Brisbane not the Bush - Some Federal Implications of the Brisbane City Council Election

A poor result in the Council election will only magnify these problems, leaving it very short at the next Federal election, particularly as it will have to run its operation for the next 18 months without any windfalls from publicly funded elections. Its brand new headquarters is also affected by a new Council ringroad, so there is unlikely to be any comfort there either by way of second mortgage or sale.

Evidence of the poor organisation of the campaign is everywhere in the suburbs. Brisbane’s Lord Mayor is elected at large, but the rest of the councillors represent just one ward. A successful campaign involves winning the majority of votes across the city, and the majority of wards. The Liberal Party needs to win 5 of these wards. I live in one of them, yet I have received virtually nothing from the Liberal Party candidate, and three major pieces, and a number of minor ones, from the ALP incumbent. In another, Marchant, the Party had to replace its candidate at the last moment because he was ineligible to run. Things are reportedly little better in the other three.

Howard won less than 50% of the vote at the last Federal Election. He was successful because of superior Liberal Party marginal seat skills. Those seem to have gone AWOL in Queensland.

Interestingly the factionalism appears to be coming from new sources. For the last two and a half years the sniping has been between the moderates and the Santoro faction. This time it is intrafactional with incumbent President Galtos being apparently undermined by his predecessor, Bob Carroll. Galtos is to be made the scape goat for the entire group’s incompetence (Santoro for example is a key member of the campaign committee), and rumour has it that Toowoomba racing identity and future senate prospect Neville Stewart, will replace Galtos at the convention in June 2000.

These factional problems will not go away. The template for what is happening to the Queensland Liberal Party can be seen in the Queensland Young Liberal Movement. 16 years ago Santoro took control of that organisation and its membership halved overnight. It has never recovered because the faction fighting has been so vicious that no-one with a life has stayed around. It has become a playground for the mad, the lonely and the ambitious. Independent thinkers have not been encouraged, because they upset the feudal system of patronage vital to a successful factional system, yet independence is a prerequisite for competence.

Paradoxically, a poor result in the Council election will strengthen the Santoro faction, despite the fact that it is to blame. The sort of people who are needed to rejuvenate the party just won’t find it attractive to belong.

So, the BCC election provides evidence of organisational problems for Howard that were always there, as well as having the potential through a bad result, to amplify them.

Overlaid on this is a likely Labor strategy to use the result to increase the momentum of the GST and make it almost a self-fulfilling prophecy that it will cost Howard the next election. Jim Soorley promised that he would run the GST as an issue. This would be consistent with what the Labor Party did in the two State by-elections. It is my guess that the GST had little effect as an issue in those by-elections. Electors are reasonably sophisticated at working out what level of government to blame for issues. But the ALP went fishing with dynamite in the by-elections, running every issue it could. Their operatives claim that the GST won the by-elections for them, particularly Woodridge.

On the same basis, and taking into account Soorley’s own statements, the GST is likely to get a run in the Council election. If there is a Labor win, it won’t matter again whether it is a factor or not. The only way to know would be to run quantitative and qualitative research. No news organisation is going to do that, so in its absence, and knowing they cannot be proved wrong, and that it makes good copy, most journalists will parrot the claim that the GST has claimed its first major victim. In the quantum mechanical world of politics, the fact that the observer believes that something has happened, can be the same thing as it actually happening. Therefore Howard has a problem of perception that extends nationally to add to his localised organisational problem. He doesn’t need much more than that to wipe out 7 seats.

National observers should start keeping a closer watch on Queensland. In Federal elections the Liberal Party generally needs a good result there to counterbalance its relative unpopularity in the rest of the country. Many of the rural seats that the Prime Minister has been visiting aren’t going to change hands. The National Party will reposition itself and take care of that. The greatest risk to the Prime Minister is in the urban seats of Queensland where the Liberal Party has to win on its own merits. There’s potential for a gale force in Queensland, but it’s more likely to affect Parliament House Canberra than City Hall.