Don't You Worry About That

I’ve come to love Brisbane, but how do you promote it to the world? What does Brisbane have that is unique, recognisable and impossible to reproduce?

We call ourselves the River City, but in reality, so does Taree (NSW), South Perth (WA),  Chattanooga (Tennessee, USA), Jacksonville (Florida, USA), and a large slab of the UK. We’re not a ‘beach’ town, and we’re not really tropical, although we have really nice weather.  We don’t have the kind of internationally known symbols that mark some cities: the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Saint Basil’s in Moscow, the Hollywood sign, the Brooklyn Bridge, the statue of Jesus overlooking Rio de Janeiro...

Brisbane has the Story Bridge, which is lovely, but not in the same class, and that we’ve got the Town Hall as our council logo is simply more proof that we’re lacking an identity.

And then this morning, as I listened to the radio accounts of an Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Brisbane’s Musgrave Park being “moved on” by a hundred or so police officers, and media access being restricted, I realised that we have something new yet oddly familiar, something unique, something with images that are recognisable the world over.

Cue the blurry images and harp-music.

It all started with an idea, a fragment of something remembered, encouraged by a few scotches and some  misty nostalgia. Queensland was drowning. We needed a hero and the Superman suit wouldn’t fit Anna or Clive.

And thus Campbell Newman was anointed Saviour of Queensland.

Next, the idea: Like all the really good ideas, it needed to be simple. Our hero, and his trusty elders and sidekicks, looked to the good times, saw what made them great, and decided to reproduce those conditions right here in 2012. All right, it wasn’t one of the great pieces of innovation in this 21st century, but it made more sense than the nothing we currently had, and we needed a change.

Under our new hero’s leadership, we would return to the heady days of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and his stand-up mates. None of this namby-pamby new-millennium peace-and-tolerance bullshit for us. The LNP, political arm of Clive Palmer’s mining organisation, teamed up with the conservative Christian Lobby and convinced more than enough Queenslanders that the only way forwards was backwards.

Thanks to the new Campbell Newman government, Brisbane is becoming a real-life 1970s Theme Park. All the fun of the Paisley Fair, right here in Queensland:  Our disco-dancing Premier has been in the job less than 2 months and already, he’s thrown a party for his Boys In Blue in Musgrave Park. Unfortunately they had to do some cleaning up, but hey, the boys are here to serve us, right? There are some conflicting reports about media access to the party, but Joh never invited outsiders to his private parties, did he?

And earlier this week, SuperCanDo announced his intention to fast-track a few hand-picked items through parliament, without benefit of committee scrutiny. Way to get in the spirit, Sir! He’s really taking that one seriously, having entirely tipped the balance in the composition of parliamentary committees. Well, I’m sure there wasn’t much emphasis on balance back in the 70s, so it’s probably accurate.

And what about this business with the gay folks wanting to get married? Joh would never have stood for that rot; he would have had them all locked up – or sent back to Disneyland where they came from. Our new Premier knows what he has to do: those progressive communists from the ALP who rammed through civil partnership legislation aren’t in charge any more, and Lord Newman is already looking into ways to repeal that unseemly festive shenanigans.

As for the bloomin’ Arts, we can’t afford it. We’re not a bloody charity! These idiots in Canberra – Gough..er…JuLIAR and their mates – have spent us into the poorhouse! You can forget your Literary Awards – if you want literature, you can read the classics. In fact, you can download them onto your Star Trek Ipod thingy for free. Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Bronte, Yeats, Coleridge…keep you going for years! You don’t need that godawful doofdoof either, or FM or that new-fangled ABC DAB Digital Radio thingo. You’ve got 4KQ on the AM band. It was good enough for Joh in 1968, and it hasn’t changed a bit.

Sadly, with money the way it is, we can’t rebuild Cloudland or Festival Hall, but  you’ve got lovely offices and homes where they used to be. Can’t wait to see what we can build on the old Regent Theatre site. Maybe a bridge, or a tunnel.

So that’s it. Brisbane is well on it’s way to being the world’s only authentic 1970s Theme Park. All we need is a massive mirror ball, and we’ll even have our icon. Thankfully, those Skyhooks blokes have already written the jingle.

Does anyone know where I can get a Safari Suit in mauve?

Campbell, Cost Cutting & Confusion

Campbell Newman’s enormous swag of LNP members have been officially on the job for a month now, and if one thing has become obvious, it’s that there is a lot of them. Finally, with Jackie Trad looking certain to hold South Brisbane for the ALP, we can finalise numbers, leave the campaign behind, and get some governing done.

That’s not suggesting that the business of governing hasn’t been going on during the past few weeks since the Queensland ALP Government was demolished. A lot of decisions have been made, and even more have been promised. This is the way of a new government determined to sweep clean. So clean, in fact, that the seven ALP members who survived the massacre won’t even have offices in the Parliament House.  It’s not hard to believe that Parliament House wasn’t built to house a government the size of this one, which is Premier Newman’s reason for consigning the poor ALP members to Woop-Woop.

I’m not convinced though. The Legislative Assembly has 89 members and everyone one of them has to have a functional office, regardless of party affiliation. It feels a little like a classic Nationals gerrymander, where the boundaries were shunted this way and that to keep the city-slicking ALP scum well away from the seat of power.

I wasn’t in Queensland during the infamous Joh years, or the aftermath, although I heard about them. We all did. The legend of Joh is tied up with his determination to strangle anything resembling opposition, and to hell with your rights as a human being. Protests weren’t just photographed for the next day’s tabloid; “they” were photographing you for your file. Bjelke-Petersen saw public protests as a menace which disrupted traffic, upset pedestrians, motorists and shop keepers, and were mainly made up of "grubby left wing students, Anarchists, professional agitators and trade union activists".

As the reverberations of increased gun-related violence in Queensland is traced back and associated with an increase in the presence of bikie gangs, Campbell Newman is talking about enforcing laws already on the books,  which restrict the right of bikies clubs to ‘assemble’.  According to Gold Coast.com.au 

The LNP opposes the anti-association laws, and vows to repeal them, yet will consider using them anyway?

Mr Newman on Sunday said the Liberal National Party (LNP) government will consider "using the laws it inherited from the Labor party" to declare it illegal to associate with or be a member of particular bikie gangs.

and

Mr Newman reaffirmed his government's commitment to repeal the anti-association laws in favour of legislation that targets people who accumulate unexplained wealth.

Even considering using these laws opens the gate for Premier Newman to blame the former ALP Governments of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland for being soft on crime. It’s inevitable. Along with the Big New Broom comes the free set of Steak Knives – all the better to blame the previous government with.  Get used to hearing “it’s all Labor’s fault,” a lot over the next few months.

The Blame Game had even more to offer, when one of the Bikie leaders pushed his beard aside to display the redness of his neck. Apparently, it’s all the fault of the affiliated Sydney-based clubs who let in bikies of Middle Eastern origin. Apparently they have a different ‘moral code’. It even appeared that the Courier Mail was in agreement.

In the course of its reporting on Queensland chapters of bikie clubs The Courier-Mail has identified several club members and associates of Middle Eastern origin.

Well sorry, Camel, but this Bikie business is your culture. If there are people exerting their moral code all over your culture, and the only response you can offer is violence, then you should expect the police to get involved. I’m not a fan of anti-association laws either, but it’s a better option that getting shot in the undies department at Big W.

Meanwhile, the seven ALP ministers are finding their way to their new offices, happy to legally assemble anywhere they can, including any available phone box and the back of my Barina. Not only are these ALP members being moved from the traditional opposition offices, they’re being moved to another building entirely. When the Fitzgerald Report included the provision that the Opposition must be provided with “appropriate resources and information”, I’m pretty sure that it was to prevent petty acts like this one.

Other new LNP Cost Cutting measures include

·         The axing of the Premier’s Literary Awards ($230,000 annually)

·         The axing of the ClimateSmart Home Service seven months earlier than planned (one-off saving $5m)

·         The axing of ‘The Smart State’ Number Plates in favour of The Sunshine State ($15,000 annually)

·         The Solar Dawn Project has lost $75 million in funding from the State Government

·         It’s also likely that the Queensland Climate Change Fund will be axed, saving $430 million

I don’t think it’s much of a surprise that Premier Newman is cutting programmes; his priority is to pay down the state’s debt and he has the mandate to do it.

The really controversial decisions made in Premier Newman’s first few weeks in office are the personnel changes. Department heads have been rolling down the steps, many of them replaced with notable LNP heads. Michael Caltabiano is a former Liberal high-flyer who lost both his council and local government seats and found himself on the outer. He’s back in the inner circle now, heading up Newman’s Transport and Main Roads department. That he’s an engineer and not a bureaucrat shouldn’t matter in running a multi-squillion dollar department. Should it?

The Bjelke Petersen legacy is one of great economic development, when Brisbane really did evolve from the small country town still visible in parts of the Brisbane’s inner suburbs, to a much larger country town. Yes, I’m mocking Brisbane, but mocking with love. This change during the Bjelke Petersen years was the first in a series of Great Leaps Forward for Brisbane. Since then, we’ve seen the city – and other Queensland cities - grow ever taller, and what feels like half of Victoria has moved north to the sunshine and cheaper real estate.

But Premier Newman is intent stripping Queemsland to it’s bones, at least in terms of expenditure. He’s hoping Newman’s legacy won’t be a Great Fall Backwards.