Greens slam Team Quirk 'cheating'

The LNP's use of the Brisbane City Council's branding image in the run-up to the 19 March municipal poll is "underhand, unethical and blatant cheating", the Greens' Lord mayoral candidate Ben Pennings says.

And Mr Pennings slammed the council's administration for failing to protect its intellectual property, claiming it had  "rolled over" to its political masters at City Hall.

Under council rules, the council's distinctive pattern of alternating yellow and blue blocks down the left-hand-side of official council documents must not be used for political purposes.

Team Quirk, led by Lord Mayor Graham Quirk, is repeating a tactic it used successfully in the 2012 poll by once again campaigning extensively with roadside billboards, footpath signs and letterbox and other printed material that contains a copycat council cleat that The Independent has argued for years is used for no other reason than to make voters think it is the official cleat and that Team Quirk therefore has some form of official support from council.

 

 

"The LNP's use of Brisbane City Council's colours and cleating is underhand, unethical, and blatant cheating, Mr Pennings said in response to questions from The Independent. "They are attempting to very closely associate the LNP with the positive BCC brand, even to signify some sort of BCC support.

"The LNP seem to increasingly see Brisbane City Council as their personal fiefdom. Political appointees and a 90 person strong marketing team keep the spin rolling, in what is now LNP branding.

"Any other company in the world would fight tooth and nail to protect their brand. Brisbane City Council instead rolls over and accepts this appropriation by a political party taking it, and the voters, for granted."

 

Top: Team Quirk election posters for the 2016 campaign. Above: The official council cleat on a bus timetable near the Valley mall.

Where to now for Walton’s eyesore?

 

NEWS

By Don Gordon-Brown
 

Does Lord Mayor Graham Quirk’s silence on this famous yet dilapidated building that’s a blight on the inner Valley indicate he’s given up on trying to force the owners to bring it up to standard?

That’s one possible explanation as to why he has apparently refused to answer questions from this newspaper about what steps council is taking to make the owners repair a litany of visible defects on all visible frontages.

Several years ago, this newspaper congratulated the Lord Mayor for forcing the owners to spend at least some time and money giving the building’s Brunswick Street frontage a lick of paint and tidying up some of more visible defects such as outdated signage.

By issuing a show-cause notice to the owners that listed some 65 defects, Cr Quirk got action where some other politicians had expended hot air and achieved nothing for a long time. We praised him at the time for that, and reinforced that message in a preamble to our questions. They were:
1. Do you share this paper’s view that Walton’s remains an eyesore and a blight on inner Fortitude Valley?
2. What is your latest estimate of how many of the visual defects of Walton’s still need to be remedied?
3.  Is any new action planned to force Walton’s owners to bring the building up to a suitable standard?
4.  Indeed, are there any plans for Walton’s redevelopment? Maybe through a forced sale of the building?
Online searches reveal that the 4000 sq/m site was listed on realcommercial.com.au back in January for sale or possible development as a joint venture, in an area zoned for projects up to 30 storeys.
The Independent understands one architectural firm has mooted development plans for the site that would include an underground council bus interchange under a high-rise commercial or residential project.

Editor’s note: The Independent is hoping the Lord Mayor’s silence on this issue, as well as our request for a CityCycle update, has nothing to do with our campaign against Team Quirk’s disgraceful use of the city council cleat for political use. But if it is, we’ll wear that rebuke as a badge of pride.

World exclusive: How the cleat cheating began!

 

The Independent has obtained an extract of a meeting of sitting LNP councillors at City Hall in late 2007, just months before the municipal poll of early 2008. It was chaired by then Lord Mayor Campbell Newman and attended by sitting LNP councillors. These shocking extracts reveal how the use of the copycat cleat came about!

Lord Mayor Newman: Before we move onto general business, I’d like to welcome to the meeting as an observer Vicki Howard, representative for Central Ward.

Voices of welcome.

Nicole Johnston (Tennyson): Isn’t David Hinchliffe the representative for Central Ward?

Newman: Oh, for goodness sake, Nicole. Of course Councillor Hinchliffe is one of the elected representatives for Central Ward. But Vicki here is also the elected representative ... the LNP elected her to be its representative just as I elected her to be my Lord Mayor’s representative for the ward. I don’t know why, Nicole, you’ve always got to throw a spanner in the works. Can’t you just be a team player like Graham and the rest of the brown-nosers here! Yes, Amanda?

Amanda Cooper (Bracken Ridge): Would you like me to get you a nice hot cuppa, Chair?

Newman: Sorry?

Cooper: Lord Mayor chair.

Newman: Sorry?

Cooper: Lord Mayor chair, Sir.

Newman: That’s better. But bloody hell, Amanda. I haven’t finished the one you made me after we confirmed the minutes. And I distinctly remember asking for two sugars. Now general business. Any general business?

Negative murmurs around the room.

Lord Mayor Newman: Well, I have one.

Graham Quirk (Rochedale): Good on you, sir!

Newman: Shut up, Graham. Now, I’ve been looking over our LNP campaign material for the upcoming council elections and I’ve come to the conclusion that it needs some jazzing up. The pamphlets and signs all look fine with our CanDo slogans but they just need something. Maybe a pattern of coloured shapes to mould them altogether under the CanDo Team banner.

Adrian Schrinner (Chandler): Something like the blue and white pattern that run across the top of official police documents?

Newman: Exactly, but of course we couldn’t use that.

Angela Owen-Taylor (Parkinson): I’ve always loved the green and purple colours associated with Wimbledon. Maybe some pattern using those?

Matthew Bourke: (Jamboree): Yes, good idea. Maybe green circles and purple rectangles running across the bottom. Something like that?

General murmurs of approval.

Lord Mayor Newman: Look, we’re on the right path here but the boys in head office came up with the idea of using gold and blue blocks of colour alternating down the left-hand side of our campaign material. Here are some examples the LNP’s graphics people came up with.

Lord Mayor shows meeting some placards.

Graham Quirk: Fantastic idea, Sir!

Newman: Shut up, Graham. Now what do we all think?

Margaret de Wit (Pullenvale): I think you’ve nailed it on the head, sir! It’s very pretty.

Jane Prentice (Walter Taylor): Brilliant leadership, sir!

Ian McLachlan (Hamilton): Like it. Like it a lot.

Geraldine Knapp (Pullenvale): I think it’s a can-do!

Short round of applause halted by the chairman’s gavel.

Nicole Johnston: Doesn’t someone already use that design? I’m sure I’ve seen it before...

Newman: There you go again, Nicole. Always on the outer. So help me, I can’t see a future for you in my CanDo administration with your carping criticisms. You really do need to change your ways or you’ll end up on the outer. Does anyone else here have any idea what this silly woman is talking about?

Soft chorus of "no idea" and "nope, nope, nope".

Newman: Well, that’s settled then. I formally move that this design be used on ....

Nicole Johnston: I know what it is. It’s the city council’s official cleat!

Newman: Oh, for Christ’s sake, Johnston. The council’s official cleat is totally different to this. You know full well that we can’t use the official cleat in political campaign material and do you think that I as your supreme CanDo leader or the LNP would even consider using this design if there was the slightest chance it could be confused with the official one? That would be completely unethical! It would be like playing underhand, sneaky tricks on the voters of Brisbane. A politician’s career would be very short indeed playing such games. Voters respect people who are all about being smart and making strong choices.

Shouts of "hear, hear" from around the room and a "Well done yet again, Sir" from Graham Quirk.

Vicki Howard: I know I’m only an observing representative here and I shouldn’t say anything but I think it’s lovely and I’d certainly like to use it in my upcoming 2008 campaign.

Newman: Thank you, Vicki. Now as I said, I’d like to formally move...

Amanda Cooper: "Would you like that cup of tea now, Sir. I mean, Lord chair mayor sir?

Newman: Oh, for God’s sake, Amanda. We’re almost through here. Oh, look, I’m sorry for that. And everyone else too. You’ll all have to forgive me. I’ve been a little short with people all day.

Nervous titters circulate around the room.

 Team Quirk posters from the 2012 Brisbane City Council election. Having given the copycat council cleat a trial run in 2008, the LNP's Team Quirk candidates gave it an absolute workout in 2012 on everything from footpath signs, bill boards, newspaper advertisements, all sorts of political leaflets, pamphlets, business cards and stationery and even the back of a campaign car! 

They plan to cleat yet again!

OUR SAY
 

The City Hall bureaucrats charged with upholding Brisbane City Council policy that protects the public branding of council materials, services, and activities appear to have given their LNP political masters the green light to trick voters again.

And it means the widespread use by LNP candidates in BCC wards of a copycat council "cleat" at the 2012 poll looks like being repeated in the lead-up to the 2016 mayoral and council election. We believe it will be another attempt by the LNP to wrap all of its candidates, from Lord Mayor down, in the cloak and authority of incumbency.

The "cleat" is the distinctive blue and gold design adorning materials officially published or created by the BCC. It usually runs down the left-hand side of printed BCC materials or signs.
In 2012 LNP candidates widely used what we believe any reasonable person would say was an identical design on their party political material and signs.
Yet the top council bureaucrat, Brisbane City Council CEO Colin Jensen, has declared he can do nothing to stop political candidates using blocks of identical gold and blue colours down the left-hand side of election material – just as the city council’s cleat is used.
According to answers from Mr Jensen to questions posed by The Independent, if the dimensions of the LNP cleat "do not conform" with the "specified design dimensions" laid down for the council cleat then council has no authority to stop "other organisations" from mimicking official BCC-endorsed material.
In asking whether council bureaucrats had ever "demanded, requested or suggested" that the LNP and Team Quirk stop using the council’s intellectual property, the three-paragraph response was:
"Brisbane City Council’s corporate branding includes a cleat with specified design dimensions.
"The dimensions of other designs used in non-council political campaign materials during the 2012 election did not conform to the dimensions of council cleat.
"Council has no authority to prevent other organisations from using the same colours with a similar design."
Mr Jensen did not answer follow-up questions seeking the specified dimensions for the council cleat, how many pieces of Team Quirk electioneering material were inspected to come to the conclusion that they were of a different dimension, and what were the dimensions of Team Quirk material that came closest to being the same dimensions as the council cleat.
The Independent specifically directed the first batch of questions to the office of Mr Jensen as CEO. Unfortunately, they came back from one of the Lord Mayor’s media spin-doctors who requested that the answers be attributed to "a council spokesperson".
We would understand completely if Mr Jensen did not want to put his name to those answers. Indeed, maybe he had no input into those responses and they were taken over by his political masters who have plenty of reasons to obscure and deflect over what we believe is the cleat’s misuse.
This paper’s three-year-plus campaign to make Team Quirk candidates come clean on their disgraceful use of the copycat cleat has always been a political one anyway. We’ll leave it to intellectual property academics to argue whether the council bureaucrats have done everything they could or should to protect the council’s ubiquitous and well-known (plus ratepayer-funded) brand.
But what is indisputable is that the LNP’s Team Quirk cynically and underhandedly copied the council cleat to give them an unfair and undeserved advantage at the 2012 poll. Any political academic worth their salt could explain the advantage the LNP gained by creating the impression its candidates had some form of official council backing. Team Quirk became Council Team Quirk.
We’re perfectly in our rights to say they use the cleat because for three long years Lord Mayor Quirk has refused to tell us how their design differed sufficiently from the official council cleat so that any reasonable person could tell them apart.
Indeed, the BCC CEO may have unwittingly let the cat two-thirds out of the bag. His answer, sanitised by Lord Mayoral staffers as coming from "a spokesperson", concedes the colours on the blocks are the same, as we’ve always known. Where the blocks were placed are the same. Our eyes told us that too.
We’re then left only with x and y arguments. If the width-to-height ratio of the blocks of colour used by Team Quirk was deliberately altered by a millimetre to cater to some legal flimflam yet still trick voters’ eyes then, as we’ve constantly argued, that would be even more underhanded, more tricky, more sneaky, more devious, more politically dishonest than if they’d just copied the BCC cleat in the first place.
So take a long hard look at the two LNP politicians below. They expect Brisbane ratepayers to always do the right thing and abide by council bylaws and regulation for the common good. Yet along with other Team Quirk candidates, we believe they have flouted council policy that forbids the use of the BCC cleat for selfish gain.
If they’re not courageous enough and open enough to admit a mistake and promise not to repeat it and scrap all materials bearing the cleat, this newspaper believes they do not deserve to be re-elected.

Footpath signs used by Team Quirk at the 2012 council elections. Lord Mayor Quirk and Vicki Howard have for three long years refused to answer basic questions over their use of the copycat council cleat.

Homeless animals the clear winners in this clash between states

NEWS

 

Yes it’s on once again! In what RSPCA Qld staff and volunteers admit without the slightest hint of embarrassment is a blatant rip off of the State of Origin series, the State of Adoption challenge has once again gone out to RSPCA NSW. This year Queensland is hoping to win an historic seven in a row!

The goal is to re-home as many animals as possible from the start of the first State of Origin game to the end of the last.

The toughly fought contest bears another striking resemblance to the State of Origin series with most of the adoptees having a bit of "the mongrel" in them!
"Of course it’s a rip off on the whole concept but if we’re re-homing more animals then it’s all worthwhile," said RSPCA Qld spokesman Michael Beatty.
"We will start as the underdogs, (if you’ll pardon the pun), because Queensland has nine shelters, while NSW has twelve. But Queenslanders are used to that tag and it just stirs us on.
"Once they’ve seen the fantastic animals we have up for adoption, we know they’ll find their perfect match and for us the perfect match is Queensland winning by a cat’s whisker!"

 Nate Miles with Kenny and Nitro (reluctantly posing as a Blue)

Markets give inner Valley that extra vibe

NEWS

The inaugural providore markets held in early May as part of the celebrations to mark the opening of the Bakery Lane project in inner-Fortitude Valley have proved so popular they have been extended for their second outing next Saturday June 6.

Bakery Lane and Winn Lane across Ann Street hosted the first markets on May 2 and hundreds of people flocked to the lanes to snap up artisans warves, baked goods and local produce over several hours.

The June markets will run for five hours from 9am to 3pm.

Trader's faith in Valley pays off

 

NEWS

A three-decade veteran of the inner-Fortitude Valley retail scene has been rewarded for his faith in the precinct after a forced relocation.

Barry Toombs had operated Downes Shoe Repairs in the famous old Apothecaries Hall building in Ann Street for more than 30 years until its redevelopment as part of the Bakery Lane project had him looking for new premises.

He kept his faith in the Valley, relocating his business to 70 Wickham Street a little closer to the city as Downes Shoes and Repair.
"As it turned out, we had outgrown the other store anyway, so the move was a positive one in that regard," Barry told us.
"And after we’d been in the new shop for six months, the business was going so well we asked ourselves: Why didn’t we do this five years ago!"
The new location allows Barry and his funky staff, pictured left putting their best boots forward, to better display some of the Doc Marten range of footwear that the store’s reputation has been largely based on for many years.
When Barry moved out of Ann Street, it had been the oldest same-name businesses in the oldest shop in Queensland.
Barry was only the second owner of the business since the Downes family started it in the 1880s. And just as the second owner promised the family to keep the name and its old-fashioned level of customer service, Barry gladly did the same when he took over in the early 1980s.
He ran it purely as a shoe repair business for a while but after some years, begun to investigate retail footwear options. Further down the track came his interest in Doc Martens footwear. His store is now so well linked to that brand that Barry is happy to report that his loyal band of customers have eagerly found their way to his new location.
Although other stores stock Doc Martens, Barry’s boast is that Downes Shoes has the best range of rare and limited Docs around. The store also has a wide range of other brands, including Blundstones.
Trading hours are Monday to Friday from 9am to 5.30pm and Saturdays from 9am to 4pm. Their phone number is 3252 2521 and on-street parking is available near the store.
- Don Gordon-Brown 

Sorry Rod, but your campaign lacks colour

LOCAL POLITICS

 

The ALP's Lord Mayoral hopeful Rod Harding launched his campaign the other weekend for next year’s municipal elections and supporters spread out all over our fair city brandishing examples of his political electioneering material.

But can I be terribly frank after seeing footage of some of them? To me, they just lacked something ... that little bit of extra oomph that this bloke is going to need if he has any hope whatsoever of grabbing the keys to City Hall off the LNP’s charismatic Graham Quirk.

So I hope he doesn’t mind but I just experimented with different colours and shapes in an endeavour to link all his various campaign documents into a cohesive narrative that might just induce a positive feedback from our city’s voters.
And after a few hours of frustration, it just came to me in a flash really. A bolt out of the blue that proved to be rolled gold in value.
And that was the simple notions that blue and gold are such warm and lovely colours, and of all the shapes you can think of, blocks to my mind are the strongest. Circles, after all, really just go about in ... well, you know ... and triangles are nice but only have three points to make. No, blocks are chunky and blokey. And Rod’s clearly a bloke. Nice-looking one, too, if I could be permitted to say that.
Then having decided on blue and gold blocks, I had this brilliant brain explosion as to where to use them. There just seemed no other logical place to run them but down the left-hand side of Rod’s campaign material, as shown above. It’s just such a natural fit, wouldn’t you all agree?
So I’m urging the ALP and Rod’s campaign team to adopt this imagery as his special way of branding his campaign. He should use it in print-media advertising, all sorts of letterbox leaflets, business cards, roadside billboards, everywhere really. Gosh, if he had a campaign car, wouldn’t that blue and gold block pattern look nice down the back of the vehicle?
Anyway, that’s my advice and I really do hope he runs with it, I really do.
I think it’s a winner and I’m really rather chuffed that I thought of it!

Don Gordon-Brown

 

Armageddon out of here!

FILM ... with Don Gordon-Brown

 

Mad Max: Fury Road (MA)

Director: George Miller
Stars: Tom Hardy, Charize Thieron, that kid from About a Boy who grew up, some Aussies.
Rating: 3/5
Now blowing eardrums everywhere.

It’s absolutely vital that a film critic approaches a new release with an open mind. And as I sat waiting for the lights to fade and Mad Max: Fury Road to begin, my mind was open to the notion that it would most likely be shit.

I wasn’t disappointed. But please keep reading: just because this flick was not my cup of tea doesn’t mean it’s not high-class film-making that’s going to blow the gasket of action-junkie revheads everywhere. It is. And the grinding, sand-dune jumping war machine action sequences pump enough adrenalin to permanently alter one’s heartbeat and enough noise to damage their hearing. It just doesn’t do much for a two-and-a-half star, rom-com half full sort of guy.

After a 30 year absence, George Miller’s fourth installment once again settles on Mr Max Rockatansky’s lonely-guy heroics to save what’s left of a post-apocalyptic world.
While there’s a short narrative at the film’s start to explain all this, some idiots were still talking right behind me, acting as if there was no storyline worth bothering about and they were only there for the chase and battle scenes. While they were spot on, I had been keen to know why things were so darned, well, apocalyptic.
I’m not sure I got a complete handle on this but Mad Max Four is clearly set in Australia, where all semblance of societal cohesion has broken down, presumably after the totally unexpected re-election of the Abbott government. I knew it was set in Oz because I’d read all sorts of pre-release spiel about how quintessentially Australian this flick is, right down to the African setting – it was shot on Namibia after outback Oz got washed out – the overseas lead actors, the presence of Megan Gale and of course all the vehicles being left-hand drive.
Anyway, there’s three main warring groups - those who have bullets to sell, those who have gasoline to sell, and those who control the Aldi stores you never see but must be in the hollows of the countless sand dunes on show otherwise there’s no way these people could possibly survive otherwise.
Then there’s this sheila who looks fairly armless, Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron, who escapes from the Citadel or Paradise or Waterfall Park or some such thing, taking with her all these sexy girls wearing next to nothing over their chastity belts whom she’s released from the harem of one of these warlords.
Mad Max is strapped to the front of one of the chasing vehicles – his blood is being used to fuel the vehicle: I told you it doesn’t pay to dwell on what passes for a storyline for too long – wearing for much of the show the facial expression he no doubt had when first told by his agent that he had the gig because Gerald Butler had been unable to step in for Christopher Bale who caught a bad cold the first day into shooting after replacing Brendan Fraser, who decided at the last minute this wasn’t the vehicle to try to restart his career.
That’s just about it really.
You know how those old bikini beach movies where Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello used to shout "surf’s up!" as soon as the storyline began to lag?
 

In much the same way, George Miller resorts to an extended road rage/battle sequence whenever the narrative in Mad Max Let’s Hope Four Is it! gets bogged down, and that’s just after the curtains open. It’s why the show’s first such sequence, where Mr Rockatansky is captured in the first place for his bloodlines, comes before the minimalist opening credits.

To be fair to George, while the action sequences are totally unbelievable to the extent that our heroes could not possibly and repeatedly get out of the messes they’re in – and we all appreciate that’s just the way of action movies – they do look real, something Peter Jackson was unable to match in his Lord of the Rings flicks, where action and battle sequences looked and sounded about as real as Tony Abbott’s smile and laugh.
There are also moments of humour in Mad Max: Fury Road even if unintentionally. The mushy dialogue between the leads used to separate the action sequences should raise a smile, while Furiosa putting her back to a wheel to help unbog a 30-tonne war rig is worth a full guffaw.
And children, it might be okay for Max to wander off into the darkness armed only with a can of gas – sorry, petrol seeing this is an Aussie film – to take on a heavily armed mobile enemy, but you should not try this at home. Max may be mad but you will be killed.
A final word of warning to all you ladies out there who might accompany their menfolk to this testosterone-ladden epic.
It is, as stated earlier, very, very loud and sleep during the feature will be fitful at most.

 

 

Where’s the hope when the dope says nope

 

Nope, nope, nope – the most negative and illiterate of all Tony Abbott’s three-word slogans.

His rejection of even the merest consideration of the complex, harrowing and indeed tragic plight of the Rohingya asylum seekers is more than an adolescent dismissal; it is frankly contemptuous, not only of his Australian constituency but of the wider world. It is, he says, a regional problem: presumably he regards the region as any part of earth which does not include Australia.

Many of the Europeans, already grappling with their own urgent and local issues with the boat people crisis, have expressed sympathy and a desire to help. Thailand has convened a regional conference, to which Australia will send a diplomat but not, at this stage, a minister – another calculated snub.
The nearby Muslim nations of Malaysia and Indonesia, having initially abandoned their neighbours, are now preparing to provide at least temporary rescue and shelter. Even the United States has offered to accept some of the far-flung victims. The source country Myanmar, which absurdly pretends that their third and fourth generations inhabitants should still be regarded as Bangladeshi immigrants unworthy of citizenship or rights, has finally taken some responsibility and undertaken a rescue mission of its own.
But Abbott’s only response is flat denial. We mustn’t, under any circumstances, encourage people smugglers. International law and convention, the reaction of our neighbours, sheer humanity are all to be subordinated to this imperative. Indonesia rather acidly pointed out that if you are going to sign international agreements you should honour them, but Abbott is unmoved.
His only concession to compassion, if it is indeed governed by that, has been a grant of $6 million in humanitarian aid. Given that it follows a $29.5 million cut in the budget of aid to Myanmar, it can hardly be called generous; moreover, it is not clear when or even how it can be delivered, given that the government of Myanmar steadfastly refuses to allow any amelioration of the poverty and degradation of the unhappy inhabitants.
Abbott has, of course, been applauded by his hard-core supporters, notably by an approving editorial in The Australian; but then, The Australian would probably cheer him on if he announced plans to pull out the fingernails of asylum seekers with red hot pincers if it would enhance what he calls border security. For more reasonable people, nope, nope, nope is simply not a sufficient answer.
And the real worry is that it is a very Abbott answer: mindless aggression in the face of a difficult problem. No defence, just attack. This is the old Abbott, the man who brought you the 2013 election and the 2014 budget. He has, it appears, reverted to type; the near- death experience of last February has been forgotten in the temporary euphoria of a couple of mildly favourable polls following the well-targeted handouts from a mere week ago. He has, in short, got gone back to his old self and resumed the habits of a lifetime – a lifetime that has always been risky and frequently reckless.
Given Abbott’s kneejerk and unqualified policy towards the Rohingyas’ desperation, it looks perilously like another captain’s pick – certainly the continued emphasis on the need to deter people smugglers is established government policy, but the peculiar circumstances of the current crisis in the Andaman Sea surely should require a more considered and consultative process. Even some of his own cabinet colleagues are reported to be a little concerned. But they should not have been; the pattern has, after all, been a consistent one.
A more immediate worry has been the fiasco over the idea of holding an inquiry over the conduct of the iron ore producers in the wake of the suspicion that at least some of them had pushed up their output in a move to drive down prices and put some of their competitors – Forrest himself, but more importantly the Chinese, out of business, an idea which has caused confusion and consternation from everyone involved, and many others who have not been.
This was unashamedly a captain’s call – although perhaps unashamedly is the wrong word, given that our amnesiac Prime Minister now claims it came from Twiggy Forrest, Nick Xenophon – even, preposterously, Bill Shorten – anyone but himself. But the record is clear. When Forrest mooted it, and Xenophon spoke to Abbott directly about it, Abbott thought it was pretty good idea, and said so publicly at least twice.
His colleagues were nonplussed and the big iron ore producers – BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto – frankly appalled. This was a clear interference in the sacred free market, they spluttered. And some made the more salient point that it was fraught with unintended consequences: what if the inquiry found that there indeed been some kind of interference or even collusion? Would the government take action? Would it impose fines or even jail sentences on the directors of the guilty companies? Would it consider the ultimate sanction – regulation?
The mere idea was unthinkable, and that being the case, why proceed with an inquiry in the first place. In practice, the mere resistance of the miners was sufficient to kill it off; we all knew what they could do to governments who annoyed them. And Abbott, of course, should have been perfectly aware of the futility of his thought bubbles before shooting off his mouth. But, once again, it apparently seemed like a good idea at the time – or at least a popular one, which these days for him is the same thing.
And the same can be said of his unilateral rejection of any changes to the tax lurks enjoyed by the super wealthy superannuants: not now, not ever. This is in the same category of his raft of 2013 pre-election commitments: a promise which is destined to be broken as it turns out to be simply too expensive, too damaging to fulfil.
It may be a handy club to bash the Labor Party, which has already endorsed some modest reforms to its policy, and it will certainly please some of the greedier of his own backers and bankers, but is just not sustainable, either economically nor politically.
Perhaps, of course, it won’t have to; the election will take care of it, and of him. In which case many will see remember his years with the brief phrase: nope, nope, nope.