A decade of service to our city

NEWS

By Don Gordon-Brown

Ten long years, eh? I’m a decade older, my knees are dodgy from carting bundles of Indies about. The paper’s bank balance is woeful. We owe our printers too much, and I ask myself the question regularly: why bother?

Probably the simplest answer is that I’ve done nothing else in a four-decade career in journalism that has made me prouder. I know The Indie is well liked – and has its detractors too.
And that it’s the only realistic print-media advertising option for many small and medium businesses in our circulation area. But if you can forgive me a little bit of navel-gazing as we reach this amazing milestone, I’m forced to ponder the possibility that, when it’s all said and done, we haven’t really achieved a lot that’s good over those 10 long and exhausting years.
The sad reality is that since a little band of well-known and respected Brisbane journalists and myself began The Independent in August 2001, our chosen patch is now not as well served by community newspapers as it was back in August 2001.
Or put another way, the competition that The Indie has provided over that time has not really done its job in making this paper – and its Quest competitors – serve both readers and advertisers just that little bit better.
Doubt my claim that readers and advertisers alike have poorer choices now then when we started? Here are the facts. The suburbs we decided to target back in 2001 – the Valley, New Farm, Newstead, Teneriffe and Bowen Hills among them – were at that stage serviced by Northern News. Our CBD competitor was another tabloid City News. Northern News from memory had the story of a new police station at Banyo as its front-page splash about the time we started.
If nothing else, we made Quest rediscover the inner-north, albeit for a short while.
A few short years after we began, Quest rebranded City News as a newsmagazine and boasted that an almost doubled circulation – from around 22,000 to 40,000 – would be delivered to readers by a brand-new method – directly into the letterboxes of a specifically targeted demography by none other than Australia Post itself! It was all marketing hype, of course, and not too many months went by before the whole marketing strategy was junked, in secret, for no other reason that to save money. Besides, it was never a marketing strategy executed with any conviction or enthusiasm. But that’s Quest for you. Cooking up slick spiels and slogans that sound great and wet the collective pants of pretty young things of both sexes in advertising agencies is all that matters.
Quest then axed Northern News and expanded City News by a further 10,000 to cover more or less our home-delivery footprint at that time. Imitation is the finest form of flattery, so they say.
Fast forward to September last year, when Quest axed the newsmagazine, returning City News to a basic tabloid on dull-looking newsprint stock. True to their form and their need for meaningless marketing buzzwords and gimmicks, they declared the new publication was brighter and bolder. You only had to look at the old and the new to know that was simply not true.
They cooked up the laughable notion of a two-speed newspaper, where busy readers could avoind reading it - and its advertisements! But never let the facts or logic get in the way of a good pitch ... and the pitch is everything, remember?
So 10 years down the track, The Indie’s main competitors have shrunk from two to just the one – City News, a publication that is shamelessly pitched at the young female city worker. It retains a circulation based largely on that failed marketing strategy of many years ago.
And yet it doubles as the home-delivery community paper as well, with about a fifth of its circulation going to a residential market almost the same as The Indie’s. But anyone who can put up their ad rates by 30 per cent since last September shows they are not in the least bit afraid of The Indie.
They could care less about the small to medium sized businesses that operate in our shared patch and who they have largely deserted. If those people want a quarter-page ad in City News, they can fork out the best part of $1400 for it, thank you very much! So what has The Indie really achieved over 10 years, if it hasn’t forced Quest to do the right thing by advertisers and readers.
Well, admittedly, we’ve had some fun along the way ... and we’ve fought some good campaigns. As the two front-pages (at top) early 2007 show, we took the then Beattie Government to task over and over again over the redhot porkies his awful government told us about the much delayed makeover for the Brunswick Street railway station, as it was back then.
It’s still head-shaking stuff to recall that Beattie could brazenly declare the final tenders had been awarded for the project – only to have to fess up that in reality the project was still in the early planning stages. Beattie trotted out a poor senior public servant to front the media and say how difficult the job was going to be and how much work still needed to be done on it.
We take an enormous amount of pride that when Beattie finally decided to come clean, he chose City News – a publication that belatedly joined the debate at the death – for one of his sickening “I’ve been a naughty boy, I need to be whipped and whipped really, really hard and I promise to do better” confessions that we were all quickly tiring of.
With covers like those above, we suspect that towards the end of his Premiership, Beattie didn’t like us one little bit. Well, all we at The Indie can say to Peter “I’ll never, ever take a government job” Beattie, the feeling was mutual.
We’re also very proud to have been probably the first city publication that questioned Beattie’s successor Anna Bligh’s plan for the North Bank project that would have extended a third way across our flood-prone river (below).
“But the people want us to do something there,” was the mantra she bleated along with her deputy Paul Lucas. But we sussed out community feeling about that issue long before the likes of The Courier-Mail stopped thinking about advertising revenue and reluctantly started to understand the strength of public resentment to the project.
Sure, our influence was certainly minor. But we took it up to the government early over the issue – and we can all be left to wonder what might have happened back in January if that scheme had been green-lighted and our riverbed had a whole heap of concrete pylons driven into it when our dams overflowed.
Have we paid a price for getting stuck into the Queensland Government over the past decade on such issues? We suspect so – and we’ll wear that with pride too. It’s true that state government departments, agencies and quangos have spent diddly squat with us over the past decade. Yet our arguments for having just a fair and reasonable share of the amounts that this government swings City News’s way week in and week out are compelling.
But the last time we wrote to Premier Bligh outlining those arguments and asking for a meeting with the right people to put our case once more for just a fair share of such government print-media advertising, we weren’t even given the courtesy of a reply. That was in late 2009. At least we know where Bligh stands.
But if putting out a loss-leading paper for 10 long years has shown anything, it’s that we at The Indie are extremely patient. If current polls prove correct early next year, we’re hopeful that the new LNP Government might actually want to spend taxpayers’ money wisely, instead of it being thrown lazily at Quest because that’s the way it’s always been done and it’s so much simpler allocatingadvertising budgets when you don’t have to think about it too much..
On other issues, we were proud last year to run a campaign with local councillor David Hinchliffe in a bid to clean up the Valley’s “grot spots”.
And over recent months, we have run an active campaign to try to get some recalcitrant Valley landowners to clean up their acts and make their buildings cleaner and safe – and with a look befitting the Valley heart. Can’t claim much success there to date, I’m afraid. Another ongoing campaign is this newspaper’s attempts to try to get our civic leaders to make amends for developer Mirvac’s decision to privatise a section of the Brisbane River so it could charge more for the units in their Pier South complex.
The “Give Us Back our River” campaign began in late 2008 and we can proudly boast a major victory in this campaign – we’re on pretty safe ground when we say that Mirvac Waterfront has not, and never will, advertise with us! What’s more, we’ll resurrect the campaign in earnest in our next issue on 14 September, so as they say in the trade “watch this spaced!”.
Finally, we’re proud of our slogan of “putting our local community first”. We’re proud to have won two Community Action Network awards for our work in the local community. And in each and every issue of The Independent, we proudly run free advertisements for worthy local organisations that could do with that publicity – and this milestone issue is no exception.
And I also want to place on record my heartfelt thanks to a small but very loyal band of advertisers who have stuck with us for so, so long and made it possible for us to hit the streets.
So, there you have it. Ten years on, and a heart-on-sleeve admission that I’m not at all sure we’ve really made any positive difference at all. Maybe we’ll do better in the next 10?

Injecting room call needles pollies, traders

NEWS

Politicians at state and local level have strongly rejected the basis of a lead story in last week’s City News that street drug injecting in the Valley precinct had reached such an level that safe injecting rooms were needed.

And local traders have reacted in dismay to the thrust of the article, with one who has just spent around $70,000 on a fitout to his new business venture in McWhirters building labelling the article a “beatup that causes nothing but harm”.
In a joint statement, Grace Grace state MP for Brisbane Central), Cr David Hinchliffe (Central Ward) and ALP candidate for Central Paul Crowther, said: “The Valley community is desperately trying to get back on its feet – particularly in the Valley heart area around Brunswick Street.
“It doesn’t need this sort of facility and it doesn’t need this sort of negative debate.”
In the article run on page 1 and 3 of last Thursday’s City News, a spokeswoman for the Queensland Intravenous AIDS Association was quoted as saying: “Currently there is street-based injecting happening in the Valey” . She said her organisaton would support an injecting centre for the Valley.
But the two sitting politicians and current candidate said in a joint statement” “We are totally against this.” “
We do not see the need nor the desirability of having such a facility in the Valley. We understand how it functions in Kings Cross, but we do not want to see it in the Valley.
“There is a role for needle exchange facilities. That debate has occurred and there is general acceptance that needle exchanges have reduced the spread of infectious diseases among injecting drug users.
“However, it takes the issue to a whole new – and undesirable – level to create injecting rooms where those who are addicted can go to get injected.”
The Independent approached a number of local traders and typical of the response when told injecting rooms were being mooted for the Valley was one trader who exclaimed “Whereabouts?”
Asking not to be named, he added: “Anywhere but near [this building]!”
But Joseph Origliasso who has only recently opened Pronto Expresso Bar in the McWhirters building and has run businesses in the Valley for two decades said that in all that time, he had never once seen anyone injecting drugs in a public place.
"I found the article devoid of any credible information. “And I call on local traders and the Valley Chamber of Commerce to chastise this puiblication for its poor reporting.”
And while doubting a street illegal drug injecting problem even existed, he said that if safe injecting rooms were needed “they should be up at the Royal Brisbane Hospital where all the support services and health care is available. It’s only a few thousand metres away”.

Will free helmets save bike scheme?

NEWS

The City Council has rolled out hundreds of free helmets in a bid to get the wobbly CityCycle scheme back on a steady course – and it's one of a handful of initiatives that the councill opposition claims is simply pouring good money after bad.

Cr Quirk believes the 400 free helmets now attached to bicycles as part of a three month trial will be made it easier for people to access the CityCycle scheme.
Other initiatives announced recently by the Lord Mayor include
• A cut a daily subscription from $11 to $2 and the introduction of an $11 weekly subscription.
• the introduction of corporate subscriptions
• express cards to allow instant access to the scheme for new subscribers
• a new web mobile site, and
• a fast tracing of terms and conditions to join the scheme.
“Providing 400 courtesy helmets with CityCycle bicycles will make it easier for users to take a spur of the moment trip without having to remember to bring their helmet,” he said.
“Feedback indicates that subscription costs, access to helmets and the subscription process have been barriers to more people subscribing to CityCycle, so we’ve focussed on these issues when developing these improvements.
“I want to remove the barrier to spontaneous trips by having helmets available on bicycles and hope that people will not abuse that trust,” he said. “We will monitor the trial and see if it is viable to continue.”
But the ALP’s Brisbane Lord Mayoral candidate Ray Smith says the Quirk administration “needs to stop throwing good money after bad on CityCycle”.
“Ratepayers are already paying millions of dollars each year to prop up this scheme, while council’s debt is spiralling out of control and services are being cut in the suburbs,” he said.
“This bike hire scheme is already costing ratepayers $10 million, when it was supposed to be cost-neutral. “The changes will do nothing to bring down the cost of this scheme for Brisbane ratepayers, who are saying loud and clear that they don’t want to see any more of their hard-earned money wasted on this scheme. “The Lord Mayor needs to stop dithering and halt the roll out of this scheme until he can get it right and it stops costing ratepayers more money.
“There are hundreds of CityCycle bikes sitting idle on Brisbane streets every day and by the end of this year, Brisbane ratepayers will be paying out over $20,000 per week to operator JC Decaux, just to have yellow bikes sitting on the side of the road gathering rust and dust.
“This scheme is a clear example that this administration has their priorities wrong for our city, and they’re incapable of spending ratepayers’ money wisely,” Mr Smith said.
Cr Quirk said: “These initiatives I have announced will be at a fixed cost of $18,000 for helmets, express cards and software changes that will be paid for by a reallocation of marketing funds within the CityCycle budget,” he said.
“There will be no additional cost to ratepayers and JCDecaux will bear the liability for any possible reduction in subscriber costs.”
Cr Quirk said the enhancements were developed by council in partnership with JCDecaux. He said daily trips had increased as more CityCycle stations opened around the city.
The average of 1300 weekly trips in the first seven months of the scheme rose 50 per cent to about 2,000 since the 100th station opened in May. There were more than 65,000 trips since the scheme began in October last year with about 6,000 subscribers.

Bye, bye Barry ... for now

NEWS

Barry the Butt ... look, we got to know him so well over many weeks that we gave him a name, okay! – finally disappeared from the dirty Walton’s walkthrough to Valley Metro as our 3 August issue was due to hit the streets.

We at The Independent are still not sure who did the right thing and gave the 10-metre stretch of public walkway the much-needed sweepout that claimed Barry – but a big thank-you to whoever did it!
Sure, they didn’t mop out the food stains and other horrible-looking smears but at least the trash and balls of fur, dirt and other detrius did disppear, along with the butt of recent Indie jokes.
Barry’s close neighbour, Bertha the half-eaten hamburger bun, was a close companion to Barry for almost as long as Barry held court in the area. The two pieces of bun disappeared some days before Barry himself went up in smoke, so to speak. We’re kind of hoping it was rats that took Bertha away, rather than some homeless and hungry person.
Bertha’s wrapping, along with other general rubbish, went in the general broom-through that took Barry from us.
Then, for a few weeks there, we thought Barry had made a return. A butt that looked suspiciously like Barry took up residence in a different part of the walkway – in another crevice where a tile had broked up and been removed.
That butt lasted a few days but disappeared before we could take a pix of him abd collect a DNA sample that could have proved any family connection.
But The Indie’s prediction that the big pile of broken tiles that had graced a corner of the walkway for many weeks before disappearing some days before that general cleanup would soon be replaced has proven spot on. Other shoddily replaced tiles that have broken up under pedestrain traffic now make up three little piles of broken tiles. No-one seems to want to remove them. As usual, no one cares.
The lighting is still poor, with a number of tubes broken. The aforementioned food stains still blight the area. As we’ve mentioned before, whoever is responsible for this state of affairs obviously could not care less about the Valley or how it looks.
The owners should be thorougly ashamed of themselves but we suspect they couldn’t give a toss.



Above: The ALP’s Lord Mayoral candidate Ray Smith and the party’s candidate for Central Ward Paul Crowther were taken by The Independent on a guided tour of the Walton’s walkthrough some weeks ago and were introduced to Barry the Butt.

Anger lingers over child centre axing

NEWS

Families in New Farm and surrounding inner-city areas now face an even tougher time finding child care following the announcement by provider C&K it plans to sell its Fortitude Valley centre to property developers.

If the sale proceeds, it will mean inner-city families have lost two C&K centres in less than three years with the community-based association providing no convenient nearby replacements.
At a heated meeting between parents and C&K management earlier this month, a motion of no confidence was passed in the group’s chief executive officer, Barrie Elvish. Parents were angry that the Robertson Street centre’s closure would aggravate a shortage of quality child care in the Valley/New Farm area and cause them to drive longer distances to and from alternative centres. A further meeting was expected to be held tonight (Wednesday, 31 August 2011) at which C&K board members were to meet concerned parents.
The Independent understands C&K plans to vacate its Robertson Street centre and use the sale proceeds to help establish a new state headquarters and child care facilities on a former Education Department site at Ashgrove where it would be collocated with the Hear and Say Centre for deaf children.
C&K, formerly the Creche and Kindergarten Association of Queensland, established its first day nursery for use by working women in the Valley in 1907. The closure of the Robertson Street centre would mean the inner-city has lost two child care centres operated by C&K in less than four years.
In late 2008 the C&K-operated Kindercraft centre formerly on the roof of City Hall closed because of concerns about its age, accessibility in the event of fire, and the need to renovate City Hall.
But plans announced by C&K at the time to open a new day care centre at the Brisbane City Council’s Green Square in St Pauls Terrace have never eventuated. At the time the state government committed about $1 million to assist the association establish a replacement child care facility.
The Independent understands the government’s commitment was made to enable the Green Square centre to be established, but C&K did not agree to sign a 20-year peppercorn lease with the Brisbane City Council on the grounds it could not be guaranteed its rent would not jump to commercial rates after the lease expired.

Heritage listing for Valley historic building

PROPERTY News

One of Queensland's first child health clinics, located in the Fortitude Valley, has become the first building of its type to be entered in the Queensland Heritage Register.

Queensland Heritage Council (QHC) Deputy Chair Chris Buckley said the Fortitude Valley Child Health Centre was constructed on Alfred Street in 1923 as a baby clinic and maternity and infant nurse training centre. “In the early 20th century there was a high infant mortality rate due to disease and mismanagement and women's organisations were lobbying for the establishment of baby clinics," Mr Buckley said.
“The Fortitude Valley Child Health Centre was purpose-built following the introduction of the Maternity Act 1922, which was part of a national and international movement to improve the health of mothers and babies.
“Public health and social reform was implicit in the growth of the town planning movement,” he said.
“The Fortitude Valley Child Health Centre was the first training centre for maternal and child welfare nurses in the state.
“The centre was also the headquarters and administration centre for all other Queensland baby clinics, operated as one of the first baby clinics, and provided accommodation for mothers.” Mr Buckley said in 1925-26, the Fortitude Valley Child Health Centre had the highest number of attendances and visits to newborns compared with other clinics in operation throughout Brisbane.
“By July 1927, the number of patients attending the clinic for treatment had increased and accommodation was insufficient.
“The centre was expanded in 1929 to include ante-natal care and during the 1930s the accommodation at the clinic was regularly overtaxed.
“A large clinic was planned for South Brisbane at the time but was never built. “In 1938, a 4.5m wide two-storey extension with a basement was added to the Alfred Street building, adding many new rooms and additional space.”
Mr Buckley said the centre was a good example of an interwar Queensland Department of Public Works institutional building characterised by good quality design and materials.
“The centre remains as one of the two operational child health clinics from a group of 13 built across Queensland between 1923 and 1930.
“It is significant for being highly intact and, as of 2011, having been in continuous use as a child health centre,” he said.
The building was identified as part of the statewide heritage survey, being carried out by the Department of Environment and Resource Management's Heritage Branch. The Queensland Heritage Council is the state’s independent advisor on heritage matters and determines what places are entered in the Queensland Heritage Register.

Places that are entered in the Heritage Register are considered of importance to Queensland's history and are protected under heritage legislation.

Views sought on backflow devices

NEWS

City council will hold a series of public meetings to discuss whether backflow devices are needed to help prevent a repeat of January’s damaging floods.

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said the sessions were being run as part of an investigation into the feasibility of backflow devices in flood-affected areas of Brisbane being undertaken for council by engineering firm Max Winders & Associates. Cr Quirk said the main aim of the sessions was to give residents the opportunity to provide their views on whether backflow devices were needed in certain areas of Brisbane.
He said as that while the sessions were being held in specific flood-affected suburbs, any resident from any suburb in Brisbane could attend to provide their views.
“Backflow devices are a tricky subject because in certain circumstances they can actually make flooding worse, particularly if they are not maintained religiously," Cr Quirk said.
“That said, this administration is committed to mitigating the impacts of flooding on this city as best we can, which is why we're out there doing this study and asking residents where and how they think backflow devices might work in Brisbane.” Cr Quirk said the sessions were scheduled to be “drop in” sessions, meaning residents could turn up at any time within the three hour window to discuss their ideas.

The meetings are at: • Riverside Receptions 50 Oxlade Dr New Farm Saturday 3 September 1pm to 4pm Thursday 15 September 6pm to 9pm
• Mercure Hotel 85-87 North Quay Brisbane CBD Wednesday 7 September 4:30pm to 7:30pm Tuesday 13 September 4:30pm to 7:30pm
• Milton State School Bayswater Rd Milton Saturday 10 September 1pm to 4:pm Wednesday 14 September 6pm - 9pm

Give our Valley a break!

OUR SAY

Fortitude Valley is home of a number of organisations that help the homeless, the needy and indeed the afflicted, and there’s nothing wrong in that at all. They are services the precinct should be proud of.

But it’s also a vital part of town trying its hardest to develop a strong day-time retail economy to go with its image as a fun destination for music lovers at nights and weekends. So unless City News can point to a real problem that needs to be addressed, its report last week – especially given its prominence and total lack of balance – besmirches the Valley’s image at a time when local traders to trying their best to make a bob in hard times.
We can all be compassionate – but should the interests of these traders going about their lawful business and trying to make a living take second place to people who are risking their own lives doing something illegal? 
An article that gives potential customers the impression that the Valley is a place to be avoided is simply bad news for those businesses. The City News article quotes a Sydney-based injecting room supporter and director of the alcohol and drug service at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital Dr Alex Wodak as saying the Valley has two to three drug overdoes a week that require ambulance callouts and “a lot of these people will die”.
Averaging that out at 2.5 a week means 125 a year, and he’s saying “a lot” of these will die! We respect his expertise but it’s a big call from a long way away. The Indie will seek police statistics on the issue and report back next edition.
Our local pollies think the scenario painted in the story – that street injecting is now at a level where safe injecting rooms are needed – is simply wrong. And in the absence of any real evidence to the contrary, we agree with them. And we believe that the unanimous attitude of the limited number of traders we spoke to would be endorsed by many; many more. Injecting rooms? No!
Sadly, City News has form in tarnishing the Valley’s image. In years past they’ve collaborated with The Courier Mail’s Punch Drunk campaign to portray the Valley as a dangerous place to visit – a place where you’re likely to be king hit at best; glassed at worse.
We thought some of the stories were beatups then, and The Indie at the time ran a story from a top Valley cop worried that such articles highlighting glassings and other violence did more harm than good.
With this latest assault by Quest Newspapers on the Valley’s image, spare a thought for Winnings Appliances, the company that has invested well over $4 million on its recently opened outlet in the Valley heart. Or the developers behind the Melba residential project in nearby Wickham Street, where work on 112 boutique apartments has begun. Our bet is that neither of those company’s research before opting for the Valley heart for their projects suggested an area plagued with a level of street drug injecting that called for safe injecting rooms?
And our guess is that they would be pretty upset over an article that suggests that anyone making a trip to the Valley stands a very real risk of seeing that illegal street drug injecting first hand, or even standing on one of their used syringes, for that matter.

Not the messiah; she’s just a naughty girl

FEDERAL POLITICS ... with Mungo MacCallum

Two weeks of parliamentary recess, and the general view is that the government must be pitifully grateful for the relief. But this is not necessarily the case.

Despite Tony Abbott’s assurance that the row over Craig Thomson (for which the Opposition is almost entirely responsible) has paralysed the government, in fact the legislation has been getting through; 22 bills in the last fortnight, bringing the total to an impressive 185 for the year.
Julia Gillard needs the parliament; in the current poisonous atmosphere, delivering the goods is her only hope of appearing positive. It is also the only place she can show what the electorate increasingly sees as her best features, her courage and persistence. Without it, there will be something of a vacuum; backbenchers will return to their electorates to be assailed with questions and complaints about Thomson and the media will become a breeding ground for yet more leadership speculation.
At the weekend the independent Andrew Wilkie gave it a kick start by opining that we might see new leaders as soon as May next year; this should not be a real news story, he added hastily, and it isn't; but nor will the speculation go unnoticed. While the Labor Party has not yet succumbed to the despair which the Murdoch press regards as its due, a faint murmuring can be heard among the understandably nervous nellies on the backbench that it might just be time to be starting to consider a plan B.
It has become something of a chicken and egg question: with the party vote and the leader's standing equally on the nose, are they both irretrievable or is one dragging the other down? And if so which? And in the circumstances would a change of leadership make any difference? On the face of it, the move would be suicidal. There is still a substantial Rudd rump festering in the party room; to add a Gillard rump would risk open and bitter divisiveness.
Moreover, it would confirm the already substantial impression of a party desperate for survival and without any sense of purpose and direction. And most importantly, it could undo Gillard's pact with the independents, who have pointed out that their deal was to support a Gillard government, not just any old Labor government.
Better to hang on and hope for a miracle - after all, if there are no serious accidents (which in the wake of the Thomson affair may be an overly-optimistic assumption) there is still two years to go. But, say the doubters, that is precisely the point.
Two years is a bloody long time - more than long enough for the voters to forget all the current kerfuffle and embrace yet another new Messiah. Gillard is doomed; the people have stopped listening to her and if they do hear anything she says, they don't believe it.
The unrelenting hostility from the miners, the clubs and pubs, small business, the farmers and of course the shock jocks and Murdoch press is aimed directly at her: Juliar, Brown's bitch. A new leader would not be greeted by these groups with joy and delight, but at least he - it would inevitably be a he - would not be carrying quite as much baggage.
But even if this line of argument were to be accepted by the caucus - and there is no sign of that happening at present - the problem remains: finding the new Messiah. Kevin Rudd is the voters' choice, but absolutely unacceptable to the powerbrokers who killed him off once and would blow up the party rather than have him back.
The deputy, Wayne Swan, is totally identified with the Gillard government and in any case is too boring. Defence Minister Stephen Smith has been mentioned as a relatively unknown cleanskin, but is hardly the man to excite the imagination of millions.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet is competent and convincing but tied to the unpopular carbon tax. Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten is a down to earth figure who has had a moment in the sun with the disability proposals but is still remembered as one of the faceless men from 2010.
And this is the catch 22: all of the above were apparatchiks - party officials or union bosses, precisely the people most to blame for the Labor Party's decline as an inclusive, open political movement.
This may be an unfair assessment of the individuals involved but nonetheless it is the public perception; they are part of the problem, not part of the solution. And, given that the same stricture applies to more than half the caucus, it would seem that any real improvement in Labor's fortunes will have to involve change starting from the bottom, not the top.
Let's face it, there is no plan B. For better or worse, Labor is stuck with Gillard, so the nervous Nellies had better just stick up for her. But Wilkie was talking about leaders, plural; is there any real threat to the smashing, bashing, crashing Tony Abbott? Well, obviously not immediately; with the polls the way they are he will cruise into government without having to consider what Tony Windsor claimed he threatened as the ultimate sacrifice: selling his arse.
But the same polls indicate that the voters will elect him with considerable reluctance: a clear majority neither like nor trust him. And it should not be forgotten that he gained the leadership by just one vote, and a lot of those who didn't want him back then have not changed their minds.
If he can get them back on the Treasury benches, that's terrific, but it doesn't end there; having done the job he was selected to do, he might find his use-by date approaching more quickly than he thought.
And the irony of all this, of course, is that if there were to be a popular vote for Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull would be a shoo in. Abbott will always have lurking behind him the real Messiah, slouching towards Bethlehem, waiting to be born.

On yer bike for a Bali good time

TRAVEL ... with David Bray

Downhill all the way. It’s the way to go when you’re part of a genuinely good day tour in Bali. Now travel writers for the glossy mags and the metropolitan dailies tend not to do tours. Don’t have to, because their hosts whiz them around in time-efficient luxury. Your reporter had some years of such junketing and saw quite a lot.

Once the freebie phase was over, it was back to Gray Line and suchlike, and it must be said they almost always proved to be enjoyable, informative and fair value for money. One such expedition not so long ago provided all of the above and a bit more. A bicycle tour without the need to ride a bike.
We see an advertisement in a tour shop as we pick our way with considerable care along the atrocious footpaths of Ubud. The brochure offered an eco/cycling day tour, down hill, suitable all ages. Just the thing, at a mere 350,000 rupiah each. Say $4.
Around 7.30 next morning Wayan picks us up at our accommodation in an air-conditioned van and we drive around town picking up others until there are seven of us, including a couple of fit-looking young men.
An hour’s drive takes us up into the cool, green hills for a nice enough breakfast at Kintamani overlooking Lake Batur and lava leavings from historic volcanic eruptions. It’s a pleasant place, good view, nice people. Next to a farm to learn what grows well here in the tropics. We are familiar with many plants. Guide Wayan (aren’t they all so named?) is a first rate teacher, well informed and with good English.
We know now that the Balinese can’t do without BBC _ bananas, bamboo, coconut. We get to sample some of the drinks. Wayan must have been looking us over, because he asks, politely: “”Mr and Mrs Bray, how long since you rode a bicycle?’’ Many years, mate. Let’s see how we find things. So soon we pick up the bikes, and helmets. They’re excellent machines, but after some surprisingly strenuous cycling around the flat ground, Mr and Mrs B accept the offer to ride the course in the comfort of the van. The five fit ones roll off and it must be said all of them make it to the finish, back in Ubud, 25 kilometres on, almost all of it downhill and on quite roads.
They, and we, visit a Balinese family who make their living from a bamboo plantation. Almost every member of the family has something to do, even granny who is weaving a mat. We learn a little about the family/social system, and later at a temple stop, discover some of the basics of the Hindu belief system.
At one stage we pull off the road to enjoy a passing colourful procession of villagers on their way to prepare for their new year celebrations. Lunch is well into the afternoon, a brilliant meal set out in a pleasant pagoda-style building surrounded by lush green rice fields.
We feel very relaxed and pleased with the whole expedition and are interested to hear the women who made the ride say they had been so busy avoiding dogs and traffic that they had not really been able to take much notice of what was around them. The blokes, more experienced cyclists, had no such complaints. For some reason none of us could be bothered doing the last bit of the tour, Monkey Forest. Nasty, greedy, thieving little wretches.
As for us, we couldn’t be more content with the day.

GETTING THERE

There are plenty of direct flights between Brisbane and Bali. Bus services and taxis run Denpasar to Ubud. Resorts and hotels arrange transfers and tour bookings. Since our effort there has been a remarkable rise in the number of cycle tours on offer in the area. Expect to pay $35 to $45. Plenty of choice on the internet.