Reaching back to Ryan to secure Labor's future

Queensland Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk has reached far back into the party’s past to conjure up a vision for its future. Palaszczuk used a Labor Day dinner in Brisbane to announce a new not-for-profit organisation to debate and discuss new policies funded by the party and the unions. The new entity is called the T.J. Ryan Foundation after the former state Labor premier. Palaszczuk called Ryan one of the Labor movement’s shining lights. "It was Thomas Joseph Ryan's government from 1915 to 1919 that is regarded as having laid the groundwork for the Labor governments that dominated Queensland politics in following decades,” she said. 
(Photo: National Library of Australia)

But the foundation link to the union would not have entirely pleased the wily lawyer who was the state’s greatest Labor premier and possibly the greatest of either party. As D.J. Murphy notes in a 1978 study of Ryan, Labor never aspired to be purely a trade union party in Queensland. From its foundation until the maritime strikes of 1890, it saw itself as a reforming party based on urban and rural unions and it supported farmers who wanted a more equitable sharing of wealth. It wasn't long before they grabbed power. Though it was only initially for just one week in 1899, Queensland was the first jurisdiction in the world to elect a labour government. In 1904 the first Commonwealth Labor Government of John Watson took power by entering into a coalition with dissident Liberals.

Among the Liberals attracted to the reforming zeal of early Labor was Thomas Joseph Ryan. Ryan was the son of an itinerant Irish farm labourer who arrived in Victoria in 1860 and became a stone fence builder in Geelong. Thomas Joseph was the fifth of his six children to Jane Cullen who died when he was just seven. Eldest daughter Mary, 11, brought up the family in her mother’s absence. Young Tom was a gifted student and got a scholarship to St Francis Xavier College in Kew. He graduated in law in 1899 and he moved to Queensland as a teacher at Rockhampton Grammar School. He was admitted to the Queensland Bar in 1901.

Ryan’s politics were shaped in Victoria by the liberalism of the 1890s which saw a big role for the state, He was also an avid federationist and both views shaped his thinking in power. At Maryborough and Rockhampton, Ryan was marked out as a great public speaker. His specialty was constitutional law and he argued for the vote for women, “one person one vote” and fair elections.

In 1903 he nominated as a Deakinite but it was soon obvious to him he had more in common with Labor. A year later he switched sides and quickly established himself as a leading Labor spokesman in Rockhampton.  He was inspired by the Prime Minister Watson who ruled responsibly in office. He remained Labor in 1907 after William Kitson left the party he led but was defeated in that year’s election. In 1909 he moved west to stand for the seat of Barcoo and was elected. He was respected as a lawyer who had mastery of labour laws and could reduce complex legal questions into arguments anyone could understand.

In parliament he was quickly seen as a rising star and he established himself as a formidable adversary of the government. Aware of the power of the press he bought the Rockhampton Daily Record in 1910 which while supportive never became a mere propaganda tool for Ryan. These were exciting times for Labor as Andrew Fisher gained a majority in both houses at Federal level. 

Ryan was a nationalist who supported referendums to give the Federal Government more power over monopolies and labour issues. Labor had hoped to win the Queensland election of 1912 until a Brisbane general strike allowed Liberal premier Digby Denham to play the law and order card in a snap election. Ryan was elected leader of the new opposition with EG Theodore installed as his deputy. It would prove one of the great combinations of Australian politics.

In 1913 he outlined where he wanted Labor to go. “There was no other party which had a policy formed at the instance of the people themselves,” he said. He appealed to professionals, farmers, clerks and labourers. With Ryan at the helm, Labor won easily in on 1 June 1915 with a broad appeal to workers and farmers who supported his push to end the monopoly power of the Colonial Sugar Refinery. Tom Ryan was just 39 years old. As Ryan became premier and Attorney-General, Australia was being sucked deep into the European War. He fully supported the war. What Ryan hated was the way the big companies grew fat on war profits with the likes of CSR and the pastoralists overcharging the Imperial Army for its supplies. He established a cane price board and negotiated a sugar labour agreement. 

Yet Ryan’s biggest problem wasn’t industrialists but his own parliament: specifically the upper house. As early as 1908 Ryan called the Legislative Council an ‘excrescence on the Constitution”. In 1915, the chamber was stacked with the previous government’s appointees with only five of 45 members supporting Labor frustrating his reform program. Ryan wanted the Council abolished as the Governor seemed unwilling to appoint new Labor members. By 1917, Ryan had charmed the new Governor into appointing 13 Labor members and set the course for the Upper House’s abolition. He supported abolition in a 1917 referendum but it was comprehensively defeated. 

His other major referendum issue was conscription. Australia was the only volunteer army in the war and Ryan could see it emerging as a divisive issue. He delayed a party decision to avoid a split. But once the referendum was called, he was the only premier to take a stand against it. Because of his role in helping to defeat the first conscription referendum, Ryan became the defacto leader of the second campaign, a battle he relished. Prime Minister Billy Hughes had brought in wide-ranging censorship to gag anti-conscriptionists. On 19 November 1917 Ryan made a speech in parliament which the censors refused to allow printed though the same arguments he made a day earlier had been faithfully recorded by the pro-conscriptionist Brisbane Courier. In the offending speech Ryan had quoted war office figures that showed there were already 100,000 men available for reinforcements making conscription unnecessary.

The censor’s report made it sounds as if Ryan supported conscription and refused to budge on requests to correct the record. Ryan insisted Hansard print the censored portion of the speech and Theodore took advantage of this to include two other censored pamphlets with the removed text highlighted in bold print. Theodore also arranged to have the Hansard circulated throughout Queensland.

At this was happening, Hughes arrived in Brisbane and authorised the raid on the Queensland Government Printer’s Office to stop the publication. He challenged Theodore to repeat the pamphlets outside the privilege of parliament and he would “have him in 48 hours.” But the press interpreted this as a direct challenge to Ryan as Theodore’s boss. It was Ryan who accepted the challenge and repeated the speech in front of thousands at two public meetings. He and Theodore were prosecuted but the magistrate dismissed the case.

Because of his strong anti-big business stance, Ryan was hated by the press. In October 1917, the Brisbane Courier editor threw his own remarks into the report of a Ryan speech against the “intolerable” Legislative Council saying it was Ryan who made it intolerable. “He wishes to retain power in the hands of the union s to create these intolerable situations whenever they choose,” the editor said. The Melbourne Argus called his anti-conscription campaign a “paltry and contemptible conspiracy with Germans and other disloyalists.” 

But more people believed Ryan than the Argus and the second referendum was lost by a bigger margin than the first. By 1918, Ryan was a national figure feted by large audiences in Sydney. He was easily re-elected as Premier of Queensland the same year in a personal triumph. He had shown it was possible to achieve in parliament what many socialists believed was only possible through revolution. But his growing stature meant he was increasingly consumed by national issues.

He still found time to pursue his attack on the Legislative Council. When the upper house softened his taxation laws, he threatened them with a large influx of Labor members and worked on a second referendum to curb its powers. In 1918, he left for England for a Privy Council case and arranged for loans with the Bank of England. Ryan’s urbane demeanour allayed the fears of the British moneymen Queensland was in the hands of the Bolsheviks or the Wobblies. 

Ryan and his wife caught the dreaded influenza in England and they lay stricken in their hotel, with doctors expecting both to die at any moment. They both recovered and Ryan won his case but years of political struggle were starting to take a  toll. He returned back to Melbourne to a large crowd and was asked would he enter federal politics. “Possibly” was the answer. When he came home to Queensland, he was escorted by hundreds of soldiers carrying lighted torches crammed by cheering spectators. 

A conference in October 1919 formally asked him to become campaign director of the federal campaign. When his friend Jim Page died in 1921, the seat of Maranoa opened up and Ryan went there to campaign for the seat. He had a heavy cold and was physically exhausted. In Barcaldine, he collapsed and was placed in hospital. He died on Monday, 1 August 1921 aged just 46.

His legacy was immense and his successor Theodore completed many of his projects including the abolition of the upper house. Thanks to Ryan, Labor would rule from 1915 to 1929 and again from 1932 to 1957. As long time Queensland parliament clerk CA Berneys wrote, Ryan was the best he’d seen: “He stood pre-eminent as a leader; as an earnest exponent of the faith that was in him and as a generous big hearted fighter.”

Today's Queensland Labor leader Palaszczuk looks to Ryan as the party emerges from the wreckage of their worst ever election loss. She said the Ryan Foundation would show Labor was something beyond a mere brand. Channelling Ryan she said Labor always been “a living, breathing party” focused on equality, fairness and opportunity. “Labor’s policies and principles should always be about people,” she said.

Labor trounced in another Queensland election

The City of Brisbane has not yet finished punishing Labor delivering a handsome victory to the LNP in the Council elections. Suffering a swing of 5% since 2008, Labor is likely to lose three seats barely a month after being trounced in the State election. The city is Australia’s largest municipality and incumbent Mayor Graham Quirk is heading towards an easy victory with 60% of the vote with almost 65% counted.  Labor’s Ray Smith is polling a disappointing 24.69% while the Greens candidate the high profile and former Democrat senator candidate Andrew Bartlett is also not doing as well as some expected with 10.36% of the vote.

The Greens are doing much better in the councillor vote, in some inner western seats overturning Labor as the main opposition.  The LNP will comfortably retain their big majority in council and are likely to take three seats from Labor with another two Labor seats in the balance. In Central, Heather Beattie (wife of former premier Peter Beattie) is heading for defeat as she trails Vicki Howard by 51-31 percent with over half the vote counted. This was the seat vacated by Labor powerbroker and former deputy mayor David Hinchliffe ending a 24 year run by Labor in the seat.

There are 26 one-member constituency wards in Brisbane and at the time of writing, the result looks like being LNP 19, Labor 7 (20-7 including the Mayor). Two of those seven Labor seats are still in the balance: Wynnum-Manly (43-41) and Northgate (51-49).  Two more are definitely lost. In Karawatha (Woodridge) sitting ALP councillor Gail MacPherson stood down but her replacement Adrienne Cremin is losing easily to a candidate with a very un-LNP like name: Kim Marx. 

Labor's John Campbell is the only sitting councillor likely to be unseated as he trails Ryan Murphy in Doboy (Tingalpa) by 54-46. In the Indooroopilly-based Walter Taylor ward, the Green’s candidate Tim Dangerfield (19.77 per cent) outpolled Labor’s Adam Atkins (14.33 per cent) to finish second to LNP’s Julian Simmonds (65.91 per cent), with nearly two-thirds of the vote counted. 

Meanwhile Labor looks set to retain The Gabba which is in Anna Bligh’s old seat of South Brisbane. Bligh’s former election agent Jackie Trad has narrowly won the South Brisbane by-election which also took place yesterday though the LNP is not yet conceding just 800 votes behind with over half the votes counted. 

Delighted with his own win and the win in Central, returned Brisbane Mayor Graham Quirk said it was the first time the LNP had held inner-city Brisbane at all three levels of government.  "Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, is an opportunity - a very unique opportunity - for a high level of co-operation between the Premier of this state and the lord mayor of this city, to work in a cohesive and co-operative way," Cr Quirk said. "I think it is a very good thing for Brisbane and for Queensland."

correction: Tennyson was won by an independent not by the LNP making the result LNP 18, Lab 7 Ind 1 - thanks to Bird of Paradox for the pick-up.

Labor's end of empire

The joke I heard on Saturday night proved prophetic. What was the difference between Labor and a Tarago? The car would still have eight seats in the morning. Sure enough as the night progressed, the Queensland election carcrash got worse for Labor. When I caught up with the ABC tally around 6.30pm (Qld time) they were projecting 13 or 14 seats which was in line with most people’s worst assumptions. But as I watched, that number went steadily down. When it got to 4 with the possibility that even Anna Bligh could lose, a total whitewash seemed not beyond the bounds of possibilities. By the end of the night, Antony Green and co were predicting six or seven, arguably a full 150 percent better.

With official party status still in doubt, not many Labor supporters were seeing the bright side of this. Labor have dominated Queensland since the end of the Joh era and won eight consecutive elections coming into 2012 (the Rob Borbidge interregnum was the result of a by-election). They were slowly coming down from their 2001 high water mark. They took 66 out of 89 in 2001, 63 in 2004 and 59 in 2006 as the long side took forever to get momentum. In 2009 Labor had a swing of 5 percent against them and polled less than one percent more than the LNP in their first election. But they carried 51 seats to 34. Almost from the moment the Bligh Government took office, the electorate decided 2009 was the last roll of the dice.

In 2012 the percentages would favour the LNP in more ways than one. After three successive defeats for Lawrence Springborg, the party became gradually more urban. John-Paul Langbroek brought the leadership to the beach before party president Bruce McIver catapulted it into the heart of Brisbane with Campbell Newman. Through his own dedication during the 2010-2011 floods as Mayor of Brisbane, Newman was able to counter the one attribute Anna Bligh had going for her – a great wartime leader. Labor decided to push enormous resources into defeating Newman in Ashgrove – or at least tying him down there - while ignoring the dangers in the LNP’s own decapitation strategy that saw three future leaders Fraser, Hinchliffe and Dick a good chance of losing their seats.

In the end none of it worked for Labor.The swing was a further 15 percent and 51 seats became 7 in a state-wide bloodbath. Nine cabinet ministers lost include Fraser, Hinchliffe and Dick. The seat of Rockhampton and a few working class suburbs of Brisbane and Ipswich was all that survived. The LNP will end up with 78 or so of 89 and Queensland is precious close to becoming a one party state. As William Bowe said, this is not a happy state of affairs with Queensland’s parliamentary sessions possibly resembling those of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Bowe said the Opposition will also be unable to fulfil its committee obligations and has no Senate to beef up the numbers.

Such unfettered power is unlikely to entirely suit the LNP either. There is a large, restless and untried team with which to fill the ministries. MPs in seats like Brisbane, Ipswich and Waterford will know they are on borrowed time and their demographics will mean a swing back to Labor in 2015. Nevertheless these are good problems for Newman. He has ten times as many seats as Labor who will have meagre resources to fight the next election mostly from outside parliament.

Their supporters are still in a state of shock, wondering how a disaster of this magnitude could occur. Denis Atkins nailed much of the late swing away today to Labor’s shocking campaign. Bligh’s attack on Newman under parliamentary privilege was so poor, the LNP used it in their mocking ads. And Labor’s own last minute ads “don’t give them too much power” was pathetic beyond belief. The Federal Government is looking on in horror as it sees the Ghost of Christmas Future in their own Queensland tilt though it is dangerous to draw too many Federal conclusions.

Meanwhile State Labor’s magnificent standing seven may even diminish further before it recovers. Anna Bligh’s inevitable resignation puts her knife edge seat on the chopping block with defeated cabinet ministers ruling themselves out of a second tilt. Who would want to rule this rabble? As Atkins said, Labor has been eaten by its own political obsession. They deserve the 15 years "they will spend in their long, cold winter,” Atkins wrote. That may be no bad thing. Queensland will be a very different place in 2032 and different parties and ideologies are required to face the many 21st century challenges. The state Labor parties across Australia do not appear to have a coherent strategy to face these times.

Campbell Newman should give Anna Bligh a ministry

A historic election tomorrow with the first ever victory by an organisation called the Liberal National Party in the state where it was founded. Queensland may not be the template for a conservative party merger but its stunning success will make the rest of the country take notice. I said in January the LNP would win comfortably and my then prediction of 13 seats to Labor now looks on track. (photo of Anna Bligh in Mitchell: Derek Barry)

Yet by March there was a bit of a narrowing and I doubted my own prediction. When I did the seat by seat Crikey poll on 13 March, my results were LNP 55, ALP 28 (including Ashgrove) and Independents 6. This still would have amounted to a handsome win for the LNP though tainted by the polls showing Kate Jones was ahead of the presumptive premier Campbell Newman.

Now just ten days later, that forecast appears hopelessly optimistic for the Labor and I won't be winning the Crikey comp. The tainted polls on Newman have been wiped away as is possibly the Queensland Labor Party itself. Labor's rump of 11 to 15 seats leaves hardly any ministerial talent and precious little room to grow in the near future.

Anna Bligh will be one of the few to survive but almost certain to take responsibility for the crushing loss and resign the leadership. Kim Jameson is tipping Annastacia Palaszczuk to be leader of the rump. Jones won’t survive in Ashgrove where the Newman polls have swung almost 10 percent and he is favourite again to get in as Premier. He may have a dislikeable glass jaw but there is no doubting his cojones in taking on a difficult seat and winning. He will owe nothing to his powerbrokers, many of whom would not have mourned his loss.

Because of this, Newman will have a lot of personal power when dealing out the spoils of office. He will lead a huge party with much jostling for position and granting of favours. He is guaranteed at least three terms of office to entrench that power. So here is an out of left field suggestion for him: Offer Anna Bligh a job.

The worst that could happen is that she refuses it, finding it too hard to work for a government she fought hard to resist. Newman would not lose any face and could get on with the largesse. But if somehow she agreed to take a role, the incoming government would be able to make a big statement of intent about inclusiveness and incorporation of ideas of the best people in the state.

Though neither side would admit it, their philosophies are broadly similar with a small tendency for Labor to prefer inclusion over wealth creation with an equally marginal tendency the other way for the LNP. Queensland Labor’s time is now up. In power for all but two of the last 20 years, voters are tired and want a change. That impression has been hammered home by a relentless advertising campaign powered by a huge budget that only winners attract. Newman is not exactly charismatic but has milked his “can do” reputation to the hilt to persuade enough people he will be a better leader.

Yet it will be a hard act to follow. I’ve met Bligh on a number of occasions on her visits to Roma and Mitchell and she is impressive in action. In every situation I’ve seen her in, she has always struck me as the one in charge and the master of every brief. Watching her from afar in last year’s 2010-2011 flooding, she was an effective commander-in-chief, overshadowing the Prime Minister in her visits to Brisbane.

There is also no doubting Bligh’s personal energy and commitment to Queensland, again on first hand observation. In any speech I heard her give, her vision always came around to getting a wealthy future for all Queenslanders. As such she saw the positives in coal seam gas while looking for ways to control the negative impacts. Newman won't change much because he too will rely on the royalties from this massive industry to pay Queensland's debt. There is no way a moratorium will ever be imposed on the industry.

Meanwhile Bligh has led the state through a succession of natural disasters that have emptied the state coffers as quickly as CSG is filling them. Where the gas is mined here in the Maranoa (a council region bigger than Togo or Croatia), the road damage bill alone is well north of $100 million with much of the devastation of the most recent floods last month still unaccounted for. It is reasonable to assume Mother Nature has not finished punishing her errant children and further severe storms in the years ahead are likely if the latest Bureau of Meteorology/CSIRO guide to the weather is correct.

So I could think of no better person to lead the Queensland Reconstruction Authority (or whatever it is renamed to in the LNP era) than Anna Bligh. The role has been filled by army personnel so it is reasonably non-political. There is no doubt that Bligh would throw herself into the ministry with the same gusto she finished the campaign on with 50 seats in a week (ours was one of the missing 39) and a laundry list of Love’s Labor’s Lost at the death.

As the first elected female Premier in Australia, Anna Bligh’s reputation will only grow after she leaves power. People will forget the failures of her watch, most of which were inherited from Peter Beattie. Instead they will remember a likeable and very able leader. The Newman at the current helm should capitalise on this in his moment of greatest power and offer her a ministry.

Queensland election 2012: Bligh to go down with the ship

With everyone expecting the good ship Labor to sink without trace in this year’s Queensland state election, the biggest unknown is the timing. Anna Bligh made history in the 2009 election by being the first woman to win a poll outright at state level. But it seems highly unlikely she will be Premier for much longer. Most polls are predicting at least a 10 percent swing against Labor which if applied uniformly would mean the loss of 38 seats and remaining with just a rump of 13 seats in an 89-seat parliament. (photo: Derek Barry)

There may be some narrowing between now and polling date but not enough to change the outcome. The election defeat is less a matter of if than when. Legally Anna Bligh can wait until 16 June before calling the election but it is unlikely she will hold out to the bitter end, however tempting it might be. As former premier Peter Beattie argued last week, such a strategy would allow LNP leader Campbell Newman to run an campaign against the government, claiming its time up for the people to decide the future of Queensland. “The government would be seen to be running scared if there was a delayed election and a winning momentum would move solidly to Newman and the LNP,” Beattie said. He said Bligh needs to go before the third anniversary on 21 March.

The problem is that this year is also the end of the four year terms of Queensland councils. Electoral Commission Queensland has to manage both elections and wants a clear six-week gap between them so they can best manage their finite resources. Nearly everyone in local government and media is convinced the Council elections are happening on Saturday, 31 March yet I have seen no formal statement to that effect by the ECQ (whose website merely says “March 2012” or the State Government.

In a New Year’s Day article in the Courier-Mail, Darrel Giles was convinced the council election would be on 31 March which would mean no state election between 18 February and 12 May. But electoral commissioner David Kerslake denies this 6-week window in the same article and I cannot imagine Bligh accepting such a demand, no matter how well meaning. An election on the same day would be too big a logistical headache and might remind some angry voters who foisted the unpopular council amalgamations on them.

But a four weeks’ gap is not beyond the ECQ's ability to manage. Saturday, March 3 is seven weeks away and gives enough time to Labor to nut out their election strategy and announce candidates in each electorate before running a three or four week campaign. The Queensland ALP website is surprisingly silent on candidate details with only a list of sitting members and the “renew for 2012” option taking you to a membership form. Here in Roma the party have yet to announce a candidate for the seat of Warrego, which is one of the safest LNP seats in Queensland (though won by Labor as recently as 1974). It seems clear Labor will be investing all its resources into defending sitting members rather than encouraging new talent to take on other seats.

Such a strategy seems wise enough given the need to contain a heavy defeat. Antony Green’s December analysis mapped the 2010 Federal Election result onto state seats and even with the caveat State Labor do better than Federal Labor in Queensland, the news is grim. Green expects Labor to be wiped out on the Gold Coast and in Cairns, lose two of three in Townsville, and also lose Cook, Mount Isa and Whitsunday. He said Labor would also lose many seats in western Brisbane, and key seats in the south-east corridor to the Gold Coast and north towards the Sunshine Coast.

The prospect of such a landslide has left Campbell Newman in the pretty position of not having to sell many policies to win. Newman’s biggest asset is he has not been in Government 20 of the last 22 years. His LNP website rebadged cornily as Can Do Queensland is bursting with news and information about fresh-faced candidates, many of whom will soon become first-time parliamentarians. But the policies such as “build a four pillar economy” are light on detail about what exactly they would do differently in areas such as tourism, CSG, the environment and education. Newman can afford to deal in generalities and be a small target while Labor faces the hostility of an electorate fed up with its longevity, geed on by a media that wants to see a change of government.

Larvatus Prodeo's Mark Bahnisch would not be among those wanting a change of government but even he concedes its likelihood in a series of perceptive posts exploring the lie of the land in the lead up to the election. I agree with most of his conclusions except when he says a Newman failure in Ashgrove would mean an implosion of the LNP state wide campaign will almost necessarily follow.

It is entirely possible the LNP could win by a landslide and yet fail to take Ashgrove. Kate Jones is proving a skilful and dangerous opponent. She knows the territory and quit cabinet to focus on retaining her seat. The news One Nation is putting up a candidate, shows it will be unpredictable and may act as a "first past the post" contest. Kate Jones is popular – particularly among the young and the greens who are likely to give her a strong second preference - despite optional preferential voting. If only another 30 or 40 jaded looking Labor members had her enthusiasm, then defeat might not be a fait accompli.