The big question on everyone’s lips – everyone’s chapped lips – is this: does Brisbane City Council still have a rule on its books that its council cleat – that pattern of alternating blue and yellow rectangles down the left hand-side of its printed or visual material – must not be used for political purposes?

It’s a perfectly fine rule if it still exists, seeing the cleat is clearly the council’s intellectual property and has been for yonks.

Just about anyone spotting it – and they don’t have to be on a Clapham omnibus to do this – knows straight away that they’re looking at a piece of true-blue, ridgy-didge, authentic council material, whether it be a mid-term brochure from the Lord Mayor, bus timetable signage on a footpath anywhere in the council area, a BCC park sign about what you are allowed, and not allowed, to do there, or on the back of a council bus simply to tell ratepayers: this is a council bus!

At centre, above, taken down Banyo way yesterday, are election signs for Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner and Northgate Ward councillor Adam Allan. They are clearly political in nature as they are branded TeamSchrinner material. with the state LNP logo. Their signs are flanked by just two images taken off the council’s website this morning.

While you, my loyal reader, plays spot the difference, I’ll just mention that my proudest time in five decades of journalism was when we at The Independent, year after year, city council election after city council election, hammered the LNP Queensland as CLEAT CHEATS!

We repeatedly asked LNP Lord Mayors and councillors how on earth could any Brisbane citizen tell apart what the LNP in its political advertising used and the council’s official cleat.

All we ever got was a short “we do not use the city council’s cleat”.

Total and utter bullshit. From Lord Mayor Can-Do Campbell’s time, through the lord mayoralty of Graham Quirk, we accused the LNP of cynically, underhandedly, unethically, immorally using what any normal Brisbane citizen would identify as a version of the council cleat in a deliberate, long-term process of making the LNP and the BCC one and the same.

The Independent didn’t muck around. We accused the LNP of breaking both the spirit and the letter of council rules. Year after year, we called them cheats. Given our paper’s reach back then across the CBD, it’s amazing we were not, at the very least, threatened with legal action.

They didn’t even bother arguing that their design differed from council’s in the colours of the rectangles, or their dimensions. And that too would have been total bullshit. The council’s cleat CMYK makeup and the physical dimensions of the X and Y sides of those alternating blue and yellow rectangles would be set in stone somewhere in council documents for designers to follow before council material is sent off to the printers where designs can be replicated exactly, but the reality is they vary quite a lot out in the real world. I was behind a council bus the other day where the blocks were practically square.

The Independent over time collected countless images of the official cleat wobbling visually all over the place. In many examples those blocks were quite elongated.

So let’s not fuck around here, people. The LNP can swear black and blue that they are not politically morally bankrupt, ethically challenged political crooks, but from the time of Newman they adopted the council’s colours and distinct pattern and set about to make the council cleat their own. Their mission was to make the LNP the official political party of council.

There’s only ONE reason the LNP have been doing this blatant cleat-cheating since at least 2012. To con Brisbane people into thinking the City Council sees the LNP as its logical, natural, political partner of choice.

They achieved that aim quite some time ago. The Queensland LNP and the BCC are now inseparable. And for that reason, the LNP are a mob that will win easily on Saturday and those elected will once again expect all citizens to obey council rules yet for a decade or more have cynically broken council rules to their own selfish advantage.

I regret not publishing a rant some weeks ago urging the Labor lord-mayoral candidate and her existing councillors and would-be councillors to take it easy and don’t spend too much time on the campaign. Toss their campaign promises in the bin and enjoy a coffee. Take a holiday even.

The LNP and the BCC are now one, and you and your chances come Saturday were well and truly fucked a long, long time ago.

Don Gordon-Brown

TOMORROW: How LNP Queensland systematically set about stealing the council’s intellectual property.

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