, and full of attitude – and wild pig scat was common. Along with the rabbits and foxes, these creatures have made encounters with any marsupials smaller than wallabies rare.)
Yet another recent scientific investigation, this time of species decline in the UK by the Natural Environment Research Council, has mooted the possibility of mass extinction of life on Earth due to human activity. The underlying problem is the interdependence of all biota, including us humans.
Einstein famously said that if bees went, we would soon follow (because they pollinate most of the food we rely on). As we proceed with out mass experiments in GM plants and cover the world with mono-crops, we only make ourselves more and more vulnerable to such a catastrophe.
Good wildlife programs always make me think how close we humans are to other species. In a real way, they are our past. It thrills me to think I am the product of such a long, persistent process as nature has run this incredibly long and complex experiment in generating new and diverse forms of life. This planet is, after all, an island of life in a hard, cold universe. I do have trouble feeling that sense of solidarity with mosquitoes and smallpox, but they too fit into the mix. Our highly evolved intelligence enables us to change that mix, but it would be the greatest tragedy imaginable if we were the ultimate cause of the whole strange and wonderful trip coming to an end.

I watched ‘Pearl Harbor’ last night on TV –yet another Hollywood blockbuster that made me think, “Glad I didn’t blow ten bucks on this stinker”. It certainly palls beside the 1970s movie ‘Tora, Tora, Tora’, a joint US-Japanese production that tried for some historical accuracy. That version could not match the fantastic but increasingly unrealistic CGI special effects of this one, but it also lacked the flag waving, religious posturing and product placement of Bruckheimer’s opus. You’d think such a signifiicant topic – it has gained great symbolic meaning with Americans – would be treated more seriously. As for the tangled love story plot, the less said the better. Has Ben Affleck ever been in a decent movie?
Following the Hollywood formula of revenge, this movie ended with the Doolittle raid on Tokyo. Pretty much a military failure, the raid did make the Japanese change their strategy (much as the British raid on Berlin during the Battle of Britain caused the Germans to switch from their successful focus on airfields to bombing cities). I wonder why Bruckheimer didn’t go the whole hog and have the hero piloting Enola Gay. Now there’s payback!
And of course there was nothing about the raging controversy about why exactly the US was so caught off guard. One of the many warnings came from an Australian intelligence operative. Churchill, who was having dinner with the US ambassador at the time of the attack, is reported to have said something like “Thank God” because he knew the US would enter WWII and Britain was saved. Churchill certainly knew about the attack, so why didn’t his close ally Roosevelt?
There are some who see real parallels with September 11. The Congressional inquiry, now getting bogged down in the predictable partisan trench warfare, will hopefully tell us a little more about who knew what when. Roosevelt never paid for the incredible incompetence (if not worse) of his administration in letting the Pearl Harbor attack occur ‘on his watch’, as the Americans like to say – I wonder if Bush will?
Those of us with a little knowledge of history can laugh at these Hollywood fictions, but then we have to consider that more and more the only history most Americans get is from movies and TV. Apparently, for instance, despite all the evidence to the contrary, significant numbers of Americans think there is a direct link between Iraq and terrorism. Interestingly, a recent report pointed out that when people receive a news report on something that is later corrected, they still tend to believe the original report.
So this is why they vote for Bush – he shares their complete disinterest in fact, much preferring the more convenient Hollywood version of history.

The allegations of sexual misconduct against rugby and Aussie rules footballers just keep on coming. What, aren’t soccer players, basketballers, etc, real men too?
Of course, there may actually be something in this. It might be the specific culture of violent sports like the two football codes that promotes the attitudes that make violence, including against women, more likely. Maybe.
In today’s “West” (I only read it for the sports coverage, honest, but sometimes a headline just catches my eye) was the headline, ‘Domestic abuse becoming normal in WA, counsellor says’. Now, according to far too many of my female students, we live in a post-feminist age where women’s rights are now assured and women can live on an equal footing with men. Despite the constant evidence that female pay rates lag behind. And despite the ongoing incidences of sexual assault. And despite the domestic violence.
Women have indeed made huge gains over the last century or so, but society has not seen a genuine shift in the attitude of far too many males to go along with this change. Boys do need good role models, and yet family fragility and an obsession with child sex abuse (as opposed to simple child abuse) resulting in a dramatic decline in male teachers sees fewer and fewer appropriate men available to do the job.
A teacher friend of mine has told me heart-rending stories about young boys pestering him after school and at home, desperate for a little male company.
This is a problem that goes to the core of what we think a modern man and woman should be. I certainly do not advocate a return to the bad old days when abuse and violence were simply swept under the lino, but we need to think a lot harder about our personal and professional relationships. Something I do know is that meaningful relationships with others cannot be bought with money.
One thing is for sure – if we see all others as whole, real people in their own right, it becomes very difficult to hurt them.

Ah, John Howard, what a funny guy… I presume that was a joke when he said all those Coalition parliamentarians calling Latham an ally of Al Quaida were doing it on their own, and so forbid he should intervene. I can only imagine how the phones would be steaming if they had actually done something like that to one of the most authoritarian Liberal leaders in a long time.
It ‘s always good to see the old traditions wheeled out again. So, just like the bad old Cold War days, any alternative to government policy is aiding the enemy, eh?
It’s actually a bit deeper than that. Worldwide, conservatives have never quite got used to the idea that democracy means that on occasion non-conservative and even leftish political parties will be elected to government. Conservatives tend to identify the country with themselves, so even non-conservative governments are somehow suspect. This was all a lot easier when communism was the big bogey, because they assumed a direct escalation from legitimate right/conservative politics to dubious centrist politics to definitely suss left politics to outright treason. So much neater than when so many conservatives supported those upstart fascists who made such a mess of the world.
So when would Australian military personnel come home? If we don’t decide when, the US will. The Bush administration is keen to get US forces out before the coming presidential elections, but Iraq seems a long way from anything like peace. Most likely US troops will go home when US domestic politics decides, like a lot of other places where the US has left without leaving peace behind.
And finally, what is democracy if it is not about making decisions on when, where and why a country’s armed forces fights? If we stay in Iraq because, as Howard claims, it would encourage the terrorists if we leave, then they are calling the shots, not us. And after all, isn’t it democracy that all the fighting is supposedly about – against the terrorists, and now we know there are no WMDs, in Iraq itself?

Now I am sure why my ALP source only told me Campbell Newman’s primary vote, but not Tim Quinn’s. The Courier Mail published its polling today. Both candidates are each receiving only 38% on primaries. That means that Newman has possibly picked up 4% since last week, and 9% since the campaign began. (Earlier CM research is here ). He appears to have taken this mostly from Quinn, who has fallen 7%. The Greens are also down by 3%.
So an impressive swing figure, but let’s look at it another way. John Howard’s had a tough time recently, and if an election were held last weekend he would have lost. And the coalition first preference vote according to Newspoll? 41%. Of course, things were different at the last Federal election. Then Labor lost. Their first preference vote? 37.8%. What that means is that whoever wins tomorrow’s BCC election is a couple of days away from the election still on a first preference vote that in an election would normally see them lose!
Of course it is the total preferential vote that determines who wins, but first preferences are a good proxy for enthusiasm. On this point I have a bit of trouble with the Courier story. They say the two-party preferred vote works out to 51% ALP, 49% Liberal, but they also say that the 9% of voters voting Green are preferencing 5 to 1 to Labor. If that’s right I make it closer to 55% ALP to 45% Lib.
Other interesting figures in the survey suggest that most people (56% to 22%) think that Brisbane is heading in the right direction. When it comes to issues, “Roads and Traffic Management” scores the highest concern at 29%, “Quality of Life” is next at 22% then “Public Transport” at 15%. Only 6% are concerned about that hardy perennial “Rates”. When asked about the attractiveness of the candidate’s promises 29% of voters think Quinn has the best transport policy, while 27% favour Newman’s. So, on the issue that most nominate, the candidates tie. The swing hasn’t been caused by any king hits on policy.
What has caused it? It’s probably not scandal either. The Courier Mail has been campaigning hard on the Council’s failure to release up-to-date flood maps, so they measured how many people have been influenced in their voting decision by this. 78% said they hadn’t been influenced.
It seems that the swing has probably been caused by a contest between energy and apathy. Campbell Newman really looks like he wants to win while Quinn looks like he expects to win.
The Courier also polled for voting intentions in the wards (Brisbane has a Lord Mayor elected at large from the city as a whole and 26 councillors elected on the traditional Westminster representative model). This part of the poll can’t be taken too seriously as it asks “Which party or candidate will receive your number one vote [in your ward]?” Experience, not to mention statistical method, says that any poll which does not use actual candidate names will be wrong. Which raises an interesting question. We know that incumbency counts for a lot in BCC elections – every Liberal loss in the last 13 years has occurred when an incumbent resigned. This time around Labor has a incumbents not recontesting in Morningside and Marchant, while the Councillor for Moorooka resigned 12 months ago. One would normally consider Morningside safe, and Moorooka should also be out of reach, but Marchant has been held by the Liberals previously.
Suddenly some interest in an election that has still to excite most voters.

There is a tradition in my area of the ALP launching a last minute sneak attack using a manufactured issue designed to fill electors with fear and loathing of the Liberal candidate. Labor is a party that cherishes its traditions, so I was not surprised to get a beautifully executed example of the genre in my letterbox this morning.
“Stones Corner is worth saving” it proclaims. Well, that gets my vote, but is it under threat? I turn the leaflet over noticing how they have used only two colours – red and blue – but produced the impact of a three or four colour pamphlet with clever use of reverse block and photos in a sort of blue sepia. I find that the dire threat is one of Campbell Newman’s tunnels which has an entrance on Old Cleveland Road at Stones Corner.
It must be a huge maw of an opening because, apart from swallowing all of those cars and spitting them out well on the other side of the Brisbane River at Mt Coot-tha, it is apparently going to destroy heritage listed buildings; devastate the local creek by halving its catchment; widen the road; destroy 1,000 local jobs and drown my suburb in a flood of cars which it will suck in from all over the Southside of Brisbane.
You may have noticed that there are five dot points here. That’s an old Labor tradition too, even if you have to stretch 3 points into five by the Pythonesque stratagem of points 4 and 5 being “see point 3”. In this case there are only two genuine points, two completely spurious ones (how exactly are those jobs going to be lost and is it really going to drain the creek?) and one doubling-up (demolishing heritage buildings is a consequence of widening the road).
Not that I expect most of my neighbours to coolly apply the tools of literary criticism to this vaguely factual brochure. No, I expect most of them to take it at face value, particularly as the Liberal candidate will be hard-pressed to get an effective answer into their hands before Saturday.
Former Defence Minister and MHR for Ryan John Moore always analysed policies as one of two types – there were policies for Government, or policies for Opposition. Campbell Newman’s tunnels are definitely policies for government (just as John Hewson’s Fightback! was). They are the sort of policy that gives your opponent lots of potential for misrepresentation and over-statement with which to induce fear of you in voters. You need to be in government to have the resources of communication to overcome the natural doubts that constituents will have. Even then they can bring you down.
Not that the local ALP in this area have needed a real issue to beat up. Linda Holliday, now Assistant State Secretary, first won this area in 1991 when it was part of Camp Hill. There was a general swing away from Atkinson, but if it hadn’t been for Holliday’s hardball tactics Jim Soorley would have been one ward short of a majority. In the last week she ran hard on two issues – an allegation that the Liberal administration would close the Carina Library; and another allegation that Liberal Party notable, Peter Fardoulys, was being given council land for free that he was going to subdivide to make his fortune.
Never mind that there were no plans to close the library (which was subsequently closed by Labor). Nor that all Fardoulys was doing was negotiating a footpath crossing for the front driveway of his house. Both these issues resonated in their local areas. Richard Jeffries, the sitting Councillor lost the election by around 100 votes. You’d have to say that either of these beat-ups could have lost it for him.
Not that encumbents are the only ones drawing long bows this election. The Courier Mail yesterday published an analysis piece by University Lecturer Doug Tucker. Early Liberal ads compared Campbell Newman to legendary Labor Lord Mayor Clem Jones. Tucker compares Newman to “[f]amous construction chieftain Robert Moses [who] adopted a similar approach [to Newman] to New York’s ever-increasing traffic congestion from the early 1920s.”
That looks like a step up, but why the comparison? Well apparently, 55 years later in 1975, New York was bankrupt, and full of traffic jams, so it just goes to show, Brisbane can’t afford Campbell Newman. Silly me. I thought New York went bankrupt through mismanagement of its civic budget (which in the US has to provide for schools, hospitals and police, on top of what we expect here). And maybe the gridlock has something to do with trying to jam a population as big as that of Australia into an area about the same size as Sydney. Tucker might just be one of Peter Costello’s “work till you drop” brigade – his time scale is prehistoric and his judgement petrified.

THE response by the National Rugby League (NRL) to the revelation that a “prominent Bulldogs player” tested positive to cocaine further confirms everything that is wrong about the leadership of rugby league today.
So far we know that anonymous players have been fined, the Bulldogs CEO “fell on his sword” and the team manager has been sacked. Yes the men who must accept ultimate responsibility for the appalling state of the game today are not only intact, their justification for their own inaction actually gets weaker day by day.
When confronted with the media revelation that the Bulldogs fined a leading player, but kept the offence, the fine, and the player’s name secret, the NRL Chief Executive, David Gallop, used words like “dissapointing” and “frustrating” and “it would be helpful if clubs kept the NRL informed of test results and penalties.”
Canterbury has handled the recent rape allegations, other claims of player misbehaviour, and now drug allegations, in as clumsy a way as I have seen in many years.
But the NRL, the game’s controlling body, has hardly covered itself in glory either.
And what a contrast the weak and inadequate “leadership” of the NRL is with the aggressive and pro-active approach the Australian Football League, and its clubs, has taken with regard to allegations of rape and other sexual abuse levelled against AFL players in recent weeks.
Not only has the AFL and its clubs named the players against whom allegations have been made, the Chief Executive of the League has publicly urged women with complaints of sexual abuse against players to contact the AFL. Several have done so.
The NRL and Canterbury may be able to justify not naming the players accused in the Coffs Harbour incident because they have not (yet) been charged, the same does not apply to the players fined already for turning up for their police interview in little more than beach attire, or the player fined for cocaine use.
The secrecy over matters concerning the Bulldogs reflects an appalling arrogance by players, and the club, but an even more worrying weakness and abdication of leadership and transparency by the controlling body, the National Rugby League.
The ever diminishing number of fans of what the late George Lovejoy called “the greatest game of all” surely deserve better.

Likely PM Mark Latham must be very happy with Senator Bishop and his old right faction in WA right now. As Latham gets up a head of steam to wrest back government from Howard and Co, an old style ALP scandal breaks out in the west. And here the now rabidly right wing ‘West Australian’ is giving it everything with headlines that suggest that the old bogey of union-led corruption is back at work in the ALP.
Sometime ago the right in WA split, with Stephen Smith starting another faction who often vote with the left. Right wing senator and ex-Shop Assistants Union head Mark Bishop has accused the two major unions behind the left of dodgy member numbers, which affects voting power on various party organisations. The unions claim it is about technical issues, and are suing Bishop for defamation. This was all to be sorted out by state ALP secretary, and ex-Shop Assistant Union official, Bill Johnston. And ex-Premier and convicted criminal Brian Burke is supposedly mixed up in it all somewhere. Burke hangs around the fringes of the WA ALP doing extraordinary damage to the party and frustrating the hell out of Premier Gallop who does not want the electorate constantly reminded of the bad old days of WA Inc.
Out of all this came the startling news that right wing Police Minister Michelle Roberts wants the top job, although she is prepared to wait another term. The Liberals, who have themselves been hamstrung by constant leadership speculation, know just how much such stuff helps and will be very happy about this. Premier Geoff Gallop, although a little tarnished of late, is a smart politician and generally seen as a definite asset as leader. Michelle Roberts’ main claim to leadership is that she breathes.
So, this is just what Mark Latham, Geoff Gallop, the ALP, and, I submit, the Australian people, do not need. The national ALP office is apparently getting involved, and I trust they will speak sternly with some people who can’t help but place their dubious personal and factional ambitions before the good of the party.