Premier Peter Beattie is showing signs of extreme hubris (that translates from the Greek as “big-headedness”). Our research says that one result of the health crisis is that voters see through his style. So they are not going to warm to his latest stunt – paid advertising of the government’s performance on crime statistics because, according to The Sunday Mail “the crime figures were ‘not as well covered as we would have liked’ by the media”. Stick by your dials for Radio Nova Pete.
He’s down, and the state opposition is in a position to capitalise on it, particularly the state Liberals. Except for their own ramshackle state and lack of competent leadership.
I went to the Liberal Party convention on the weekend for a couple of hours – the first time for a few years. The first thing that I noticed was how many faces I recognised, the second how grey we are all becoming, and the third, how few of us there are. There were some Young Liberals in the room, but I suspect that I was still below median, let alone mean, age. That’s not a good demographic profile for a “party of the future”.
My first conversation was with a senior parliamentarian. “What’s the public message out of this convention?” I asked. “I’m not sure,” he replied. Since 1981 or ’82 when Gary Neat became State Director the invariable rule with state conventions was that they would project a tailored public relations message. It was a good rule, but apparently holds true no longer.
But party conventions do project a message by default if not design. So the lack of a set-piece meant that Howard’s bungled announcement of a mere $320 million to solve one of the most intractible traffic problems in the south-east corner – the Ipswich Motorway – dominated. The money is insufficient, and worse, the announcement was made without any forewarwning of the local libs who were flung into damage control. Apparently the first they knew was when journalists called them for comment! Talk about traffic accidents.
The reason for the lack of public relations focus probably lies in the extreme autism of the state liberals. The sub-text of the convention was the struggle by out-going state president, and now state MLA, Michael Caltabiano to become Queensland’s first liberal premier.
The party organisation has been busy polling to gauge Michael’s public standing, compared to Bob Quinn’s. Why bother? As our WhatthePeopleWant research, done jointly with the local ABC shows for free, Caltabiano’s well ahead with the public. But so what, Quinn’s the leader at least until the next election, and will be unless the party room decides otherwise?
Which is why the real action wasn’t at the convention at all, but out in the branches where preselections will be determined. The story there appears to be that the joint pre-selection process agreed with the Nationals is a face-saving device. The deal has already been done to sacrifice three seats to the National Party and vice-versa, and the determinant of which seats to sacrifice for the Liberals is whether the likely Liberal candidates are Quinn or Caltabiano supporters. Because joint pre-selections are made up of small numbers of Liberal and National executive members, they are open to manipulation – one or two members defecting from either party can make the difference and as Caltabiano controls the executive, he also effectively controls these preselections.
The only really significant business contracted by the party over the weekend were changes to the constitution which would make it easier to discipline dissidents, and to determine who should, or should not, be allowed to even present to a preselection.
If Premier Pete can conquer his own bouts of self-obsession and concentrate on his opponents, despite their wins in two by-elections, the Liberals will still be playing with themselves in their own corner after the election, not occupying the treasury benches. Which is Caltabiano’s best chance of becoming premier eventually.