NEWS
It’s now quite some weeks since we asked Lord Mayor Graham Quirk for straightforward answers to very simple questions as to why his Team Quirk candidates in the recent council poll used imagery almost identical to the official City Council cleat that must not be used for political purposes.
Back then Cr Quirk bluntly stated that his team had not used the official cleat. So we’ll be equally blunt. He is our municipal leader. He no doubt expects the ratepayers of Brisbane to obey both the letter and spirit of council rules and bylaws.
He must show leadership. He has a moral and ethical and political duty to answer our questions, most importantly the one that asks him to explain why any reasonable person would not have mistaken the “copycat” cleat he and his candidates used for the real one.
Make no mistake. The LNP’s use of that imagery gave their campaign an aura of legitimacy: the party sanctioned by the council. Would Cr Quirk have still won the mayoralty by not using these shady tactics? Probably. Would he have won by the margin he did without it. We say most certainly not. And sadly that means his recent win has been badly tainted.
Hence his need to answer our questions. He should start by telling us how the design his team used differed from the official city council cleat. And once he’s done that, he should then try to convince us why people would not have confused the two.
Maybe he’ll tell us that the LNP’s decision to use alternating blocks of blue and yellow – in some cases indistinguishable in colour from official city council documents – down the left-hand side of their electional material was a pure coincidence. Times are tough so we could all do with a good laugh right now.
Perhaps he ‘ll declare that he would be absolutely dumbfounded if anyone could possibly have confused the two. That would give us an even bigger chuckle.
He could, of course, surprise the socks of us all by honestly applying the streaker’s defence that “it seemed a good idea at the time”, apologise openly to the people of Brisbane and pledge never to let it happen again. In the world of modern politics, we don’t suspect for one minute that is going to happen – and that’s a crying shame.
In our next issue, we’ll run the findings of a vox pop on the issue, where we’ve been asking people in the street to look at a series of pamphlets and images – half using the official city council cleat and half LNP political brochures, media advertisements, street signs, etc – and the results to date are exactly as we suspected they would be: people can’t tell the difference. And we suspect that’s exactly why the LNP did it.
And when explained the background to it – and the fact that the LNP was not permitted to use the official cleat – their responses have been very strong indeed. Reactions have included: “The little people have to follow the rules and the people in charge can stretch those rules to suit themselves”.And “most of us have to do what we’re told,. those in power can do what they like”.
And make no mistake about this issue. The losing side in the recent City Council elctions did not use this copycat cleat imagery. The LNP did – and as we’ve stressed in the last issue, it’s entirely fair of us in the light of the Lord Mayor’s silence on the issue to stick by our claim that it gave the LNP an unfair advantage. It was dodgy, unethical, too-clever-by-half political tactics that have tainted their win. And we’ll stick with that view unless Cr Quirk wants to do the right thing by answering our questions in a way that convinces us otherwise.
So we’re going repeat our questions in each and every issue of from now on until Lord Mayor Quirk comes clean over his copycat cleat.
