The Australian Labor Party’s leader in Queensland, Premier Anna Bligh, is an excellent communicator and a very personable politician. She is the first female State Premier in Australia to win an election. Just over a year ago, Bligh’s leadership during the flooding crisis was exemplary and her personal popularity went sky-high. During this years election campaign she’s been a dynamo once again, working tirelessly against the tide to sell her Party’s message.

Yet if the opinion polls are correct, Labor is about to cop a disastrous hiding at the polls. Why?

I’ve observed Queensland politics from within the State, with growing concern at the prospect of an avalanche win by the Liberal National Party – a party that doesn’t seem to me worthy of government by any standard.

My theory is that while Labor has a better team than the LNP and a better case to sell, it’s picked the wrong election themes. I don’t know why. As party leader Bligh will take the blame – but I suspect she’s had bad advice. Here’s what I’d have said had I been her political adviser. I’d have begun saying it about a year ago; nothing I’ve seen since has led me to change my mind.

Unused Meme 1A

It’s about a year since the leader of the Brisbane City Council, Campbell Newman, resigned that position and was nominated leader of the LNP’s State Parliamentary Party even though he didn’t have a seat in Parliament. Since then, the Queensland LNP has actually had two leaders: Campbell Newman the “leader-in-waiting” who hasn’t been in Parliament – and Jeff Seeney who has served as his deputy and Parliamentary leader.

It’s an unprecedented arrangement. I’ve followed a lot of elections under the Westminster system in many countries. I’ve never heard of this before. I have heard of parties drafting in leaders from outside parliament – but always by first finding that person a seat to win via by-election first. Once in Parliament, ‘star’ politicians may be promoted fast. But what the LNP have done here is unique as far as I can determine. They’ve nominated a leader who has no Parliamentary seat.

When the LNP did that, I thought it likely they’d already lost the next election. How could the electorate take this kind of arrangement as anything more than a joke? I imagined Labor would ridicule it persistently until the penny finally dropped for the electorate: if a political party can’t even find ONE competent leader within its parliamentary ranks, why should anyone imagine it’s ready to govern?

Yet as far as I can tell, Labor hasn’t hammered this point at all.

Labor has been attacking Campbell Newman’s credibility - especially his business dealings and unusual campaign funding arrangements while Brisbane Mayor. That’s fine – but although it seemed to come close, Labor couldn’t land a knock-out punch. Since last weekend when the Crimes and Misconduct Commission announced it wouldn’t investigate Mr Newman further, the LNP has been able to claim it’s been victim of a negative campaign all along.

That’s ironic in the extreme. The LNP’s own campaign has been unremittingly negative, relying mainly on the “It’s Time” factor and a persistently repeated claim that “Labor has Failed!” (without troubling much to explain why).

Unused Meme 1B

A year ago or more it was entirely predictable that the LNP’s campaign would use those negative memes. It had used them before. A political strategist’s job was to work out how to counter them. When Campbell Newman was appointed LNP leader while outside Parliament, ALP strategists were handed a gift-horse. But they didn’t seem to recognize it. Now it’s rather late…

A spin-master’s answer to “It’s time” is surely “No it’s not!”, which could be further finessed to “Not yet anyhow!”

The answer to “Labor Has failed” has two parts. The first is “No it hasn’t” (defend the record). The second is “Even if you don’t like Labor, be even more afraid of our opponents!”. At the last election in 2009, when the same two negative memes were also used, those defenses worked to some extent. They kept Labor in power, albeit with a reduced majority.

Winning this election was always going to be even harder for Labor. The “It’s Time” factor never gets better for a party in government, by definition. Additionally, having lost some seats in 2009, Labor now defends a slimmer majority.

Enter the gift-horse… By the unprecedented measure of nominating an extra-Parliamentary leader, the LNP signalled, in effect, that NONE of its Parliamentary front-bench are really up to the job. What does that say about the Party as a whole? The extreme measure of drafting in Campbell Newman was really another way of saying “we need to put EXCEPTIONAL lipstick on this pig!” From that day on, Labor should have focused on that point relentlessly. Had it done so, I think it might now be in a winnable position once again.

What kind of political party, operating within the Westminster system, is so thin in leadership talent that it needs to draft in an outsider? Only the LNP in the 2012 Queensland election, as far as I’m aware. Labor let it get away with this admission of extreme weakness. That’s bad politics.

Rather than focusing on what will happen if Newman doesn’t win his seat in Ashgrove – a dominant theme of the 2012 election campaign – Labor would have been better off with different spin.  Even if Newman gets into Parliament, what kind of government will it be with no other obvious leadership talent? How can a party be a serious contender for government if it’s so reliant on one person? What happens if – God forbid – Mr Newman walks under a bus? Will the LNP draft in ANOTHER new leader from outside? Who might that be? How about a mining magnate such as Clive Palmer? The mind boggles…

Labor has tried to defeat the LNP by claiming (1) Newman is bodgy and (2) he might not win his seat anyway. Let’s call that STRATEGY A.

I think it would have been better with a different focus which I’ll designate as STRATEGY B: (1) The LNP is so bodgy it had to do something utterly unprecedented and pick an outsider as leader and (2) Even if Campbell Newman gets into Parliament, his team is obviously so wafer-thin on talent it’s not ready for government.

STRATEGY A might have worked if Labor had enough evidence of corruption to make a case stick – and if the polls showed Newman losing in Ashgrove. But it clearly never that crucial evidence – and couldn’t count on the polls showing a loss for Newman, despite very spirited campaigning by the sitting Labor MP Kate Jones.

STRATEGY A was a high risk strategy. Additionally, Labor’s mauling of Campbell Newman hasn’t really hurt the LNP as a whole.

STRATEGY B had none of those downsides. It couldn’t be falsified and rested on some fairly unarguable principles.  It focused on the exceptional way the LNP sought to resolve it’s own crisis – a crisis of lack-lustre leadership. Labor failed to take advantage of what was clearly a sign of desperation on the part of the LNP.

If the LNP does win this election an extraordinary precedent has been set.

Should parliamentary parties ever get used to nominating leaders from outside their team, where will it end? How long before we have plutocrats parachuted into leadership of political parties without bothering to get elected at all?

Those are questions Labor might have got us all thinking about. They might have planted the seeds of doubt on sufficiently fertile ground to keep the LNP out of power one more time.

Regrettably, they haven’t.

In Queensland we pride ourselves on being different.

The Australian States

Compared with Queensland’s southern sisters, this huge state that makes up the entire north-east of the Australian continent has a reputation for extremes.

It’s partly deserved. Queensland’s weather is wilder, our red-necks have redder necks, our greenery is more lush and verdant, beer-guts seem to bulge out further – and the stench of political corruption, when encountered, has a richer, more tropical odour.

Yet Queensland has actually shown remarkable political stability over long periods of time, with only a few big mood swings in the political landscape since Federation. For decades around the middle of the 20th Century Labor ruled the roost. Then power shifted to the right, especially the National Party. By the 1980s it seemed the era of populist National Party leader Bjelke-Petersen would never end. But end it did – and in 1989 Queenslanders were ready to vote the Australian Labor Party back into power with a big majority. With only a brief hiccup in the mid-1990s, Labor has held government ever since.

The right-wing of Queensland politics has always been a multi-party phenomenon and disunity among the ALP’s conservative opponents has been a factor that’s helped Labor retain government. On the left, only two significant parties vied for votes since the 1990s: the ALP and The Greens. The latter have yet to make a breakthrough and win a seat in Parliament, while Labor has often benefited from Greens preferences under the State’s “optional preferential system”. At the last election, which was fairly close, Green preferences were crucial to the re-election of Anna Bligh’s Labor Government.

Now – less than three days before the State election on March 24th, – it seems Queensland is about to undergo one of its rare seismic mood swings. Unless all the polls are way off, there’s about to be a change of Government. The Liberal National Party – a relatively new amalgam, so far limited to Queensland, formed by the merger of what were previously separate Liberal and National parties, is set to win in a landslide. On some polls, Labor’s team in Parliament may be reduced to fewer than football team size. Queenslanders, it seems, have had enough of the ALP.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh; her leadership during the 2011 Flood Crisis was widely recognized as outstanding

Interestingly, while Labor’s vote base has hit rock bottom, polls indicate the Greens share of the vote is also down. What’s happening is more dramatic than a loss of faith in one party and its leader. If the polls are correct, there’s a broader loss of electoral support for what may loosely be called the “progressive” side of politics.

Does this reflect real attitudinal changes among the mass of voters?

I rather doubt that. I think the values of Queenslanders – taken as one huge, diverse whole – have changed much less than the dramatic poll shift would suggest. That’s social research I’d like to see done. Perhaps when the electoral dust has settled, someone may try to assess any deeper changes in underlying values.

Right now, the only story in town is polls, polls, polls – all of them shocking for Labor state-wide – along with a general sentiment that “Labor has Failed” which merges seamlessly with the “Time for a Change” meme.

The result is akin to an infectious itch for voting Labor out. Nothing seems to alleviate the itch. On Saturday, Queenslanders go to the polls where they can have a good scratch.

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I’m utterly out of sympathy with The Big Scratch.

On Saturday, I shall vote Green 1 (swallowing my contempt for the national Green Party’s pro-imperialist foreign policies). Then I shall vote Labor 2.

For the first time in many elections – I won’t assist at electron stations by handing out Greens “How to Vote” cards, because I cannot bring myself on this occasion to hand out HTVs that don’t recommend a second preference vote to Labor.

Now I’m someone who’s been needling for “change” for years, dissatisfied with state government policies that seem to me grossly unsustainable in the long-term. Yet I’m not keen at all about this massive wave for “Change”. Why not?

For one thing, I appreciate the social, health and educational services provided by the State. I’d like them expanded, not reduced. Labor has done a reasonable job in these basic areas of government service. I think we live in a fairly civilised State in which help is given to the poor, the needy and the unwell. I like it that way. Other levels of government are involved too – especially the Commonwealth – but Queensland has, I think, been run with attention to social justice.

A unique double act visiting Cairns: LNP Leader-in-waiting Campbell Newman (right) with "Interim" Parliamentary Leader Jeff Seeney

Yet even in those policy areas the electorate is in negative mood. There are the usual complaints – too few hospital beds, hospital waiting lists that annoy. What’s missing, it seems to me, is a positive accounting for the real achievements. These are many and usually go unrecorded and un-trumpeted.

I have a personal tale to tell. A few years ago, I contracted an unusual tropical disease and got very sick indeed. I relied on the public health system. It wasn’t perfect; diagnosis was a little slow and I ended up in hospital under intensive care. From that moment I have nothing but the highest praise for the treatment I received, the wonderful multi-ethnic staff who cared for me – and for the governance that made it all possible so I could walk out of hospital soon after, healthy again and without incurring a massive debt for the first class treatment I’d received.

My survival made no news headlines. It was a headline in my life – but if the newspapers, TV channels and radio shock jocks were talking about health-care at all at the time, they were grizzling about alleged malpractice in a handful of hospitals, waiting lists or other negative stories.

To some extent this is simply the media doing its job. One person’s good news isn’t “newsworthy”; rorts and shortcomings do need exposure. But there’s probably a deeper impact on public consciousness. The populace is encouraged to think negatively about the services it does get from government – services that are often of high quality despite budget constraints. This negativity makes it easier for such benefits to be taken away. That, I fear, may be coming soon…

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As an environmentalist, the current Queensland government (along with its predecessors) has disappointed me in a number of policy areas. I could list them. It would be quite a long list.

Yet recent Labor governments have shown real concern for environmental protection. Legislation to protect the State’s remaining Wild Rivers has been a superb initiative – vilified by the mining lobby and its allies and probably about to be undone by an LNP government – but nonetheless a great effort to help save some of what’s left that makes Queensland unique. The National Parks estate has been expanded. Broad-scale native forest logging – an issue that still divides Australians in other states – has been phased out.

Environmentalists’ biggest beef with the Labor Government has been in energy production, notably Coal Seam Gas and most crucial of all to those concerned about climate change, the massive coal export projects that the government has been approving up and down the east coast.

Queensland coal exports: the modern opium trade - making the whole planet sick?

These projects are turning Queensland into something akin to the Saudi Arabia of Coal – at a time when scientists concerned about global warming say we must wind down our use of fossil fuels. It makes the pretence of a climate-wise “smart state” farcical.

Yet this “mining boom” has been what’s pumped much of the recent prosperity into the State. Labor supports it and so do all the parties of the right. The Greens stands alone in their opposition to Big Coal. Most people are persuaded that the mining boom is, on the whole, a good thing. Aster all, it helps pay for the services they like and the infrastructure they want built. No other feasible and better alternative has been sold to the public, so public support isn’t surprising.

I’m on the Greens side in that debate. But I understand why most people are not. Those of us who want a different, greener future for the State have yet to develop an alternative economic program which could deliver prosperity without these vast resource projects. The Greens’ answer to increasing government revenue is largely to increase the imposts on the mining industry. I think that’s a good idea too – the mining industry should pay a lot more of its windfall profits to the community. But this is not a policy for avoiding the big projects Greens find so offensive.

At this election, Green Party anger is being expressed most tangibly in a decision not to recommend a second preference to Labor in all but one of the seats. Individual voters are encouraged to make up their own minds on preferences. It’s a rap over the knuckles for the ALP; in earlier elections there was typically more effort to help Labor get across the line. But most Greens think Labor is about to get thrashed anyway.

My fear is that significant gains environmentalists have won in Queensland in recent decades are about to be wiped out – while there will be no change or things will get worse in those policy areas where environmentalists were already at odds with the Government.

In short, I fear Queensland is about to jump from the environmental frying pan into the fire.

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The State-wide wave of negativity, directed against the government, has been combined with an almost complete failure to scrutinise the LNP team. We know very little about most of the LNP candidates. Mostly they’ve been keeping their heads down and trying to stay out of trouble.

Yes, there has been scrutiny of leader Campbell Newman’s business dealings. Last week he came under a lot of pressure from the media and seemed to be fumbling. But when the Crimes and Misconduct Commission announced it wouldn’t investigate Campbell Newman further at the end of last week, the LNP declared victory. Since then it’s been successful in spinning an impression that Labor ran a dirty campaign throughout, peddling utterly baseless smears. That’s cited as one of the reasons given for Labor’s lack of success in the polls.

To me, whether or not Campbell Newman is corrupt is in some ways a lesser issue than what we already know to be true.

We know the LNP is still withholding its costings three days out from the election (they’ve finally been promised for Thursday – less than 48 hours before polling day!).

We know the LNP has been debate-shy. That seems to be a pattern throughout Queensland and it’s not surprising, either. On the rare occasions the two leaders have squared off, Anna Bligh dominated. She’s a much more substantial politician and a more competent debater. It shows. I suspect the same if often true at local level; it is in my own area.

CanDo Queensland

Brandishing its corny “CanDo” slogan, the LNP has indicated a recklessness about due process that’s deeply alarming. Asked about environmental impact assessment in relation to his proposal to dredge Trinity Inlet in Cairns, Campbell Newman breezily responded “where there is a will, there is a way!” That’s very true, Mr Newman. But what about the Great Barrier Reef? Mr Newman made similar remarks about another proposal to dredge Broadwater on the Gold Coast, so it’s not an aberration.

A lot of LNP candidates fail to impress after a modicum of scrutiny. Mark Boothman is a classic example. Campbell Newman’s defense of Boothman – while he continues to court religious conservatives – is rank opportunism.

There’s no break on a Party with a Parliamentary majority in Queensland – except for the courts and the Federal Government in well-defined policy areas where it has leverage. There’s no Queensland Upper Chamber. If a Government with a solid majority wants to make big changes, there’s not much to stop it.

If these wretched polls are right, evidence-based policy is about to take a back seat to Crash-Through populism.

I, for one, would much prefer this doesn’t happen.

Not in my back yard…

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No article about this election from Far North Queensland would be complete without at least a mention of the LNP’s delightful candidate for Cairns, the ex-NewsCorp personality-hack Gavin King.

Some of Gavin’s more choice remarks have already made national news, but the pithy video displayed below, complied by the local ALP, is worth a look.

It turns out Gavin has a bad word to say about almost everyone. In that sense, he’s perfectly in tune with the current mood of the electorate. No matter Gavin King pours scorn on them too – and even on his own new Party. He’s a petulant man – the man of the moment!

Very high tides have a way of bringing up a range of unusual life-forms and dumping them at high water mark. If Labor loses Cairns for the first time in a century, we’ll know it really is a King Tide.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is the major publicly-funded broadcaster – TV and radio – in this sprawling southern continent. In recent years it has also become active on-line and consequently does an increasing amount of “narrow-casting” as well.

It’s often said “the ABC is the most trusted media organisation in Australia”.

I think it likely the ABC’s public credibility is higher than most of the privately-owned media – although I also believe the perceived integrity of ALL the mass media is in decline. More and more people with the ability to double-check media spin on-line simply don’t trust mainstream media any more.

On definable news subjects – especially topics of keen interest to the Zionist Lobby and/or the so-called “intelligence agencies” – I don’t consider the ABC trustworthy at all. Many folk have yet to catch on to what dreadful liars they are. But that’s a changing too…

In the media, credibility is power. Power should come with responsibility. But to whom is the ABC really responsible?

The popular notion is the ABC is run by frightfully clever people – a government-appointed board of the best minds and highly professional senior staff – who can be relied upon to do the best job possible on behalf of the broad public interest. That’s more or less what I used to believe. I don’t believe it at all any more. I’ve come to believe this organisation is heavily manipulated by some covert power configurations. It must be.

WTC-7 - not even mentioned in the US Government's initial 9/11 report

Like many people, it was 9/11 that woke me up. Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time considering the matter is aware there are INSOLUBLE problems with the official narrative.

That’s why so many highly-qualified people have taken career risks to demand a new inquiry. Clearly the fairytale of fanatical Muslim hijackers which has been used to sell recurrent wars and to rationalize plummeting civil liberties is bogus. What really did happen and who was responsible is open to legitimate dispute – although even that thorny subject has been persuasively sketched-in over recent years.

That, of course, is to present just one person’s perspective – my perspective. I believe that like everyone else in this country, the public broadcaster should give me a voice – one voice among the many. It should not set out to censor my views. That’s not serving a news function; that’s acting as a control agent.

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Earlier today I happened to post a comment on The Drum, which is the busy ABC blog where selected articles are posted and comments from the public are invited (but not always approved).

The article Journalism education v profession: who has lost touch? was by journalism academic Jenna Price. I read it with interest. After all, I’d blogged about this same issue only yesterday.

Comment sumbitted to Jenna Prrice article in The Drum

I posted a comment under her article. It wasn’t a brilliant comment. In fact it was rather grumpy. But it did open new ground in the discussion and was broadly on topic.

My comment (see right) wasn’t published.

Of course, every blog is free to choose which comments to publish – but my question is this.

Why should Australian citizens – as a whole – pay the wages of ABC staff if they select only those articles and comments of which they approve?

What’s the value these ABC people add to our national debate by exercising that largely covert censorship function with such evident bias? Whose interests are they serving? Whose interests are they completely disregarding?

More and more a key role of publicly-funded media looks to me like social control.

That was a theme in my article Come in No 12! Taking a Megaphone to Australia’s Finkelstein debate, published here yesterday. I’d hoped to be able to point anyone reading through comments at The Drum to the article. But the public censors decided otherwise.

The ABC is an organisation funded by all Australians. It now occupies webspace (such as The Drum) that independent initiatives could take instead. Yet it exercises an inexplicit, unjustified (and in my view wholly unjustifiable) censorship function.

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ABC Canberra 666

Here’s another case of ABC censorship – and a good example of the contempt in which ABC staff often hold people whose views they consider beyond the pale.

This afternoon I happened to come across a tweet from ABC Radio in Canberra. I learnt that a discussion was already underway about “conspiracy theories” (stupid term!) and 9/11. I tuned in to 666 to listen.

The presenter, Genevieve Jacobs, was in the process of interviewing a man who was identified as a (so called) ‘Sceptic’. He was in the mould of the USA’s Michael Shermer, or Australia’s most pompous radio commentator, Philip Adams. Like Shermer and Adams before him, the interviewee enjoyed himself immensely ridiculing “conspiracy theorists” none of whom, needless to say, were on-air and able to talk back. Genevieve asked him occasional soft ball questions. They joked together. Both were clearly having lots of fun.

ABC 666 tweets re "conspiracy theory"

I called in.

I was asked what I wanted to say and put on a call queue.

When asked, I’d decided to be honest and explain that I’m highly critical of the official 9/11 story; apart from anything else I wanted to see how I was treated as someone with those unpopular views.

Would I get to be interviewed on air?

The answer was no. After ten minutes or so, the line went dead.

I called the ABC back, but was told there was no time for more calls from the public. I pointed out the entire conversation had been 100% biased towards the perspective that the official story about 9/11 is correct. All the phone-in callers had concurred on that point. I’d identified myself as holding the opposite view but given no chance to speak. Didn’t they want to treat the subject with any fairness at all?

The voice at the other end of the phone started to sound annoyed. Today’s discussion, she told me, followed another on-air segment the day before, when a real “conspiracy theorist” had been on air. I asked his name and whether I could get a transcript of that interview. She curtly told me to try ‘Media Monitors’ (a paid service) and hung up.

So much for the ABC’s responsiveness to public inquiries.

Genevieve Jacobs; thinks it's a giggle that people still ask questions, a decade after three skyscrapers collapsed at near free-fall acceleration on one "unique" day in NYC

During the parts of the show I heard, Genevieve Jacobs’ discussion about “conspiracy theorists” was more than dismissive. She actually pathologized the people with whose views she disagrees. Listeners were invited to join in and say why anyone might possibly hold such nutty views.

Except we weren’t really invited – not unless we agreed with the Genevieve Jacobs line on 9/11.

Her minder made sure of that.

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Let’s suppose Ms Jacobs actually wanted discussion on the topic of 9/11 on her show.

Let’s suppose , that is, she wanted a serious discussion (which doesn’t mean boring): a discussion which aimed at investigating the truth and exploring the range of cogently-argued positions on the topic – as opposed to merely celebrating the current dominance in the mass media of one view over another.

Ms Jacobs could still invite all her chums to participate as usual – but she’d also need to speak with scholars such as Dr Graeme MacQueen and architect Richard Gage. She’d need to sample the best of the case for and against – not merely ridicule one side.

I challenge her to do this.

I doubt very much she will, because I suspect she’s really a phony “journalist” working for a fake news organisation, aka ”their” ABC.

Genevieve has enough talent to make fun of people who are grappling with the truth – but has she got the inclination or skills to really explore the complexities of the subject of 9/11? I doubt it. Perhaps it touches on one of her cultural blind-spots?

Now… please do go right ahead and prove me wrong Ms Jacobs!

Make my day!

On the subject of 9/11, I think you’re more a propagandist than a journalist. A shill, not a honest commentator.

No wonder you and your chums giggle about “truthers”. You gleefully celebrate the ascendancy of The Lie! 666 indeed!

I bet you won’t get a green light to interview knowledgeable genuine sceptics such as Graeme MacQueen, Richard Gage or David Ray Griffin - even if you wanted to. I doubt your controllers would allow it. You’re not smart enough to best such interviewees. Serious intellectuals like MacQueen, Gage and Griffin would make their points effectively. You couldn’t stop them. So, I doubt your bosses would dare let you take the risk – even if you had the curiosity and nerve to consider taking on such a challenge, which is also highly doubtful.

OK ABC… why not show me I’m wrong?

How about taking up my challenge Genevieve?

Have you got what it takes to discuss 9/11 on a level playing field?

I doubt it.

In a move that stunned critics in the press gallery, Julia Gillard has promoted the well-known blogger Bob Carr – whisking him into Parliament as a Senator and instantly appointing him Minister for Foreign Affairs.

This is the first time in Australian history a blogger has been promoted so fast.

Bob Carr sworn in by a laughing Governor General and smiling Prime Minister

Canberra sources say astonished public servants in the Department of Foreign Affairs are burning midnight oil pouring through every cached version of Bob Carr’s blog to locate opinions that need to be fixed immediately. The organisation has no corporate memory of ministers with their own opinions.

For his part, newly-appointed Minister Carr is understood to be undergoing intense re-education to stamp out any lingering independent ideas. It seems to be working. Carr has disowned his former shocking opinion that attacking Libya was a bad idea. This morning, Senator Carr made acceptably crass remarks about the need for regime change in Syria.

The press gallery are understood to be furious over Carr’s appointment, not only because it made most of them look like prize idiots. They also believe if anyone is to be parachuted directly into Cabinet it should be a member of the media elite.