Clive Palmer: last sentry

Clive Palmer continues to hold a fascination for Australian politicians and the media alike. Prime Minister Julia Gillard invoked his name in her revenge attack on Campbell Newman's Queensland LNP Government. Gillard made a long speech to the Queensland ALP conference yesterday but it was the reference to Clive Palmer (curiously left out of the official transcript) that gave the Brisbane Times its lead. "Even Clive Palmer is having doubts," Gillard said. "You know the ship is going down pretty fast when the bloke who wants to resurrectthe Titanic is seen leaving it."

Gillard is referring to LNP life member Palmer dishing out on LNP leader Newman. Palmer has been on the attack since last week’s Queensland budget where the new government raised coal royalties. The near billionaire Palmer is directly affected through his China First coal project in the Galilee Basin which was cancelled in May though he cloaked his criticism in wider concerns. According to News Ltd, Palmer said “strikes, protest marches and royalty hikes were not good for the image of the state and would drive away investment.”

It is amusing to see Labor use Palmer as a tool of their propaganda after painting him so often as the bogey man. Wayne Swan was in his sights for much of that past 12 months, but the businessman has added the State Government to his grumbles. He is up in arms against both levels of government over his proposal to pump wastewater from his Yabulu nickel plant into the Great Barrier Reef protection zone.

Meanwhile the Queensland Government decision to award Gina Rinehart and an Indian consortium a rail corridor to the Galilee still rankles. Palmer and his Chinese partners have put their joint venture on hold due to the dropping price of coal. Luckily for Palmer, his enormous wealth is in iron ore not coal. His company Minerology painstakingly secured 160 billion tonnes of iron ore deposits south of Dampier in the Pilbara Ranges in Western Australia over 15 years.

Forbes estimates Palmer as being worth $795m making him the 29th richest person in Australia. Palmer said his father George, a successful silent movie star of the 1920s and radio pioneer, had the greatest influence on him. "Dad worked with the then Prime Minister Billy Lyons when he was in power, advising him on media stuff. He was probably the first of the spin doctors,” Palmer told the Gold Coast News. "He also set up train and buslines for transportation. He broke that monopoly that the state railways had. He was quite an amazing guy."

On leaving uni, George's son got a job in real estate in the Gold Coast. He quickly became their top marketing consultant, before setting up his own company, GSS Property Sales. With the Coast in the middle of a construction boom, Palmer thrived and was worth $40m before the age of 30. In 1986 he set up companies to buy iron ore deposits and trade oil. He became a close confidant of Joh Bjelke Petersen and an admirer of the way the Premier turned Queensland into a coal exporter. Palmer was considered the architect of Joh’s final election victory in 1986.

Palmer also met Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and set up joint ventures with Russian companies that persist to this day. Palmer also greased the wheel with Chinese interests and had to be very patient to make the deals work over many years. The lesson was to treat everyone with respect. Palmer said their collective decision-making process often allowed middle management more power than the managing director. But Palmer’s key skill was his sense of timing. As Griffith Uni’s Jason West said, thermal coal prices spiked to unprecedented levels allowing the likes of Palmer, Hancock and Forrest to experience profit margins beyond their wildest expectations. “Instead of earning margins of $2 to $10 a tonne as they had for decades, coal miners were now earning margins of $50 to $100 a tonne which in turn increased asset values to levels rivalling well-established and brand name top 50 firms,” West said.

West said Palmer had one income-earning asset and a whole bunch of tenements offering nothing but promises of future wealth. But some of those promises are extremely lucrative. They include the massive $8 billion Sino Iron Project at Cape Preston, 100 km south west of Karratha, WA expected to deliver before the end of the year. Owned by Hong Kong-based CITIC Pacific, it is on Palmer’s tenements and will be the largest magnetite iron ore mining and processing operation in Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald estimates Palmer will rake in half a billion a year in royalties on Sino Iron.

These are impressive numbers for someone who is still mostly regarded as a joke. Much of this poor public profile is his own fault due to his buffoonish tendency to act as a walking headline. Palmer is not shy about self-promotion and prefers to call himself Professor Palmer, courtesy of an honorarium from Bond University. Somewhat bizarrely, he has also been officially listed as a "national living treasure" though the National Trust of Australia offers no reason for this accolade other than the incorrect statement “Palmer is a self–made billionaire”.

Whatever his status, there remains the unfinished business of political ambition. In a Lateline interview last week, he attacked Campbell Newman for his lack of experience in business. “I'm the most successful Queenslander in the commercial world that's ever lived, yet I'm not supposed to have any say and any knowledge about that,” Palmer said. But while he has flirted with Katter, he still wants change from inside his party. “I love the LNP and I've been a supporter of it for 43 years,” he said. “I remain the last sentry at the gate to protect democracy in this country.” The question remains whether the sentry is there to guard the gate or attack the castle.

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'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.

The problem with Queensland's Local Health and Hospital Networks

I was saddened to hear today about the death of a man I met only once but have known about for a long time. Before I was headed to Roma a couple of years ago, a friend from IBM days told me I simply had to meet his cousin. His cousin was a named John Young who my friend told me was involved in the Roma airport and later the hospital and health system.

By the time I got to Roma,his cousin had mostly retreated (retired is not the right word) to his property some 50km south of Roma where he worked the land. It was well over a year before I got to meet him and this fact was always discussed whenever I met his cousin in Brisbane. I finally got to meet John Young at a meeting of the local Health Community Council

HCCs were a sort of half way health house set up by State Labor in 1991. For 20 years, HCCs operated geographically at just-above-local council level (there were 36 in Queensland) dealing on the ground with patients and their hospitals. They were the eyes and ears of the health system becoming aware of, and fixing local problems. They talked to the patients and they talked to the staff but relied on their soft power with authorities to get things done rather than any legislation.

Last year the Queensland Government disbanded HCCs in a major revamp of Queensland Health. From 1 July 2012 they will be replaced by 17 Local Health and Hospital Networks (with the unfriendly acronym of LHHNs). These new agencies will be responsible for bigger areas and will have more powers.

The old Roma HCC represented the views of the communities of the Maranoa and Balonne regional councils. They also monitor the performance and quality of public health services in these regions. John was the chair of the Roma HCC and I finally met him at a public meeting at Wallumbilla Hospital in February 2011. Only one couple showed up from the general public, the rest were there from the general hospital but John showed no disappointment with the small turn-out. He diligently explained what their role was and what assistance he could provide. He carefully listened to the couple’s issues with the health system and gave them options on what they could do to improve their situation.

He also talked logistics with the hospital staff. He made whoever he spoke to feel important and he gave suggestions to solve issues. Everything was important and surmountable. At the end of the meeting, he and I shared a joke or two about our mutual friend/cousin before going our separate ways. I never saw him again.

The HCCs were disbanded in June 2011. By June 2012 the will be replaced by 17 Local Health and Hospital Networks (LHHNs) which will have a strong local decision-making and accountability function. There is a 12-month gap while Queensland Health rolls them out with five already established including ones in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. The Government said this was a major reform with profound implications for the quality of health care in Queensland.

The LHHNs will be statutory bodies with Governing Councils, accountable to the local community and Queensland Parliament. In August 2011, I editorialised in my paper the changes were good ones with more money, more beds, more doctors and nurses available at a local level to support an overburdened system. But I said finding the right local people to go on these volunteer boards would be tough. The board members will have the huge responsibility for managing the operation and performance of the hospitals within the network. While I didn’t mention him by name, I thought John Young would have been ideal for the local board.

It will never happen now. This morning I found out he had died of a heart attack in his paddock yesterday. I was shocked and immediately texted his cousin to offer my condolences. He rang back within minutes. I was worried he had not heard the news prior to my text but he had almost found out in real time. John’s wife had relayed the terrible news on the phone to the wider family in updates. John had a fall and it doesn’t look good, she reported. Then a few minutes later, “he’s gone”. He was just 59 years old.

John’s death was a tragedy for the family but it was also bad news for the wider community. I don’t know if he nominated to be part of the local LHHN, but they need people like him if they are going to work. I don't blame him if he didn't nominate. The LHHNs are a far bigger ask than the HCCs, they cover a wider area and have greater powers. Members need skills in business, finance, legal and human resources expertise wanted as well as the delivery of clinical services. All this in volunteer and most unpaid work. Reform is needed, but for these new LHHNs to work, we need people like John on them - people with knowledge, understanding and the ability to listen to and act on problems, in short, people with a vocation for health. Our wellbeing depends on it.

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.

Reap what you sow: The axing of PCAP

There was much to admire in Surat today at what might possibly be the region's last Mid Winter Music Carnival. Every year hundreds of kids and some enthusiastic parents, gather in one of the region’s towns, march around the central streets behind a marching band pumping out Waltzing Matilda, and end up at the local shire hall where they break up into individual bands and play a free concert. This year it was Surat’s turn to host the carnival. There were over a hundred musical kids on stage who were proof positive this scheme for nurturing talent works. But while their parents listened with obvious enjoyment, they were also worried the dead hand of government is about to destroy a good thing. The funding for the program is about to be axed at the end of the year.

The full name of today’s carnival is the PCAP Mid Winter Carnival and is sometimes shortened as PCAP Winterfest. PCAP is an acronym for the Priority Country Area Program. It is the Queensland version of the national Country Area Program introduced by the Fraser Government in 1977 under the Disadvantaged Schools Programs to recognise students attending schools in isolated areas have less access to educational, social and cultural opportunities than metropolitan students. Queensland’s PCAP is a community-based program and unusually – and critical to its success - is intersystemic, that is, jointly administered by the State and Catholic school system.

From 1982 eligibility under the program was determined by eligible local government boundaries. Rural Queensland was divided into four geographical areas with local administration; each grew differently to each other as local needs were cared for.In South West Queensland 80 per cent west to an area wide program, rather than to individual schools. Itinerant PCAP teachers became devoted to the areas they served in. In 2008 there were 242 PCAP schools across Queensland, many of them very small, enrolling 31,500 students. There are 48 local committees that sit to decided where funds should go. These committees had high level of community involvement as social events and bonded rural communities as much as the programs they sponsored.

The Federal Government provides the funds to PCAP and gave $6.4 million in 2008. The cost of administering the program in wages, committee meetings and operational costs is $1.6m. While the PCAP has good educational outcomes in the bush, they are difficult to manage on a balance sheet. Moreover, the administrative bill of 26 per cent of the total budget was very visible and had bean-counters in Canberra and Brisbane worried. The 2008 Queensland Council Amalgamation and COAG insistence on more “accountability” from the states gave the cost conscious Queensland Government the opportunity it needed to claw back some of that funding.

They called in former Education Department bureaucrat Frank Rockett to review the program and his consultation report had contradictory findings. Focus group meetings with stakeholders revealed a number of flaws in the program including an onerous fund application process for even the smallest dollar amounts, occasional trips for entertainment rather than educational purposes, and a bucket of funding money for wider community groups. But Rockett also acknowledged the vital role it played in forging community ties and getting good educational outcomes for isolated kids. He made 27 recommendations to the Minister for Education, 20 of which were accepted in full in the final report.

The program will be axed at the end of 2011 and replaced by Rural and Remote Education Access Program, to be known as RREAP. Eligibility will be based on the Australian Standard Geographical Classification used in the Health industry bringing in a total of 347 schools and 54,850 students. The administrators will be sacked, teachers will be based in schools not paid by the program and funding will be tied to learning outcomes. The administration will be divested to the schools themselves – adding to their already large workload. According to Rockett, the School Principal “is clearly held accountable for school performance just as the manager of a business or the Chief Executive Officer of a large company are equally held accountable.” But there is no one the school CEO can turn to with knowledge of the program’s many small but vital services nor it is clear what will happen to all the instruments PCAP currently owns.

Without administrators RREAP will also not be able to promote itself. Most people in the south-west know about PCAP – there are stickers everywhere in the community promoting them. In the south-west, PCAP is most synonymous with music and produces a huge amount of musically-talented kids through the program, as Surat today showed. But it does much more. They run their own bus to events around a huge district, they charter other buses to take people to regional competitions in Toowoomba and they subsidise dance teachers to drive 200km to help children learn ballet in St George. There were other benefits that couldn’t be measured on the bottom line such as the confidence that flows on to other areas of learning and the sense of discipline and responsibility a child takes as a musician. As one parent told me today, her son was sick but didn’t want to miss playing as “he was the only saxophonist in the group”.

PCAP was introduced in the Joh era and some might call it pork-barreling, subsiding educational outcomes for a particular area. In Queensland parliament in September 2009, Current LNP leader-in-the-house Jeff Seeney called it “an important source of funding for country area schools in order for them to provide the extra opportunities that larger schools take for granted.” I would go further than that. PCAP is a great model for effective micro-local government. It cost money to run but it was ecumenical and rooted in the community. It inspired kids to be musicians and parents to be volunteers and it had value-added services based on unique local needs. The Government will save $1.6 million on the empty swings of administrators but may lose more on the busy roundabouts of harassed principals and demotivated volunteers with no paid support staff to give them a gentle push. As any parent in Surat could tell you today, it's a false economy.

A Newman at the helm of Queensland's LNP

An extraordinary week in Queensland State Opposition politics has ended with Brisbane Mayor Campbell Newman being catapulted to LNP leader despite not being in parliament. The current leader and his deputy, John-Paul Langbroek and Lawrence Springborg, resigned their positions today leaving Jeff Seeney as “leader of opposition business” in parliament. Newman prompted their resignations by declaring two hours earlier he would stand for the Brisbane seat of Ashgrove held by Labor Climate Change Minister Kate Jones. Newman said if successfully preselected for that seat, he would challenge Langbroek for the leadership. Seeing the writing on the wall, Langbroek fell on his sword. Newman’s elevation to leader-in-waiting as a non-MP is unprecedented in Australian politics. (photo: Tony Moore)

Premier Anna Bligh reacted to the news at a media conference by accusing Newman of abandoning the people of Brisbane and she also hinted at an early election. “What I see in Campbell Newman is a man who when his city faced its worst disaster, when families across our suburbs are in shells of homes, Campbell Newman decided to cut and run when people needed him most,” Bligh said. “What I say to the people of Queensland is that I will never cut and run when you need me.”

Bligh used the phrase “cut and run” five times in the interview setting the tone for a likely plan of attack during the election. With three year terms in Queensland, the next election is due by 2012. But with Council elections mandatory in March 2012, the likelihood was always that Bligh would go early to avoid any residual taint from the loathed forced council amalgamations of 2007. Tanking in the opinion polls in 2010, Bligh’s stocks rose with the rivers during the 2010-2011 Queensland flood and cyclone crisis when there was almost universal praise for her leadership, while Langbroek was perceived to be missing in action.

While recent polls showed Bligh’s approval rating more than doubled to 60 percent, they also showed the LNP would still comfortably win the election with a 55-45 lead in 2PP terms. Bligh was preferred premier, but despite the floods it was still looking like a proverbial “drover’s dog election”.

The only question would be who would get to be drover. The internal campaign against Langbroek had been brewing for some time and came to a head earlier this month when MPs complained the organisation had not yet endorsed a single sitting MP for the next election. LNP President Bruce McIver claimed this was merely procedural, but MPs were not convinced.

One MP told The Courier-Mail the relationship between Langbroek and McIver had deteriorated significantly. Yesterday, Langbroek was reported calling for the faceless men in the party to resign. “Faceless men” has long been a metaphor in Australian politics for those who count the numbers in backrooms, and in this case it was a clear reference to McIver.

Labor gleefully upped the ante on the weekend when Treasurer Andrew Fraser said McIver offered an illegal inducement. He asked the Crime and Misconduct Commission to look into suggestions LNP president Bruce McIver offered Bruce Flegg a top job in London if he quit his seat of Moggill so Newman could be parachuted into state politics. Fraser said it was an offence under section 87 of the Criminal Code to promise a public office holder a favour or benefit.

Fraser’s allegation remains to be tested, but it blew apart any hope of Newman taking a safe seat. Hence the announcement today about Ashgrove where Kate Jones won in 2009 with a margin of 7.1 percent on Green preferences. She won’t be easy to unseat. Queensland’s optional preferential voting makes preferences difficult to predict but Kate Jones as climate change minister can expect a good preference flow. According to Andrew Bartlett today, “the Greens will have a good candidate in Ashgrove who may well also be announced fairly soon”.

Bartlett admits it is to Newman’s credit he is not being parachuted into a safe seat. Newman will be relying on his own personal popularity to carry him over the line. It has been a while since Newman was Australia’s most senior Liberal (that honour was taken in turn by WA Premier Colin Barnett then Victoria’s Ted Baillieu and next week by NSW's Barry O’Farrell) but it was always in his blue blood that Brisbane would not be big enough for his ambitions.

His mother Jocelyn was a Tasmanian Senator and minister in the first two Howard Governments and his late father Kevin was a Tasmanian MP and a minister in the Fraser Government. Campbell followed Kevin into the army and then into politics.
He was elected Brisbane Mayor in 2004 and comfortably retained his position with a big win in 2008. His second win also helped cement a Liberal victory in the council elections.

In December 2010 he finished fifth in a competition to find the best mayor in the world behind Mexico City, Oklahoma City, Riace (Italy) and Surrey (Canada). Testimonials for Newman praised his vision, drive and passion. These will be qualities he will need in abundance if he is to steer the LNP to victory in the next election from outside the gates of parliament.

LNP's balancing act as they head to drover's dog election win

The Liberal National Party held a shadow cabinet meeting in Roma last week where they re-committed their support to the Surat Basin resource region at the centre of the $30b mining approvals given by Environment Minister Tony Burke last week. The fact the Queensland Liberal National Party is in favour of the massive coal seam gas developments might usually be assumed at a matter of course. The party has been pro-development in most of its guises through the years.

But the ruling Bligh Government is also in favour, desperate for what they will earn in royalties from the deals. The Opposition has been forced to play the green card in order to make a point of differentiation. They are adding their voice to concerns about the groundwater released during the gas extraction and possible damage to the water table. But the position hides tensions: the Nationals half are comfortable digging in for the farmers who grumble about wells on their properties while the more Liberal end of town wants to see the deals with China sealed as soon as possible.

There is a good reason for this haste; they want to be in power when the money arrives. Bligh’s trickery and the loss of Prime Ministerial power has left Labor on the nose in Queensland. The LNP won 21 out of 30 Queensland seats in the 2010 Federal election. Queensland too will go to the polls in either late 2011 or early 2012. If all recent polls are to be believed, the LNP will win in some comfort. The party will need to adjust to the mindset of government over the next 18 months as it lords over the Queensland political scene and grapples with what kind of administration it wants to be.

The LNP is a hybrid party formed in mid-2008 after a long and difficult birth. Uniquely the Nationals were always the bigger entity in Queensland and their members were enthusiastically in favour of merger. After four straight defeats to Labor, they were anxious to regain power by any means. But the Queensland Liberals were much more divided with the right faction in favour but the moderates opposed. John Howard categorically rejected the idea of a stand-alone Queensland amalgamation in 2005. In 2006 Senator Barnaby Joyce pronounced the last rights on it in 2006 saying because it looked and smelled like a dead duck, it probably was one.

But two events in 2007 conspired to put the dead duck back on the agenda. When the Liberals did not contest Brisbane Central after Peter Beattie resigned, it angered the Nationals and even Liberal's own Deputy Leader Mark McArdle who publicly admitted they had failed the people of the electorate. Then in November, the Federal Coalition lost the election and Howard lost his seat. The biggest obstacle to merger was gone. When Lawrence Springborg replaced Jeff Seeney as Nats leader in January 2008, he pressed forward the amalgamation agenda over the head of opposing Liberals.

They outmanoeuvred their opponents in several key ways. Firstly they got the Federal MPs onside by guaranteeing them pre-selection for the next election. Secondly the two party presidents (who were both in favour of merger) conducted polls of branch members which found an overwhelming majority in favour of merging. Thirdly the new party would become the Queensland division of the Liberal Party and an affiliation with the federal Nationals.

Nats President Bruce McIver set a timetable for amalgamation calling a constitutional convention for 26 July 2008 to make a decision. Pro-merger Libs agreed to meet on the same day. Two days before the appointed date, Lib state council narrowly voted to postpone, but the pro-merger faction went to the courts and secured a Supreme Court judgement to ensure it went ahead. At both conventions on 26 June, the merger was approved. McIver was elected president and former Libs state president Gary Spence became deputy. Springborg was anointed leader of the combined entity with McArdle his deputy. It wasn’t until eight months later the Federal Council of the Liberal Party ratified the new LNPQ as its Queensland Division.

Electoral desperation had driven the two parties together but it did not pay immediate dividends. Anna Bligh clung to power in the 2009 state election despite losing eight seats. Springborg resigned after his third defeat and handed over the reins to former dentist John-Paul Langbroek. Langbroek is an ex-Liberal and his succession wasn’t an easy one, winning possibly by as little as one vote.

Almost 18 months later, the rumblings in the cabinet room continue with Infrastructure and Planning spokesman David Gibson resigning from the frontbench after Langbroek called for a ministerial reshuffle without first consulting colleagues. Tim Nicholls, who Langbroek defeated for the top job, is not ruling out a challenge.

But Nicholls is just noise. Only one of two people can become Premier in the next Queensland election and Nicholls is not one of them. Given Labor’s latest catastrophic polling in Brisbane, neither is Anna Bligh nor anyone in the party that might overthrow her.

In what is shaping up to be a drover's dog election, the next Premier of Queensland will be either JP Langbroek or Lawrence Springborg. The “Borg”, as he likes to be known, remains extremely powerful as deputy and the unofficial head of the Nationals wing of the party. But three defeats have shown he is not trusted in the metropolitan areas. It is up to the more likeable Langbroek to step up in the next 18 months to show he is Premier material.

I saw signs of it when he made a major speech here in Roma last weekend when the Shadow Cabinet met in town. Springborg was notably absent, but the rest of Langbroek's cabinet had the steely determination of a party about to seize government and were looking seriously at the problems that will bring. Langbroek's style is consensual but philosophical differences means the marriage of the Nats and Libs remains fragile. Langbroek will be looking for the smell of victory to keep them away from the divorce courts in the shorter term.

BTEX throws a spanner in the Queensland CSG works

The fraught relationship between mining companies and landowners in rural Queensland took another blow with the mysterious discovery of an illegal poison in eight Origin Coal Seam Gas drilling wells about 350km west of Brisbane. The find of the banned toxic chemical BTEX last week comes just months after the Queensland Government ordered Cougar Energy to shut down its Underground Coal Gasification plant near Kingaroy when water tests detected similar compounds of benzene and toluene in groundwater monitoring bores.

CSG is a very different technology to the unproven UCG. However, the BTEX find puts a cloud over an industry that is about to take off in the mineral-rich Surat Basin energy province. On Friday Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke gave conditional approval to the GLNG (jointly owned by Santos, Petronas and Total) and BG plan to export $30 billion of CSG to Chinese markets via Liquefied Natural Gas plants in Gladstone in the coming 20 years. Neither company were directly affected by the BTEX find which occurred at eight Australia Pacific LNG (jointly owned by Origin and ConocoPhillips) coal seam gas sites in an area between Miles and Roma.

The industry has been on the defensive over the outbreak. APLNG is likely to be the next major CSG player to have its environmental impact assessment tested by government. Their Environmental Impact Assessment has been with the Queensland Coordinator General Colin Jensen since January this year. Jensen has been holding off his decision awaiting the Federal Government on GLNG and BG. Landholders in particular in coal seam gas areas have not been happy about the impacts to their land and water. Given that Burke imposed more than 300 strict conditions on GLNG and BG, it is likely the Origin/ConocoPhillips project will have to address these also.

The BTEX contamination is an added headache. The problem came to light last Tuesday when Origin released a statement to the ASX saying they had found traces of BTEX in fluid samples taken from eight exploration wells. They said they advised relevant landowners, Western Downs Regional council (but not apparently the Roma-based Maranoa Council which was also affected) and the Queensland government of the find. The company told Queensland Minister for Sustainability and Climate Change, Kate Jones there was no evidence of environmental harm or risk to landholder bores. However Jones has requested confirmatory testing by an independent service provider.

The finds come just days after the Queensland Government banned BTEX from all coal seam gas operations. Minister for Natural Resource Mines and Energy, Stephen Robertson told parliament BTEX petroleum compounds were not used in Queensland CSG operations but have been used in overseas oil and gas operations in the fraccing process. Fraccing is the controversial process that involves pumping fluid at high pressure into a coal seam to fracture the seam to allow gas to flow readily into gas wells. The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association say chemicals make up less than 1 percent of fraccing fluid and the risk to public health at those levels was negligible.

Which is just as well, as BTEX is extremely toxic. As well as being a cancer-causing compound, there is a documented history of harmful effects on the central nervous system. Because of the solubility of the majority of the BTEX components they are also prone to leaching into the underground waterways polluting areas larger than the original contamination site.

BTEX gets its name from its make-up: petroleum compounds containing benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes. They are aromatic hydrocarbons which occur naturally in crude oil at low levels. In the 1970s the oil industry invested so heavily in BTEX it comprised 35 percent of all US gasoline (petrol) by 1990. When the EPA found excessive benzene concentrations in city air, the culprit was identified as the aromatics. While the percentage was subsequently decreased, it still makes up a significant component of petroleum.

Origin say they have no idea how it was found at their wells last week but admit it may have been contained in lubricants used at the site. While its use in fraccing is illegal, they may be used on a drill bit which remains legal. APLNG's executive general manager of oil and gas, Paul Zealand told the Courier-Mail the traces were barely detectable, did not enter the water table and may be naturally occurring. "It is isolated from water courses and livestock," he said. "The company will undertake further testing in consultation with landholders in the coming days."

Australia will pay the price of Queensland's asset sales

The Queensland Government furniture firesale continues as they soften the market for the crashlanding of QR National. In one of the first major share offerings since the GFC, the rail freight business is being pitched as a “growth story” for which they hope to get somewhere between 6.6 and 7.8 billion dollars. Bligh acknowledges dividends will be low and investors will not make a quick killing. What she does not acknowledge is that this slow long-term growth behaviour makes it ideal to remain in government hands.

There is another reason the sale is bad. Privatisation of any enterprise costs money and the cost is deducted from the sale price, effectively meaning the vendor pays for the transition. Australian and Queensland tax payers will also lose tens of billions in long term revenues.

In the case of QR National, the "book value" of the company is $7.4 billion which puts it in the ballpark of a fair price. But the book value does not measure other aspects of the company value including future earnings, goodwill and the power that comes from being the leading producing of freight services in Australia. It too must be in the billions of dollars.

QR National is the biggest of five assets to be disposed as Queensland buckles under financial penalties caused by its AA credit rating. With $52b of debt to service, international credit demanded these tasty morsels be released in downpayment. The unfolding financial disaster left Bligh was in a no win situation after her election. The only people that wanted these assets privatised would never vote for her. Her base detested the move and her credibility was shot to pieces after she introduced the sale without a mandate in the 2009 election.

These are not trivial items. QR National is huge. They are the largest rail freight haulage business in Australia by tonnes hauled and are particularly strong in coal haulage which has doubled in ten years. QRN operate 2,300 of dedicated railway lines across five states. Their future outlook is strong having invested $3.4 billion in three years keeping its rolling stock up-to-date while expanding its network. Another $3.8b is earmarked in expansion programs in the next two years.

QR National may be the jewel in the crown but the other four assets are also sparkly. Queensland’s largest cargo port, the Port of Brisbane could fetch up to $2 billion. Queensland Motorways operates the tolling franchise on the Gateway and Logan motorways and is worth about $4.5 billion. But as Professor Ross Guest told RACQ a likely sale price of $3 to $4b “would therefore transfer net worth from Queensland taxpayers”.

The fourth item up for grabs is Australia’s most northerly coal port: Abbott Point Coal Terminal. Abbott Point is 25km north of Bowen and is the quickest coal route to China. The port is also valuable because there are few other locations along Queensland's eastern seaboard where very deep water is so close in-shore. Whitsunday Regional Council Mayor Mike Brunker said the terminal might go for half its $3 billion asking price because of crucial missing links in the railways that provide coal to the port.

The fifth asset is a 99-year licence for Forestry Plantations Queensland and it is already lost to the state. The smallest of the five, it was the ideal candidate to be first cab off the privatisation rank. The licence to manage, harvest and re-grow plantation timber on over 200,000 hectares of plantation lands was sold for $603 million at the end of June to American company Hancock Timber Resource Group. The price shows exactly how much privatisation costs.

Professor Gary Bacon, adjunct professor with Griffith University's Environmental Futures Centre, said the state's forestry assets appeared to be going at bargain basement prices. He said if the land remained in government hands, the right to grow and harvest trees on it would be worth an estimated $1370 million. This higher figure came from parliamentary research commissioned by Bruce Flegg and while it is politically motivated, it shows a loss of $767m on unrealised earnings for the state. There are also environmental concerns. Hancock Timber Resource Group are the target of Greens' ire over their Victorian operation which will clearfell much of the Strzelecki Ranges.

The QR National sale is likely to dwarf the Forestries sale in scale, impact and likely money lost forever to the state. In parliament on 7 October, Queensland Treasurer Andrew Fraser called the QR National share offer a “historic moment for QR, for Queensland and indeed for the nation.” Apart from failing to recognise the impact of the GFC, it was this curious phrase “indeed the nation” that made it suggest Australian interest was an afterthought with the sale.

This is a major blunder given QR National’s size and reach into the important NSW market, a state which will recover its crippled mojo when the hopelessly compromised Labor administration is turfed out of power in 2012. The Queensland Government is expecting to receive something between about $3.6 billion and $5 billion in proceeds from the float, but once again the true value of future earnings is not included. Bligh is aware of all of this but has no option but to press on. Her fear of bankers appears worse than her fear of voters who don’t want the sales to go ahead. This death wish suggests she has little choice in the manoeuvre.

The coded message for help in the Queensland Government’s spiel appears in the very name of the new entity “QR National”. Its sale means billions of dollars will be lost to Australia. If Bligh is unable to act in a notional national interest, then Prime Minister Julia Gillard ought to. She could buy the remaining assets for the cost of about a tenth of a stimulus package.

Tens of billions are leaving the Queensland economy which will not be compensated by the benefits of privatisation. Stephen Bartolemeusz in Business Spectator gives the game away when he says the value of QRN is in the privatisation alone. Given the company’s strong set of businesses with dominant market positions it ought to release considerable value. But “against that” he outlines reasons why investors won’t pay premium prices: The grandfathering arrangements to protect jobs, the retention of 25-40 percent Government ownership and a 15pc ceiling on individual shareholding.

It is these political risk management strategies that drives the increase of buying cost, a factor the Federal Government would not have to worry about. What the Feds would have to worry about is being locked out of the “growth story” Bligh is now telling because they will have to deal with the consequences of private ownership decisions on the management of the Australian economy and environment.

Queensland’s troubles is another example why federalism is a mess and is economically unsustainable. If there really is a new paradigm in Canberra, it should send a message to show how our state-based power structure is crippling Australia. In the “future directions for rural industries and rural communities” session in the 2020 summit two years ago, session chair Tim Fischer admitted their solutions saw them “almost demolishing the states”. It's a worthy vision for 2020 - the quicker it happens the better.

A history of abortion law in Queensland

Cairns is the scene of the latest battle in the fight to update Queensland’s antiquated abortion laws. The District Court there will try Tegan Leach, 21, and her partner Sergie Brennan, 22, for procuring drugs for an abortion between November 2008 and January 2009. Leach has been charged with procuring her own miscarriage and Brennan with procuring drugs for an abortion. The Crown’s case is that S282 of the criminal code does not apply in this case and because there was no serious risks to the mental or physical health of Leach, the abortion was illegal. The case jeopardises the availability of the 14,000 abortions carried out each year in Queensland.

In Queensland abortion is a crime under the Queensland Act, although generally regarded as lawful if performed to prevent serious danger to the woman’s physical or mental health. Queensland has draconian legislation in place dating from 1899 that criminalised abortion. Abortion is defined as unlawful in the Queensland Criminal Code (1899) under Sections 224, 225 & 226 (sited between “incest” and “indecent acts” in the code). Women, doctors and their helpers can be criminally prosecuted for accessing abortion. Under section 224 a person who intends to “procure the miscarriage of a woman” is liable for 14 years imprisonment. Under S225 a woman who seeks her own miscarriage is liable for 7 years while S226 condemns anyone else who helps out to 3 years. The only defence is S282 which absolves medical operations on “a person or an unborn child to preserve the mother’s life”.

In the Cairns case, police alleged the couple arranged for a relative to bring a supply of the drug misoprostol along with a variation of mifepristone, used in medical abortions, to Australia from the Ukraine. They also alleged the woman used the drug successfully to terminate her pregnancy at 60 days, after the couple decided they were too young to parent. Leach has been charged under S225 and Brennan under S226. She faces a maximum of seven years while he faces three years in prison.

While this is the first time in over 50 years a woman has been charged in Queensland for choosing an abortion, the case is the latest in a long line of depressing state sanctions against pro-choicers. In the Joh era of the early 1970s, the Minister for Justice announced that it was illegal to terminate the pregnancy of a woman with rubella, and that vasectomy was illegal. Although a few private doctors were prepared to do a limited number of abortions and menstrual extractions, abortions in public hospitals were performed strictly on medical grounds. Most women had to travel interstate to obtain an abortion.

The Greenslopes Fertility Control Clinic opened in 1976 and was a thorn in the side of the hypocritically conservative (but corrupt) Joh administration for the next ten years. A court ruled search warrants used in a police raid on the clinic in 1985 were invalid so the Government appealed for whistleblowers to denounce the clinic. A 21-year-old mother came forward and the clinic’s Drs Bayliss and Cullen were charged with procuring an illegal abortion contrary to Section 224 of the Criminal Code and inflicting grievous bodily harm.

Judge McGuire heard the case and based his ruling on the English case R v Bourne (1939) and a Victorian ruling by Justice Menhennit in R v Davidson (1969). McGuire said R v Davidson represented the law in Queensland with respect to Sections 224 and 282. S282 provided the accepted defence to a charge of unlawful abortion under s224. It meant a prosecution under s224 would fail unless the Crown could prove the abortion was not performed “for the preservation of the mother’s life” and was not “reasonable having regard to the patient’s state at the time and to all the circumstances of the case”.

Since the 1980s, lobby groups have fought to change the abortion law. In 1995 the Goss Labor Government introduced “revised” criminal legislation that retained abortion as a criminal offence despite the Premier’s verbal support in Parliament for women’s access to abortion. A year later, his Government was defeated and the new anti-choice Health Minister in the Borbidge Government (Mike Horan) cancelled funding for women’s choice support groups. They were re-funded under the Beattie administration in 1999. A Taskforce on Women and the Criminal Code recommended repeal of the abortion laws in 2000 citing community support. However the Beattie government would not implement this recommendation claiming abortion was a matter for the consciences of members of parliament and not public policy.

Anna Bligh hid behind the same excuse when refusing to change the law last year and so abortion remains illegal in the state. Where abortions are illegal, they are also generally unsafe. In an article for the Deakin Law Review, Rebecca Dean estimates 68,000 women die annually and 5.3 million suffer temporary or permanent disability as a result of 20 million unsafe abortions across the world. “Women will continue to have unplanned pregnancies they seek to abort because, among other factors, contraception is not one hundred percent effective, and rape and domestic violence are prevalent around the world,” said Dean.

Should Community Cabinets be part of the furniture?

Words can create strange alliances in time. My words from last week were used in evidence in high-level political flaming in Queensland's parliament yesterday. And because it now appears in the weighty Hansard, it has forced me to think further about what I wrote. (photo of Anna Bligh speaking to Roma's Community Cabinet: Tim Braban)

Let me explain.

Two weekends ago we had the State Government Community Cabinet in Roma. Anna Bligh and most of her ministers were in town to hear deputations and meet with locals to discuss their issues. We covered the cabinet in detail in last Tuesday’s edition of the local paper, The Western Star, including an editorial I wrote that strongly supported the concept of community cabinets.

Fast forward to Queensland’s parliament yesterday. After a bout of feuding across the floor about federal issues, it was Labor MP Mary-Anne O’Neill’s turn to ask a question without notice of Bligh. O’Neill wanted an update about the success of the recent community cabinets. The question was designed to elicit honest information but coming from a fellow party member it would also act as a Dorothy Dixer for Bligh to attack Tony Abbott further.

Last month the Opposition leader announced some 17 cuts to pay for $1.2 billion worth of election promises. One of these cuts is the axing of federal community cabinets as part of a general trend to hold less meetings.

The Feds can’t axe Queensland’s community cabinets as Bligh well knows. It would be a much harder promise to make for the State-level LNP whose bread and butter is the rural and regional vote. Yet the closeness in time of Bligh’s latest cabinet with Abbott’s announcement was an opportunity too hard to pass up. Bligh got into Abbott’s mind to unleash a bit of conjecture:
“I’ll be so busy cutting and slashing your services that the last thing I want as Prime Minister is to be out there hearing about the pain that those cuts are causing,” said Bligh as Abbott.

It was pure politics.

Yet Bligh did have some interesting things to say about community cabinets. Roma was State Labor's 132nd community cabinet and the 26th since Anna took over in 2007. This was the second time it took place in Roma and the numbers of deputations have almost doubled from 67 to 129 in the ten years between the two.
“What this tells us,” Bligh said, “is that far from the community tiring of those sorts of events, their enthusiasm and appetite for them are increasing."

It was at this point Bligh brought in my article in as ammunition to back her up.
“I will quote from the editorial in last week’s Roma Western Star newspaper. It stated...” she said, before launching into two sentences from my editorial: “It was a great chance for people with local issues to discuss them directly with decision makers. It is forums like these when the government comes to the people that give those affected by decisions 500 kilometres away the chance to make themselves known to administrators, so they can humanise the policies that affect them.”

Bligh went on in her own words. “That is exactly what happens," she said. “At Roma we had delegations to me and all of the other ministers in relation to matters affecting rural Queenslanders.” Bligh said they had delegations from farmers, people talking to the government about protection of cropping land, about getting a balance with mining companies, and about looking after the interests of landowners and rural producers.

“These are absolutely critical issues for Queensland and we will make better decisions in relation to them because we have sat down and talked personally to those people who will be affected by them,” Bligh said.

After this sentence, Bligh began her attack on Abbott which I’ve already documented. Yet the question about the value of community cabinets is moot, especially considering the numbers.

Bligh and I agree they are a great idea, particularly in large dispersed communities like Queensland. But doing 20 or so a year must be extremely expensive in time and money. Federal Labor has also been busy. They have held 24 community cabinet meetings in two and a half years. 6 have been in NSW, 4 each in WA and Queensland, 3 in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania and 1 in Northern Territory (ACT gets the consolation prize of hosting all of the non-community cabinets).

That is a lot of meetings and they appear to be skewed in favour of the three big northern states. Abbott is wrong to want to axe them but it is a reasonable question to ask how much humanisation of policy we can afford with our taxpayer dollar and in what direction? Maybe we'll come to the surprising conclusion it doesn't happen enough.

Queensland Budget 2010

“Twelve months ago, this Government took the decision to fight for jobs, above all else.” These were the words Queensland Treasurer Andrew Fraser began his 2010 budget address with. Fraser is a hard-working and earnest young man but I wonder if it crossed his mind that others might wonder if the jobs they fought hardest for were their own. The Anna Bligh government has been on the nose for twelve months or more and the latest Galaxy poll in the Courier-Mail on Monday showed a 55-45 lead to the LNP on a 2PP basis.

On Monday Fraser claimed he would not be distracted by the poll and in his budget speech he recommitted the Government to what he called its “true task, providing Queenslanders with a chance at the dignity of work.” Given that the unemployment rate in Queensland is 5.6 percent, Fraser may be taking a gamble in his “first commitment” which does not address the other 94.4 percent of adult Queenslanders who either have jobs or who are not registered with Centrelink.

But Fraser did have good economic data to report. He spoke of a better than expected growth rate of 3 percent which was still “below trend” but was better than the national 2 percent rate. The recession-busting construction spree represented 7 percent of the State economy and 120,000 jobs with a predicted 2.75 percent increase in 2010-11. They will continue to pour money into infrastructure promising $17.1 billion this financial year though disappointingly, roads still get the lion’s share of the funds.

The State deficit has been reduced to $287 million which is well down on the $2.3 billion Mid Year forecast and a measure of how the resources boom has contributed to state coffers. Fraser said they are on target to deliver “a solid surplus” by 2015-2016 but the revised estimates suggest it will be happen a lot sooner than that.

Despite his money worries, Fraser still has the ability to dish it out to various constituencies. Pensioners do well as usual, a form of largesse that governments may need to reconsider as the country gets older over the next 20-30 years. Fraser gave them another $90 million 50 percent concession on Compulsory Third Party insurance and an increased electricity rebate worth $50 million. As worthy as these sound, I wish governments became more creative with their grants by either supporting a move towards the consumption of renewable energies and providing incentives to use more public transport instead of subsiding private vehicle use.

There are some sops to environmental concerns. There is $60 million for the popular Solar Bonus Scheme (which 22,000 people have signed up to already) $35 million for the Kogan Creek solar boost project (matching a similar amount from the Federal Government) to install a solar thermal addition to increase its capacity by 44 megawatts at peak solar conditions and improve plant efficiency.

The budget also has $300 million for education and training including funding for up to 316 new teachers and teacher aides and five new schools and 40 kindergartens. There is also $10 million for training in the booming Coal Seam Gas and Liquefied Natural Gas industries. There is an additional $72 million to provide disability support with good programs including autism services in regional areas, helping people with spinal cord injuries and transitioning disabled young people out of school. He also announced a new tax measure by excluding homes purchased through a disability trust from stamp duty. In Health the budget has increased from $5.35 billion to $10 billion in five years. The government will add 1,200 doctors, nurses and health professionals as well as building or upgrading 22 hospitals.

The government estimates that 100,000 people will move to Queensland in the next 12 months. That's a lot of people and Fraser said “we have to cater for that growth”. He announced a new Regional First Home Owner Boost, an extra $4,000 on top of the existing state funded $7,000 First Home Owner Grant to encourage people to move out of the South East. He also announced a $450 million new police academy as well as over 200 new police officers and spent $240 billion on yet another backwards looking project - the Gateway motorway upgrade south extension. Other roads to do well in the cash grab were the Port of Brisbane with $330 million, the Ted Smout Bridge to Redcliffe $315 million, the Forgan Smith Bridge in Mackay $148 million and the $190 million Port Access Road in Townsville.

Queensland’s 150th budget is much like the 149th that came before it. It is a carefully crafted grab-bag of token initiatives, old solutions and outright bribes that paper over the economic cracks but do little to address the State’s longer term needs: how to move to a 21st century economy as the population grows daily older. It will take a government with a lot more vision than the cautious Anna Bligh/Andrew Fraser administration to deliver on that promise. Such a government is nowhere in waiting in Queensland, however.