Have the administrative people who run Queensland Labor resigned in disgrace yet?

I’m referring to the party’s state president John Battams, state secretary Kate Flanders and assistant state secretary Zac Beers (pictured above with Battams on the left), in the positions I firmly believe they deserve to hold right now. Others on the committee should join them in the dumpster.

Too harsh? Not at all. They’ve overseen another disastrous result for the Labor Party in the Brisbane City Council elections last Saturday. And answer me this, all you BUGers out there? If these three were running a retail firm and saw their market share slump as dramatically as it continues to do at the municipal level, do you think the company’s shareholders would not move swiftly against them.

Let’s look at the sad, cruel, facts. From the ABC’s vote coverage, here are some latest Labor primary votes in inner-city wards from the weekend poll, with the Greens share in brackets and the outcome: Brisbane Central: 17.1 per cent (35.3) – LNP retain; Coorparoo: 20.1 per cent (34.8 per cent) LNP retain; The Gabba 23.9 per cent (45 per cent) Greens retain; Paddington 16.7 per cent (39.3) Greens win; Enoggera 23.8 per cent (30.9) LNP retain; Walter Taylor 13.6 (39.5 percent) LNP retain.

I don’t know how long Flanders and Beers have been in their positions as they wait for a Senate place or a safe Labor seat (good luck with finding that!) but they’ve got to cop the blame for those shit figures above.

Left-leaning people are totally entitled to ask why Labor Queensland has lost all interest in the local municipal area that was once Labor’s playground, with Jim Soorley the Lord Mayor for a dozen years up to 2003? Why have they ceded the left and central vote to the Greens party. Do they seriously believe Labor is incapable of creating a policy package that appeals to inner-city dwellers?

And how about the adage that all politics is local. Turn your back on local and you’ll do poorly at state and federal level. Saturday’s results show Grace Grace (Brisbane Central) and Jonty Bush (Cooper) are in real danger of defeat at the hands of the Greens come October 26. At the last federal election, the Greens took three inner-city seats, one off Labor, two off the LNP.

Federall, inner-Sydney and inner-Melbourne are a blaze of red; Brisbane is moving Green.

Soorley’s long-term deputy David Hinchliffe was very damning about his party’s performance in an article by News Corp’s Brendan O’Malley.

He was quoted as saying it did not take a crystal ball to see the ALP was in “terminal decline’’ and Labor and the LNP refused to accept society was changing and people were sick of the politicisation of local government.

“Labor and the LNP are old parties full of hacks, while people are wanting more co-operation, more consensus on serious issues,’’ he said.

“There were times in the (former LNP Lord Mayor Campbell) Newman period when we shared information on difficult issues.

“But when we won the Olympics, with 11 years to prepare, it was almost guaranteed there would be one Labor government and one LNP government in that time and therefore it was important they set up a bipartisan organising committee.

“Politics is a business. But any business where the directors sit on one side and make all the
decisions and the shareholders sit on the other side and make none is destined to fail.’’

One of my insiders who knows Labor Queensland well has this to say in recent days:

“Labor hasn’t invested time or energy or thought into the BCC so it hasn’t won a thing for 20 years.

“There should be people falling over themselves to run as Lord Mayor but they end up with unknown nobodies, plus they dumped Rod Harding who at least gave it a good go in 2016 but got dumped part-way through his second tilt in 2020 and we got Patrick Condren!

“Nobody in the Labor BCC caucus ever wants to take the risk of running as LM because they might lose their council seat.

“Why isn’t the Labor BCC opposition leader the candidate for LM? That’s the whole idea of opposition leader, I thought.

“Several Lib councillors ran against Soorley knowing they might lose – which they did.

“Labor councillors do fuckall in each 4 year term to differentiate themselves on policy or run campaigns, and the party has in the past relied on last-minute scare campaigns or allegations that people like Graham Quirk are corrupt!

“FFS, who’d believe that? The answer of course was, nobody.

“I guarantee if you asked the Labor councillors six months ago what new ideas they had to take to the 2024 poll you’d have got blank stares.”

My insider also told me this: “I did a rough calculation on Saturday night vote shares – which may change in the final wash-up – but by my reckoning at the 2020 poll the Greens outpolled Labor in five wards and were neck and neck in one.

“On the Saturday night stats the Greens were outpolling Labor in 11 wards and neck and neck in one.”

Back to me. As the years go by, council wards in and around Brisbane are going to be increasing chockas with residents paying off or renting their over-priced New-York style apartments without kitchens and a fold-down bed/lounge space.

The Greens have worked out how to appeal to these people; Labor has deserted them.

Battams, Flanders and Beers need to fuck right off and give party people who believe Labor can be competitive in inner-Brisbane a chance to at the very least reclaim some wards in four years time. If not that, then at least have a primary vote share that might have seen the LNP lose the four wards mentioned above that they’ve managed to hold this time.

All politics is local, right?

Don Gordon-Brown

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