Qld Grass-root Policy Rules Out Goss
Sun Herald
Saturday September 30, 1989
THE succession of the Roma grazier, Mr Russell Cooper, to the Premiership of Queensland has forced the continuation of the focus on Queensland politics but dramatically altered the likely outcome of the "knock-'em-down drag-'em-out" political dogfight in that State.
The vitriolic media attacks on Cooper following his successful coup against Mike Ahern are a fair measure of the fact that those who saw Ahern as easy prey on the way to Labor leader Wayne Goss devouring the Queensland electorate, know that Cooper will be harder to digest.
Goss's odds of becoming Premier must now have lengthened.
It was never really Joh Bjelke-Petersen's bumbling delivery, autocratic manner or one-man rule which upset his media critics but rather the fact that Joh was a beast of a different political burden from his detractors.
After all, in Victoria, where the VEDC is a scandalous minefield of political deception and public waste, you don't see the 7.30 Report and A Current Affair at it every other night over Cain's fitness for office.
When Bjelke-Petersen went, carved up by Ahern, the critics were like Cheshire cats and the Joh supporters in the bush in Jackie Howe singlets or Jaguar cars defected in droves from an Ahern who could rarely decide and when he did either got it wrong or changed his mind.
Somehow, no matter how hard Ahern tried, he just sounded wrong.
And so, in by-election after by-election the Nationals' support base became eroded. Voters defected. Where, it was not really known.
Parallel to all that, Goss, the Labor leader went from strength to strength, hammering the Government on by-election defeats, Fitzgerald corruption, electoral boundaries, Japanese ownership - it was easy stuff and every blow hit its target.
Those who have waited in the wings for years for the Bjelke-Petersen burial salivated at the prospect of Goss soon being the principal pall-bearer.
No-one is so sure anymore.
Cooper has arrived to claim the Nationals' grass-root support.
Wealthy insofar as he might have assets of a couple of million dollars (but farmers are not fairly classified in that way) Cooper has, according to his critics, turned back the clock.
If that means changing perceptions of Government there are most probably a lot of Australians right now wishing we could turn the clock back to the days when government offered tough leadership; when high office wasn't axiomatic with seedy practice in public administration; when we didn't have the burden of government waste coming hand in glove with government power.
It's sad for example, that Labor good men get trapped with the "embroidery"of party dogma.
This week we've seen the NSW Government selling off coal mines which should never have been owned by the Electricity Commission.
Government at its worst, in terms of excess, in Canberra with the ACT Government (I can't say it without cringing) bringing down a Budget of a billion dollars for 250,000 people and, without debate, deciding it's against the fluoridating of Canberra's water supply.
Then, $200 million of our money went to four banks whose collective profits last year were $3.7 billion.
All designed erroneously to stop home-loan interest rates going up.
Then, $60 million to the multinational company Kodak to save them from competition; $100 million to the airlines to save them from a predatory pilots' union; and then, solve the pharmacy mess by throwing $50,000 at each pharmacist who wants not to practise.
We've been doing much the same to Aborigines for years.
In Europe they call it agricultural policy: paying farmers a fortune not to farm and using taxpayers money to help them make up their mind.
You can't seem to have modern politics without having to buy party political baggage.
It seems impossible to get good people like Goss without all this party nonsense of anti-discrimination, equal opportunity, Teachers' Federations running education, union deals and a million and one ways to accommodate the concerns of every bleeding heart. Cooper knows this and the push is on to shore up those who, post Joh, have strayed from their political home.
Of course, Cooper has to live with the so-called gerrymander, even though on a preferred vote, Bjelke-Petersen had in 1986 more than 50 per cent of the vote.
The zoning system now complained of by anti-Cooper noise works was introduced to Queensland by a Labor Government 40 years ago to prevent a political takeover of Queensland by metropolitan voters.
In that zoning system in the 1950s, Brisbane had 24 seats in the parliament, South Eastern Queensland 28, Northern 13 and West 10 - hardly a rural stacking in a geographically enormous State.
Now, South Eastern, including Brisbane, has 51 seats, provincial cities 13, Western and Far North Queensland 8 and Countries 17.
Goss needs to win 16 seats to win Government and he will have to do that at the expense of the Nationals in metropolitan and Gold Coast areas.
Impressive though Goss is, he can't do it and Cooper's elevation to the leadership with the corresponding return to the wooing of his party faithful makes Goss's starting price at the next election much longer than that on offer when Ahern was in the field.
© 1989 Sun Herald
