Day economy in the doldrums?

Top:  Final days for the Loot outlet in McWhirters. Above: police handle a possible drug overdose on the steps of McWhirters.

Is this the Valley of slow returns....



Another bout of business closures is damaging Fortitude Valley’s bid to establish a sound day economy to even remotely match its nightime and weekend reputation as a pulsating entertainment precinct.
Paradiso fashion store in the TCB closed over the Christmas-New Year period, another of the smaller fashion outlets that dot Ann Street also gave it away, and McWhirters will suffer a setback when its biggest retail tenant Loot closes its doors at the end of this month. Just metres from the Loot shopfront, lease signs stand where two separate pharmacies
have tried to make a go of business in the past year only to close their doors. Paradiso was a long-term TCB tenant that had already been established and so missed out on a free fitout and year’s rent after 10 new fashion outlets were lured to the revamped centre several years ago. Some of those have closed since the free rent period ended, and the centre already has some three lease signs on retail spaces on the ground floor apart from the now empty Paradiso shopfront.
The normally slow festive season and the ongoing Chinatown Mall makeover delays have not helped local businesses, and The Independent understands that a number of stores dipped into their overdrafts to see them through to 2010.
Valley Chamber of Commerce CEO Carol Gordon told The Independent the chamber had been concerned about the day economy for sometime. “It is the heart of the Valley that is still of most concern … but some major improvement are taking place.
“Big solutions are generally needed for large problems and this is the approach the Valley Chamber has taken to improve the day economy,” she said.
Long-term Valley businessman Joseph Origliasso who has run shops in the Valley for 15 years, including for the last three-and-a-half his budget fashion outlet, nvy, in McWhirters near the main entrance off the Valley mall, said the Valley mall no longer had a day economy to speak of.
“I have seen a change in population over the years, and workers have been replaced by residents. And contrary to popular belief, a worker spends more than a resident does,” Mr Origliasso said. He believes 2009 had been tough on all local traders, from fashion shops to fast-food outlets.
“I estimate that my takings are down about 30 percent over the year,” he said. Local business closures were becoming quite common. “I reckon by March we’re going to see another five or seven closures. I don’t want to sound alarmist but it’s a fact of life.”
As The Independent was talking to Mr Origliasso, he parted some frocks hanging near his counter and pointed to the front of the Valley Mall and said: “That’s also part of the problem.”
The paper took the photograph (above) of several mall police beat officers giving aid to a young man who had collapsed on the steps leading up into McWhirters. He had possibly overdosed on drugs.
Mr Origliasso also questioned the look of the local business area. “Someone needs to enforce the building codes and force landlords to clean up their shopfronts,” he said.
Ms Gordon said the Valley Chamber agreed that more workers were the key to improving the day economy. “The chamber’s overriding objective to increase the number of office workers moving into the area as this is primary way of increasing the customer base for the ‘day economy’.
“The Valley is starting to connect the dots, making it easier for shoppers, workers and visitors to the area. A lack of street parking is still a major issue but we are lucky enough to at least have three car parking stations which other areas lack.
“Importantly, the Valley Chamber of Commerce truly welcomes the BCC initiative to have the Rapid Bus Transit system in place this year. This will allow more people to efficiently commute West End to Newstead and return via Wickham and Ann streets in the Valley with stops planned every 800 metres or so.
“Obviously this mean changes to road conditions for vehicles and deliveries and these are important and serious issues to be addressed with a workable solution found. But the most important benefit will be more people will be able to easily move around the area between the precincts and it is the heart of the Valley, ie the Valley Malls area that has the most to benefit with more potential customers.
“Fortunately the area’s connectivity is starting to be addressed by both the council and state government as part of the major planning for the area and the Valley is still leading the way with new large-scale developments that will bring the office workers and along with this new retail and small business opportunities.
“It will be interesting to see what Lend Lease does with Valley Metro as the railway station located within this shopping centre continues to play a vital role in the revitalisation of the Valley Malls area. Businesses are still continuing to relocate to the Valley.”
The Independent also emailed local councillor David Hinchliffe to comment on the possibility that the massive publicity given to the Valley as a “loud and proud” entertainment zone – Australia’s first such designated precinct – might have inadvertently damaged the Valley’s brand, with would-be shoppers reluctant to travel to the area in the daytime. Cr Hinchliffe is holidaying overseas and had not responded as this issue went to press.

Early Xmas gift turns sour for traders

Does this look almost finished to you? The pictures above were taken in the Chinatown Mall on January 4.

City Council’s early Christmas gift to Chinatown Mall traders – to have large areas of the mall open to pedestrians a week before December 25 – has proved a hollow gift indeed for business owners struggling to survive through the much-delayed $8 million plus makeover.
Council was true to its word and removed many barricades on December 18, but council claims that the move would give traders a much-needed boost in Christmas trade as people flocked to look at what had been done did not eventuate.
Claims by traders that festive season bookings had already been badly affected by the ongoing noise and dust of the makeover proved correct, with reports of poor trading figures up to Christmas and beyond.
And the project builders have now rebarricaded the area under the grand awning, with many other sections of the mall, including the fish sculpture and water feature on the mall’s northern side, still behind construction panels.
The dust may no longer be a major problem, but noisy jackhammers were still working just outside his Green Tea restaurant when owner Tom Tran spoke to The Independent earlier this week.
“It’s a maze again,” Mr Tran said, pointing to the solid barricades metres outside his doors. “How to people know where to walk?
“We were led to understand that once it was opened it would stay open. It is very disappointing to see the machinery back and the fences up again.”
Outside his restaurant, a workman was putting an undercoat on the main supports of the grand arch, but the arch’s canopy – a red and white structure in the pattern of a fish’s scale – remained only half completed.
Mr Tran said the first half had taken some weeks to do, and he was staying hopeful that the second half would not take as long. Of his pre-Xmas trade he said: “Christmas was really nothing this year compared with last year. We continue to dig into our pockets and we shouldn’t have to do that.”
Mr Tran said some night trading in the week after Christmas had been sound. But he doubted council claims that “all finishing touches” would be completed by the end of January, in good time for Chinese New Year on February 14.
“I’ve heard from construction workers that we will be lucky to have things done by March.” He also questioned whether the look of the new mall when completed was going to engage people. “I have heard no-one say anything good [about the design.] They’ve been saying: ‘We’re spending eight million over eight months for this?’”
Down the mall, Nelson Long at the Mandarin Palace said ongoing nightworks had cruelled his festive season trade. “They’ve been going from 9pm every night for weeks and our late-night trading has suffered. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel.”
Mr Long criticised the lack of information from council about when the mall would be completed.
“We’ve had no official word of when it will be finished. No one knows and we can’t really do any planning until we know.”
Mr Long said he had become frustrated with the way work had been undertaken on parts of the mall reconstruction. In any particular area “they seem to do about 80 per cent of the work and then stop it and go and start somewhere else”, he said.

Police presence ‘must continue’

Valley licensed premises want the recent police surge to continue – but they also want harsher penalties for those drinkers caught playing up.
Valley Liquor Accord chairman Danny Blair said an increased police presence in the Valley during November and December had proven successful in reducing incidents. “And that’s the approach the government should continue to take in addressing the issue,” he said.
“We want an increased police presence in the Valley every weekend as it’s proved to be successful in reducing anti-social behaviour. “The police need their actions and hard work supported with harsher penalties in court.”
He called on the Queensland Government to get serious about tackling alcohol-related anti-social behaviour and introduce harsher penalties for serial offenders. Mr Blair said the VLA was extremely disappointed that a man who had faced the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Monday on his fourth public nuisance charge in 12 months yet was only fined $300.
Mr Blair said the man had showed disrespect for the court by swearing during his hearing and was fined an amount that would not be deemed harsh enough to act as a deterrent. “For someone to face court four times in 12 months and only be penalised the cost of two Big Day Out tickets, shows we are losing the battle in educating people on anti-social behaviour,” Mr Blair said.
“We’ve invested a lot of time and money in increasing our security, launching a safety campaign and falling into line with government directives to make the Valley a safer precinct to socialise.
“I assume this man was sober, yet swore in court, so what hope have we got when he gets in a public place and consumes alcohol knowing the worse that can happen is a $300 fine.
“What we need are penalties which mirror the government’s rhetoric on clamping down on anti-social behaviour against individuals.”
Mr Blair said this incident occurred before midnight and flew in the face of the Ambulance and Police Unions calls for a 2am shut down.

Visions vary on city’s future

Both sides of politics have traded jibes over their visions for the River City.
Brisbane would become a “sardine city” under Labor’s Soviet-style housing density targets, according to LNP infrastructure and planning spokesman Dave Gibson.
And the Labor leader in City Hall, Cr Shayne Sutton, said a joint State Government and Brisbane City Council announcement to develop a River City blueprint was “just the gracious and leafy Brisbane suburbs, especially those along rail and bus corridors would be destroyed under Labor’s South East Queensland Regional Plan (SEQRP) which dictated high-density housing.
Mr Gibson said Labor’s SEQRP had been embroiled in controversy, with Labor mates facing CMC inquires, and local residents and suburban groups up in arms over the destruction of their suburbs and lifestyles.
“The biggest worry is the high-rise, high-density housing that Labor wants to force into our suburbs,” Mr Gibson said. “Queensland families want a backyard …not a balcony twenty stories up,” he said.
“No one wants to be forced into a ‘sardine city’ type lifestyle that Labor is proposing and already we’ve seen that market demand for high-rise in the suburbs is far less than Labor’s targets. “Growth in Brisbane and the South East should be driven by market fundamentals – buyer’ choice, market conditions, and dwelling and location preferences, not by Soviet era style housing targets.”
“Labor’s spin that high-rise development is better for the environment, reduces traffic and travel time, isn’t necessarily supported by the facts.
Councillor Sutton said it was essential the Blueprint prioritised more active transport river crossings.
“If we are serious about congestion busting we must prioritise other forms of transport to help Brisbane residents move around the city more easily,” Cr Sutton said.
“Pedestrian and cycling bridges are a win for everybody. They are cheaper to construct, encourage people to be more active and by decreasing car use, they are better for the environment.”
“If Brisbane is to become a New World City, we need New World infrastructure that will help us beat traffic congestion and keep our city active, healthy and green.”
Mr Gibson said a 2007 report by the Australian Conservation Foundation (Consuming Australia), found that in almost all Australian cities, higher density housing produced higher per-capita greenhouse emissions and had larger environmental footprints than outer suburbs, despite the greater access to public transport.
“Opportunities for relatively efficient, compact living appear to be overwhelmed by the energy and water demands of modern urban living, such as airconditioning, spa baths, down lighting and luxury electronics and appliances, as well as by a higher proportion of individuals living alone or in small households.
“Suburban homes traditionally have a higher number of people per household than high-rise developments.
“Labor’s spin that high-density developments are somehow more environmentally sustainable shouldn’t be accepted on face value.

2010 ... steady as she goes

The Independent asked Adam Gray, director and principal of PRDnationwide New Farm, to reflect on recent real estate trends in the Indie’s patch and ponder what the future holds for both investors and individual homebuyers.

The last five years in real estate has been considerably turbulent. The market has been either racing ahead, coming to a complete stop or in some sections of the market, dropping off a cliff.
Now at the beginning of a new decade it is interesting to ponder what will happen over the next two to three years. Having been in real estate for over 20 years, I have seen cycles not dissimilar to the current situation. Now that we have had the full effect of the Global Financial Crisis with regard to the normal residential market, I believe the next few years will be steady as she goes.
In the New Farm/Newstead area, I expect all prices to increase steadily from their “current market value”. I say “current market value” because some owners have not realised that the price of their property has dropped considerably from the height of the boom at the end of 2007.
The upper end of the market has seen considerable price reductions over the past two years. It is interesting to note that this end of the market has started to bounce back and we could see some higher than expected growth for properties over $1 million.
The residential market around the $500,000 price bracket was not greatly affected by the downturn over the past two years. We have noticed continued price growth and expect this to be a very stable market over the coming years.
With the lack of new supply of apartments in this area, we can only suggest that rental pricing will start to increase again. It is the simple case of high demand for the best area of Brisbane with limited added supply.
We are currently marketing a project in Newstead called Aris and we have noticed a high level of enquiry from owner occupiers and first home buyers. As nearly all the apartments are under $500,000, it goes to show that tenants are realising that now is the time to buy to avoid having to pay higher rents over the coming years.
The introduction of Mirvac’s and FKP’s Newstead Riverpark will bring a whole new perspective on Newstead and surrounding suburbs. With the addition of such an elite project, we expect pricing in neighbouring areas to rise considerably.

Building a work of art in itself

Architecture

A 45-metre artwork looming above the traffic at Kangaroo Point is fast becoming a new Brisbane landmark. Waterford Properties has spent more than $2 million on the work of art to adorn its 15-level $100m residential project Scott Street.
Made from interwoven precast concrete, the structure weighs a staggering 350 tonnes. “Our brief to the architects Jackson Teece, more than three years ago, was to design a striking contemporary luxury apartment building that would set it apart from all others in Brisbane,” said Waterford Properties managing director Mike Kavali.
“We were also encouraged by the Brisbane City Council development assessment team to incorporate a distinctive external treatment to the south-eastern part of the building as a gateway to the city-bound approach to the Story Bridge.” Mr Kavali said these days a new luxury city apartment building needs to make an artistic statement reflecting its quality and to establish its enduring identity.
“We wanted to enhance the public space around the development and draw attention to it at the same time," he said.
“The sculpture piece also responds to the architectural issues of providing comfort and privacy to the residents, while acting as a filter to the environment.” Mr Kavali said the giant vine-like motif is under construction and will be complete by the end the month. “The structure is gaining lots of attention from motorists and pedestrians crossing the Story Bridge,” he said.
“We are delighted with the outcome – it’s certainly becoming a public talking point, particularly with some other exciting and bold new designs for innercity bridges and buildings now happening in Brisbane.”
Mr Kavali said such a bold statement is relevant considering Scott Street’s colourful recent history as Ryan’s on the River and the historical precinct dating back to the early 1800s and the first settlements in Brisbane.
“We believe it will become an instantly recognisable landmark,” he said. The art work, designed by Damian Barker and Andrew Tesoriero of Jackson Teece, was inspired by Melaleuca forests and mangroves found along the Brisbane River and Moreton Bay.

What really aled me over Christmas!

FROM MY CORNER .... with Ann Brunswick

Want to know what really aled me over the festive season?
My festive season was totally ruined by an uncaring and thoughtless multinational company and I want to share the details with you!
You’re wrong if you thought it was Telstra. Understandable guess though, under the circumstances. And no, it wasn’t some mobile telephone company or power supplier that tried to stiff me with an inflated bill. That happens a lot, too, doesn’t it? TransLink charging me a motza cos I’m an old fashioned gal who likes paper travel tickets? Not that, either.
No, it was one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of softdrinks – the Schweppes organisation. Here’s how it unfolded. At the end of a long day or night, the final trick to winding down after working a corner for as long as I do, is to get home, kick off the high heels, discard the wig and enjoy a scotch and dry. Surprised, loyal readers?
I bet many of you saw your Ann as a gin and tonic sort of gal, but no. To get the bitter taste of a day’s hard grind out of the system, your Ann turns to a nice highland malt, a few ice cubes and a splash of dry to take the edge of the spirit. Heresy, I know, to true whisky afficionados, but there it is. And herein lies the problem.
My bitch is with Mr Schweppes and his little 330ml bottles of ginger ale. And I’m not talking about how they reduced the amount to 330ml a few years ago when they stylised the bottle a tad. Didn’t reduce the price then, did they, but that’s a bitch for another day.
No, I’m talking about how it’s just about bloody impossible to unscrew the tops of these blasted things. True! I know some people out there in Indieland see me as Wonder Woman, but while we might look alike, sadly I don’t have the strength of that glorious creature.
You just simple cannot get the top off these bloody things You can try a very dry tea towel, run the top under hot water for a half-hour and all you get is sore hands, sorer shoulder muscles and a really bad mood.
Was it just a bad batch where the tension meter was too highly set during the bottling process;? No, because it’s been a problem your Ann has faced for months now. Unless you’ve got some pliers in the kitchen, or a piece of sandpaper handy, you just get angrier and angrier as you try without luck to open the bottle.
These things are just badly designed, and I want the head of this company’s CEO on a platter. I want their bottle designers sacked. And I’m calling on all Indie readers to boycott their miserable tight-sealed product so that they never operate in this country every again.
Why do I keep putting up with this problem in the first place? Kirk’s ginger ale is a mighty fine, albeit sweet softdrink that’s great on its own. But it just doesn’t mix well. So it looks like I might have to drop into a hardware store after work today and get a few sheets of coarse sandpaper – anything to avoid in future this nightly hissy fit I’ve been working myself into trying to open a bottle of Schweppes ginger ale!
Please make me feel better by letting me know if you’ve had similar problems with this product – or any other well-known brandname for that matter. Email me at ann@theindependent.com.au

***

The Valley certainly lives up to its “Loud and Proud” image from time to time.
Your Ann was having an evening meal in one of those cafes on the northern side of the Valley Mall over Xmas/New Year and it turned out to be a very distressing and unpleasant experience, what with the wall of sound that was thundering across the mall from the Royal George, Ric’s and Kalibar. Honestly readers, Phil Spector would have sat bolt upright in his prison cot with pride at the mega decibels throbbing out of those venues. It became one almighty roar whereby you simply could not even begin to guess what particular deluge of decibels was coming out from which venue.

Uncomplicated diversion

Films ... with Tim Milfull




It’s Complicated (M)
Director: Nancy Meyers
Stars: Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin
Rating: 3/5 120-minutes, screening from tomorrow, Thursday January 6

Alec Baldwin has been enjoying something of a renewal in recent years with his performance as the charming if vaguely sociopathic studio executive Jack Donaghy in Tina Fey’s excellent sitcom, 30 Rock.
In It’s Complicated – written and directed by Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give and What Women Want) – Baldwin stars alongside Meryl Streep as Jake, a baby boomer who suddenly realises that he may have made a mistake a decade ago, when he left Streep’s Jane for a much younger woman.
Aside from raising three children into adulthood, Jane has built a thriving bakery – shades of Julie & Julia, perhaps? – and pretty much healed over the scars of her failed marriage. When the family unites in New York to celebrate the graduation of Number One Son, Jane and Jake find themselves sharing a drink in a hotel, and later … a bed.
Suddenly, Jane is the Scarlet Woman, and Jake discovers what he might have lost. Writer-director Meyers has a well-developed talent for Hollywood rom-coms – if we can forgive the execrable The Holiday – and It’s Complicated is the kind of flick that will have the cinemas crowded with baby boomers keen to find a rom-com they can relate to.
Streep offers a good performance as the hapless Jane, while Baldwin’s shameless Jake is consistently amusing. If you can set aside some atrociously wet characterisation in their adult, but very sulky children, and the wasted Steve Martin as Jane’s new love interest, It’s Complicated is a pleasant enough diversion.


Clooney’s character no air head



Up in the Air (M)
Director: Jason Reitman
Stars: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga. Anna Kendrick Rating: 4/5
109-minutes, screening from January 14

Apparently, Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) has one very clear, simple goal in life: to earn a certain number of frequent flyer miles. As a high-flying specialist executive who rarely spends more than forty days in his hometown of Omaha, Ryan is in the perfect position to realise his dream.
The rest of the year sees the highly organised, commitment-phobic Ryan jetting back and forth around the world, living in hotels, drinking in airport lounges, racking up points, and occasionally taking directions from his reptilian boss, Craig (Jason Bateman). But when Ryan is suddenly called back to base – and his dingy one-bedroom apartment – he learns that his dream is under threat; a fresh-faced Ivy-League graduate, still wet behind the ears, has convinced the company that there might just be a much cheaper way of getting his job done.
When he points out that there’s more to his job than simply setting up a video link, Ryan is saddled with an unwelcome sidekick – new media wunderkind, Natalie (Anna Kendrick) – and told to show her the ropes on the road.
Clooney is excellent as the vapid corporate funky who is willing to step in where cowardly bosses fear to tread, and Kendrick is perfectly cast as the icy twentysomething careerist with no idea about the harsh truths of the real world. But Ryan and Natalie are small cogs in a larger story adapted by Reitman and Sheldon Turner from Walter Kim’s novel about the devastation of corporate downsizing. I found Up in the Air powerful, engaging, and oddly tragic.

THE BINGE

Beautiful, terrifying and weird
I have something for everyone in this first chat about DVDs in 2010, with a kids’ show, a strangely beautiful and terrifying tale from Australia’s convict past, the latest weirdness from Korea, and a compelling documentary about the fashion industry.
Ponyo is the latest gorgeous film from the prolific anime master Hayao Miyazaki, whose Studio Ghibli prides itself on old-style, hand-drawn animation. This film is no exception, echoing Miyazaki’s now customary theme of the interaction of humanity and the environment.
In Van Diemen’s Land, Tasmanian writer-director, Jonathan auf der Heide took his film school short, Hell’s Gates, and fleshed it out into a feature-length exploration of similar territory: man’s relationship with his surroundings. But this dark tale – based upon Australia’s most infamous cannibal, Alexander Pierce – eschews the saccharine beauty of Ponyo, and focuses on the harsh wilderness of Tasmania, and the desperation of lost convicts.
Korean director, Park Chan-wook (of the Vengeance trilogy fame) uses his latest film, Thirst, to throw another hapless victim into an awful situation and see what happens. After a terrible accident, Father Sang-hyeon (Song Kang-ho, from The Host) suddenly has to learn how to manage as a vampire. His coping strategies include a perverse relationship with the desperate Tae-ju (Kim Ok-bin.
Finally, documentary-maker, R.J Cutler spends a month in the New York offices of Vogue magazine charting the publication of The September Issue, edited by the legendary Anna Wintour. The resulting film is surprisingly compelling, especially given that in the shadows of the woman whose life was portrayed in The Devil Wears Prada, there lurks a team of remarkably talented individuals.

Gloves off as bloody election looms

By Mungo MacCallum



Welcome to another bloody election year. And yes, it will be a bloody election. Tony Abbott knows that he is on a hiding to nothing and will fight it the way he won his boxing blue at Oxford, a way that had a journalist report: "No-style Abbott's a real smasher … he has no defence when going forward".
He has already signalled that he is going to make border security an election issue; this, of course, is code for race. Abbott, like his mentor John Howard, will not hesitate to appeal to the worst instincts of Australians if he believes there are votes to be won.
What makes his opportunism even worse than Howard's is that Abbott himself is not racist; unlike Howard he is comfortable associating with all creeds and colours and is an enthusiastic convert to multiculturalism. But desperate elections require desperate measures, and Abbott has shown throughout his career that he is ever ready to embrace the Jesuitical teaching that the end can sometimes justify the means.
He will need all the distractions he can get, because his position on climate change - Kevin Rudd's chosen battlefield - is pathetically vulnerable. When Abbott unexpectedly became leader of the Liberal Party his supporters insisted that one of his first jobs was to tell the voters a story; and he did. The problem was that the story was a barefaced lie. It consisted of the assertion that Rudd's Emissions Trading Scheme was a great big tax on everything, and that he could deliver the same cuts at no cost to anybody.
Rudd's ETS is in fact not a tax, but a market-based solution of the kind free enterprise parties such as the Liberals are supposed to applaud. The idea is that the polluters have to pay for their permits to pollute. They will of course pass the extra cost on to consumers, but the government will use the money raised by the sale of permits to compensate those worst affected. Competition between the suppliers will force them to look for cleaner alternatives, which will eventually become economically viable, making everyone a winner.
This, at least, is the theory, and Abbott has not attempted to refute it; his only response has been to say that an ETS is a great big tax on everything, which it clearly isn't; indeed, Treasury modelling suggests that it will have far less impact than the introduction of the GST, which Abbott praises as a great economic reform.
His own approach to the problem of reducing carbon emissions (he now accepts that they are a problem, despite not long ago calling the science of climate change "crap") is through what he calls "direct action".
This apparently involves government regulation over the supply and consumption of energy, anathema to Liberal philosophy and more importantly to Liberal voters, and/or subsidising alternative energy sources and the elimination of carbon from the process, a solution previously derided by the Liberals as a Greenie fantasy. But whether the idea is practical or not, it would be expensive; indeed public and private economists calculate that the cost would be roughly double that of an ETS, to deliver less than half the reduction in emissions.
Moreover, the government would not have the income generated by the sale of permits to pay for it; the scheme would have to be funded entirely from consolidated revenue, and paid for, presumably, by a great big tax on everything. As a strategist on climate change, Abbott makes General Custer look like Alexander the Great.
The other key battleground during the campaign will, as usual, be the economy; and here again Abbott is on shaky ground. He is trying to appeal to the Howard-Costello legacy of economic management, but the hard fact is that Howard and Costello have both gone in somewhat humiliating circumstances and their replacements hardly seem up to it.
Abbott's own economic expertise is, if the above policy is any guide, close to zilch. His shadow treasurer Joe Hockey has no real track record other than to insist that if tax cuts are on the agenda they should go to individuals rather than companies, an about face on Liberal policy hardly likely to appeal to the party's most important donors.
And then there is Barnaby Joyce overseeing the vital and wide-ranging Finance portfolio and already proving that he can piss in the cabinet tent just as effectively from inside it as he did from outside it.
By contrast Rudd can point to the proven reliability and steadiness of Wayne Swan and Lindsay Tanner, and to Australia's success in weathering the Global Financial Crisis through swift and decisive action that has since been endorsed by the vast majority of economic authorities, both national and international. Labor can justly declare that it has reclaimed the title of superior economic manager, and unless things go drastically wrong in the next few months, Abbott's talk of debt and deficit will most likely be dismissed as carping and whingeing by a largely relieved electorate.
This is not to say that Rudd is a shoo-in; the halo has slipped a bit in the last few months, and the idea that he is a timid leader who would rather talk than act to deliver real reforms is starting to gain some traction. But it can hardly be denied that he is starting from a long way in front, and that the government over the last two years has been a model of stability compared with the alternative, whoever has been leading it.
To unsettle it, Abbott will have to fight hard and dirty, and the preliminary signs are that he is ready and willing to do both. Like I said, another bloody election.

Call the cops ... I've just been plasticed!

DGB


I’ve been a really bad binge drinker all my life.
I remember one night - let me rephrase that - I don’t remember one night when friends took me to a night club while I was travelling overseas. Okay, some people would call it by another name - a girly bar. Fair sauce of the shake bottle, but it was a pretty high-class joint. At least I hope it was.
For you see, I drank far too much for my own good, and there’s a very good chance that in my time in this establishment I may have inadvertently seen something naughty. I’m not saying I did, mind. It’s just that with the night being a complete blank, there’s every chance that I did.
Anyway, the very first thing I did when I awoke the very next morning was to ring my beautiful wife back in Oz and apologise for the things I had no memory of seeing but could very well have.
I did this for three very sensible reasons.
One, the things I didn’t recall seeing might have been very naughty indeed. I’m talking perhaps exposed nipples here. Mine or someone else's.
Two, my beautiful wife deserves better than to have a husband who even wanted to see such naugthy things in the first place, even though, as I stress, maybe I didn’t see anything naughty after all which sort of makes the apology unnecessary the more you think about it.
And most importantly, Three: Recounting this story in this way didn’t lose me any votes with the Australian people, no matter how implausible my non-recollections were and the fact that there wouldn’t be one normal red-blooded Australian male anywhere who so lacked in testicular tissue that they would even bother apologising to their missus for not remembering what they might possibly not have seen.
Anyway, enough extracts from our Prime Minister’s upcoming autobiography, Lost Moments. I’m sure it’s going to be a riveting read.
But I thought I’d share just that short extract with you, as it seems so pertinent at the moment, coming from Australia’s most famous binge drinker, our very own lip-licking, earwax nibbling nerd of a leader. “I’m Kevin, I think I’m from Queensland and can’t remember why I’m here to help”.
At least he’s not a hypocrite. His history of binge drinking entitles him, as he has in recent months, to declare war on this social scourge that appears to be blighting our society more and more.
His calls come as we are bombarded with suggestions that our state’s entertainment precincts are out of control, that glassings and other violent assaults are on the rise, that drunkenness on our roads is worse than ever and that all sorts of things need to be done to stop these social ills — from earlier closing times for clubs and pubs, for glassware to be removed from such premises, that maybe the alcohol tolerance level for driving should be cut back to dead zero.
Leading this campaign, especially on the licensed premises front, has been the Courier-Mail’s excellent Punch Drunk campaign, one I wholeheartedly endorse. The paper has had some fairly average results with its public campaigns of recent years, so let's hope that Punch Drunk gets them at least an honorable mention at the next annual internal New Limited awards night, of which best public issue campaign is highly coveted. Such matters should never be just about filling up news pages, you know.
And the paper is to be commended for its sheer determination and persistence in making sure the campaign is a success. "Last drinks!" declared their splash a while ago after “another increasingly violent weekend across the state’s entertainment precincts". Senior police were "reeling" over the level of violence. Cops were being attacked at a northside railway station and at a suburban domestic disturbance, although somehow linking violent punter behaviour in bars for those incidences seems akin to blaming your mother for your wife’s looks.
Clearly this campaign needs to succeed - and I wish the Courer well come awards night - but if I have just the one criticism, it's this: why do we all have to pay a price to bring into line the lowest common denominator - the cowardly moron who thrusts a glass into someone's face?
Take enjoying a beer. I’ve made a lot of overseas friends over the years, and I like nothing more than spending a few hours with them, in a beer garden if at all possible. Signors Peroni and Moretti and I get on very well, and I like nothing more than to pour only small amounts of their beer at a time into a frosty glass, a habit picked up in a hot country. It’s also nice to turn their bottle labels towards other drinkers, just to let them know I’m a self-made man who can afford such luxuries of life.
With all the Courier-fuelled publicity over alcohol-fueled violence, such enjoyment is now fast becoming a thing of the past.
I checked out three Valley venues over the weekend. First up was Cloudland and can I say that I quite like what they’ve done there, although I have read somewhere that its interior design has all the appeal of the stomach contents of a post-mortem examination. Just then, actually.
If I had handed over $9 to the friendly barman, I would have been handed a stubbie of Peroni and if I wanted one, what I understand was a tempered glass.
Cloudland had a victory of sorts some months back against the powers-that-be after being put on a naughty-venues list. It seems a glass that had been thrown turned out to be tempered glass. Tempered glass apparently is the only thing ill-tempered people should throw or thrust faceward. So far so good for this sophisticated drinker of the world. Tempered perhaps but it’s still glass.
Around the corner, the Royal George Hotel has gone down a different path. With a big range of draft and bottled beers on offer, I could get a stubbie of Peroni for $7.80 but they would have given me what they called a “rock” glass to drink it with. Rock, the bar lady told me, was not plastic. The perspex you have when you don’t have perspex perhaps sums up her explanation. On the bottom of these glasses are the words “Remedy of Rocks” from which the name obviously springs.
Next door at Ric’s, where all beer sales are stubbie-based, a Peroni would have set me back about $8, again with a plastic, sorry, perspexy sorta container to drink it out of. The only real glass they use is for champagne. Champagne drinkers aparently are refined people who don’t smash glass into someone’s face, regardless of what they may or may not have said.
So all three venues allow me to go and sit down and drink from safe containers filled from a stubbie. But wait on, that’s an untempered stubbie, is it not?
Courier, get onto this immediately! Isn’t this akin to confiscating an airline passenger’s nosehair clippers but then allowing them to eat inflight meals with a steel knife and a fork? Someone’s going to get mightily pissed and smash a stubbie and push in into someone’s gob.
So here’s hoping in an installment of Punch Drunk very, very soon, the Courier calls for all stubbies to be BANNED!
Instead of handing me a stubbie of my favourite foreign lager in future, bar staff will be pouring the whole shebang into a 15oz container, be it plastic, perspex, paper or plain tempered. I'll be forced to sit with my plastic/perspexy/paper/tempered schooner of beer - just like at the Gabba - and try to drink it quickly before it gets too hot.
Then drinking hot beer too fast is going to make me crankier than normal. And then fights will break out and tempers will flare, and before any dinky-di Aussie can say fair shake of the suck bottle, we unruly patrons will be plasticing and perspexing and papering and tempering one another in the face and some new Courier-Mail campaign will have be launched - Off your faces! perhaps - I think it works on several levels? - urging the state government to force licensed venues to serve only single sars and ginger, horehound and root beers in paper cups with paper straws. Over much shorter hours too!
And if we patrons don't learn our lesson then - and please, let's all just calm down here for god's sake! - for such licensed premises to be shut down forever! It should be a great campaign. No-one in the News stable will top it! No other daily newspaper in Brisbane would stand a chance!
And what a great night it will be! The envelope please .... and the winner for best public issue campaign goes to.....