The only thing Bligh and Beanland have in common is the first letter of their names, and the fact that they both figure in issues I wanted to mention today.

Beanland

Bundaberg Hospital Inquiry Head Geoff Davies has indicated that he is likely to make an interim finding critical of both sides of politics for the practice of taking documents into the cabinet room so as to exempt them from disclosure under FOI laws. It is claimed that both the Borbidge and Beattie government have done it, and indeed they did. And so did the Goss Government from what I remember.
The Bjelke-Petersen governments didn’t have any such problems, because they didn’t have FOI at all.
However, some people do get an honourable mention. The Courier Mail reports: “Only Liberal leader Bob Quinn was prepared to admit it was wrong of previous conservative governments…” So Quinn gets a medal. So too should Denver Beanland and Rob Borbidge. Beanland, as A-G in the Borbidge Government, took a submission to cabinet to outlaw the practice, but according to my information he and Borbidge were rolled by the cabinet, led by Joan Sheldon and Mike Horan, and supported by Santo Santoro.
The other person who gets credit is Dean Wells who as Labor Attorney-General in 1992 established the act in the first place, although it apparently didn’t take long for things to start reverting.

Bligh

My remarks about Anna Bligh yesterday were based on our public opinion polling. Of course the only poll that counts is that taken of the 61 members of the ALP caucus (which was the other mistake I made, I was still counting them at 63). The hot tip there is that if anything happened to Beattie it would be John Mickel who would win the leadership ballot, not Bligh. So, they are most likely to play the Iemma, rather than the Lawrence/Kirner gambit.