So let’s get this straight…
Nobody much liked Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, until her stoic performance handling the state’s natural disasters. Yet still, through hell and high water, they liked Liberal-National Party leader John-Paul Langbroek even less. Particularly his colleagues, who have been trying to knife him for most of his troubled reign.
Enter Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman — dubbed “Can Do Campbell” in northern parts and at one point the country’s highest-ranked Liberal — who people like quite a bit more. He’s spent much of his political life denying he had any aspirations to leave the heady world of rubbish collection and dog registration behind. Which was all hooey, apparently, because today he orchestrated a coup to dump Langbroek and take charge of the state opposition.
Never mind that Newman doesn’t actually sit in parliament. He’s announced a run for the Labor-held seat of Ashgrove at the next state poll, not due for another year. Langbroek has already stood down (deputy leader Lawrence Springborg, too), Newman will get the vote, and he’ll become the first pollie we can think of (that debate has ignited; we’ll take advice) to lead a major parliamentary party from outside the building.
Anna verses Can Do. With a sandstone wall between them.
It’s genius. Or madness. Probably both.
There is nothing so entertaining in politics as a desperate, poll-depressed party. Stay tuned.
6 thoughts on “Can Do and the desperate Libs”
Pete from Sydney
March 22, 2011 at 3:37 pmre. late delivery….next time you’re bagging newspapers over a typo here or there you may show a little more charity perhaps
klewso
March 22, 2011 at 3:42 pmJust think, what, with all this extra loverly money, “Can Do” can do!
klewso
March 22, 2011 at 3:46 pm“Can Do for Can Bra”?
But won’t he have to advertise “which party” he stands for, in this sort of election, in print you can read, from a metre?
Glen Fergus
March 22, 2011 at 4:07 pmCan’t can’t. What happens if people decide they like him where he is? Sallyanne had similar delusions IIRC.
BTW, BCC has an annual budget of $2B; it’s a touch more than just pets and rubbish.
Cletus Purcell
March 22, 2011 at 5:31 pmIf you don’t live in and around Brisbane it is very easy to be gulled here. Known in the Australian Army as ” Noddy ” Newman – and son of ex-Social Welfare Minister, Jocelyn – whom took not one, not two, but three full pensions into retirement by special decree after serving Howard well in coshing and marginalising Social Welfare beneficiaries in the late 1990’s – our Noddy has form. Not the least of which was using Brisbane Ratepayer revenue to expand the numbers in his PR team up to an incredible 23-24 people. This sheer weight of media factotums means that Newman has been able to appear on most TV Channel’s News broadcasts some 4-5 days of each and every week and , of course, regular guest appearances in the Courier Mail, wearing a hard hat and hi-visibility safety jacket. This gives the distinct impression that he is out there beavering away non-stop in his ” Can Do ” role of building and tunneling and constructing a bigger, better Brisbane. He apparently specialises in White Elephants such as the Clem 7 Tunnel. Which kinda begs the question: if he spends that much time and frequency posing for photo opportunities and sound bites – what has he actually been doing with the rest of his time, apart from plotting being parachuted into a safe State Liberal seat? The LNP deliciously deserves him in joining a veritable host of other blunderers and pretenders. As Paul Keating rather infamously said of someone else – Newman is all tip and no iceberg.
William Schild
March 22, 2011 at 8:27 pmTake out the shotgun and blow half your foot off, then try and run the race. This seems to be the modus operandi of the former coalition and now the LNP. Last election we had the ridiculous nonsense of Springborg or Flegg as our dear leader depending on who had the most members in parliament and now this. The old political adage disunity is death is given the double twist with a pike in this latest piece of audacity from the LNP.
In acknowledging the parlous state of the Queensland opposition that none of the current members are up to the job, this crazy brave tactic requires so many skittles to fall their way. CN first has to get elected by knocking over a sitting member in a seat that has been labor for 20 years and the LNP has to win. Either one not occurring and life is going to get extremely interesting for the opposition.
The fact that Queensland is one of the most decentralised states with 40 percent of Queenslanders living outside Brisbane with all the inherent rivalry that brings could see the LNP could face a backlash by putting up someone who is the face of Brisbane.
All I know is that Bligh must be doing cartwheels and the Queensland election has gone from boring to far side in way that only Queenslanders know how.