How The North Was Won

In March 2011, Campbell Newman – then Lord Mayor of Brisbane – announced hewould seek pre-selection for the Queensland state seat of Ashgrove, held by Laborand needing more than a 7 per cent swing for Campbell to win. Campbell Newman,subsequently, was voted leader of the newly formed Liberal National Party –although still unelected to the state parliament. This high wire strategy paid off withthe LNP winning a record majority in the March 2012 state election. How thishistorical unfolding developed is part of a unique political story. David Russell QC – aformer president of the National Party of Australia and former vice-president of theLiberal Party of Australia, was at the centre of it all. On Tuesday 12 June, DavidRussell addressed The Sydney Institute to discuss how it happened.

 

 

HOW THE NORTH WAS WON

 

DAVID RUSSELL

 

At the outset, it is perhaps appropriate to pose the question, “Is Queensland different?” My answer, as a native Queenslander now working frequently south of the Tweed, is “Not particularly”. But there are some differences relevant to the present topic that are worth mentioning at the outset.

Queensland historian Ross Fitzgerald has made the point that life for Queenslanders has never been easy – our climate and geography mean that we don’t have the fertile fields and genteel lifestyles available to our southern compatriots. There was something of that understanding in Premier Anna Bligh’s declaration during the 2011 floods:

I want us to remember who we are.

We are Queenslanders.  We’re the people that they breed tough North of the border.  We’re the ones that they knock down and we get up again.

 

Queensland politics has been played out against that background. There are important differences in our demography and our political system from those in other States. Queensland is unique among the mainland states in that the majority of Queenslanders live outside the capital city.  The pattern of settlement did not commence in the capital.

Brisbane is a single local government area, with a budget greater than that of Tasmania.

Queensland had first past the post voting until 1963, then compulsory preferential voting, and now optional preferential voting.  It also has had an electoral system aspects of which have been controversial, but since the advent of the Party system has only denied office to a party which won the majority of the vote four times – in  1920, 1926, 1950 and 1995.  In each case the beneficiary was the Labor Party.

It also has a tradition of strong executive government, accentuated by the lack of an Upper House of Parliament since 1921.  Just how that came about is worth recalling.

In 1915, the Denham Liberal government was defeated by the Labor Party, led by T J Ryan.  It experienced difficulties with its legislative program at the hands of the Legislative Council and the Courts. In 1919 he was replaced as Premier by Edward Granville Theodore.

1921 was not an auspicious year for Queensland’s democracy.  In 1920 the Theodore Labor Government had taken advantage of the retirement of the Governor to appoint as Lieutenant Governor William Lennon, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, a former (Labor) Minister[1].  He acceded to its recommendation to appoint sufficient Members of Legislative Council to ensure passage of the Government’s legislative program (including abolition of the Legislative Council – hence their nickname of “the suicide squad”).

The Australian  Dictionary of Biography[3] takes up the tale:

In September 1919 he became Speaker of the Assembly until an interregnum at Government House gave the Labor government an opportunity to move against the obstructive Legislative Council. In January 1920, Lennon resigned his seat to accept appointment, on a salary of £1000 a year, to the previously unremunerated office of lieutenant-governor. In a series of manoeuvres, lampooned by some as at best comic opera, he appointed himself to a seat in, and subsequently the presidency of, the Legislative Council. The conservative press was particularly galled at Lennon’s alleged misuse of the vice-regal prerogative, resurrecting from the conscription debate his denunciation of British imperialism and his 1910 description of the office of State governor as ‘effete’. Following a cabinet recommendation, Lennon augmented Labor’s ‘suicide squad’ in the council with a further fifteen new appointees prepared to vote out of existence a House their party deemed undemocratic and anachronistic. In March 1922, Queensland became the only Australian State to abolish its Upper House. Lennon had achieved “the most important single constitutional reform in Queensland history”. He continued as lieutenant-governor until May 1929 when he returned to private life after the Moore government cancelled his salary.

In addition to the passage of legislation for the abolition of the Legislative Council[4], 1921 saw the enactment of legislation which removed three judges from the Supreme Court by reason of a retrospective age limitation, shortened terms of office of the remainder and abolished the District Court.

The government justified these measures on the grounds that the Legislative Council and Supreme Court were frustrating the will of the democratically elected government of the day. Although this argument had a superficial attraction[5], it does not withstand close analysis.  Since 1908, the Parliamentary Bills Referendum Act had permitted the government to enact legislation not approved by the Legislative Council by submitting it to a referendum.  The only legislation so submitted was a Bill for abolition of the Legislative Council, which was decisively defeated in 1917[6].  Moreover, Ryan and Theodore had been able to placate their more radical supporters by proposing legislation neither supported secure in the knowledge that the Legislative Council would reject it[7].

Decisions of the Supreme Court, whether favourable or unfavourable from the government’s viewpoint, were subject to appeal to either the Privy Council or the High Court, neither of which was amenable to changes in composition at the instance of the Queensland Government to secure more favourable outcomes. Nor, in any event, is it clear that the decisions to which the Government took exception were wrong as a matter of legal principle[8].

It should not be thought that the “suicide squad” were unmindful of the possible loss of perquisites of office when they voted to abolish their positions.  The Constitution Act Amendment Act of 1922 provided[9] that upon abolition of the Legislative Council, its members should retain the privileges of office including gold travel passes.  These were abolished by the Moore (CPNP) Government[10], and restored by the Forgan Smith (Labor) Government[11].

One of Queensland’s most distinguished jurists, Mr Justice McPherson of the Court of Appeal has observed that –

A tendency for the legislature to assert its dominance over the judiciary, and for the executive to dominate the legislature, may have its origins in the bungling of Queensland’s constitution at Separation …  Its apotheosis was the decision in McCawley’s case and The Supreme Court Act of 1921 followed a year later by the abolition of the Legislative Council.  In fashioning an instrument of power for their use the politicians of that era lacked the wisdom to foresee, or perhaps to care, that control of it would one day pass to their opponents.  Those who now regret the ambit of Executive authority in Queensland can be in no doubt who were responsible for creating it …[13]

Nor should it be thought that the consequences in Queensland of abolition of the Upper House were unintended. Premier Theodore, proposing it, expressed the view that an Upper House which duplicated the composition of the Lower House would be superfluous, while one that obstructed the working of a constitutionally elected lower house would be destructive of parliamentary democracy[14].

Not content with this act of constitutional vandalism[15], Theodore and his Labor successors attended to a succession of questionable judicial appointments which appear to have been in part motivated by payback arising from an inquiry into Theodore’s corrupt conduct. Again, to quote Mr Justice McPherson[16],

The choice of McCawley, Blair, Brennan and Webb was not made in order to encourage the belief that judicial appointment remained the prize for pre-eminence in the practising profession.  Men like Feez, Stumm, and MacGregor, and later Hart, Real and Fahey, were passed over because of their political opinions.

In 1930 a Royal Commission found in respect of former Premiers Theodore and McCormack that “men who have occupied high and responsible positions in the State … betrayed for personal gain, the trust reposed in them, and have acted corruptly and dishonourably”[17]. The Crown declined to prosecute Theodore and McCormack, but sought to recover moneys from them in a civil action and failed – although as McPherson has pointed out, that seems to have been a perverse finding as “it is impossible now for a rational doubt to survive as to Theodore’s part in the venture”[18].

Subsequently, all barristers who acted for Theodore were appointed to the bench by the 1932-1957 Labor government.  Although amongst those who acted for the Crown were leaders of the Bar, none were appointed, although one was appointed to the District Court upon its re-establishment in 1959[19].

While on the subject, it is perhaps worth noting that Theodore was neither the first nor the last Queensland politician to be under a cloud for corrupt activities.  Sir Thomas McIlwraith had spent the last three years of his life[20] in Europe avoiding the powers of an Inquiry into his dealings with the (then government owned) Queensland National Bank and, perhaps most egregiously, the Gair (Labor) government in 1956 had secured the dismissal by Parliament of V. R. Creighton, a Lands Commissioner who had drawn to public attention the corrupt activities of Thomas Foley, the Minister for Lands[21].  In fairness to the Labor Party, it should be acknowledged that it expelled Foley, only to see him re-elected at the following election.

In the following year, the Labor Party government split apart and the first of two long periods of government, one by the non-Labor parties and one by Labor, commenced.

Non-Labor in power 1957-1989

The 26 years of Coalition government, followed by six years of National Party government, were increasingly marked by disputes between the Liberal and National Parties. Preferential voting was introduced in 1963. Accompanied by its introduction, in part intended to capture DLP preferences, there was an agreement between the then coalition parties whose terms were later disputed. The Country Party perspective was that the agreement was that the pre-existing arrangement whereby the Parties did not engage in electoral contests against each other would continue. The Liberal Party perspective was that the agreement was to apply to only that election.

In 1966, following upon the Country Party’s rejection of a Liberal Party approach for merger, the Liberal Party endorsed candidates in seats traditionally contested by the Country Party, including some held by sitting Country Party members and very nearly won one of them, losing another (in the vacant seat of South Coast) only because the Labor Party directed preferences to the Country Party. As time passed, three cornered contests became more widespread and reached the point where they involved sitting cabinet ministers and, on one occasion, an exchange of preferences between a Country Party sitting member and the Labor Party.

Ill feeling between the parties reached a crescendo with the split in the coalition in 1983, which saw the election of a National Party government, made possible by the defection from the Liberal Party to the National Party of two sitting Liberal Party members who, it must be said, had made it plain to their respective electorates during the election campaign that they would support a government led by the National Party.

Relations between the parties continued to deteriorate, coming to a high point in the 1987 federal election campaign. At the same time, aspects of police administration became the subject initially of media scrutiny and then of a Commission of Inquiry headed by Tony Fitzgerald QC. The outcomes of this Inquiry, in addition to the conviction of a number of corrupt police personnel (including the Commissioner, who had close ties with Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who was leader of the National Party government for much of the period), included the conviction of four former Ministers for abuse of parliamentary expenses and, in one case, income tax obligations, one businessman for bribing yet another Minister (who died prior to his own trial), and a failed prosecution of former Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen for perjury. The 1989 election saw the Liberal Party publicly indicating that it would refuse to serve in a coalition government with the National Party except as senior partner, which was widely considered to be a totally unrealistic prospect, and allocating its preferences to the Labor Party against a sitting Minister in one seat, which Labor won.

Whilst it cannot be disputed that aspects of the later years of the Bjelke-Petersen administration were far from satisfactory, it is important to keep them in perspective having regard to the standards which had applied in Queensland beforehand (and indeed in the later years of the subsequent Labor administration).  As against these defects, it should also be kept in mind that the 32 years of Coalition and subsequently National Party government had transformed Queensland from the “Cinderella state” as it was known in 1957 to the powerhouse of the Australian economy. Not only was there no net state debt, but (uniquely in Australia) all public sector superannuation entitlements were fully funded. This fiscal nirvana was achieved despite (indeed arguably because of) Queensland’s status as the lowest taxed State or Territory in the nation.  Progress had been made in other areas too, including Australia’s first steps towards laboUr market reform following the successful conclusion of a major dispute in the electricity industry.

When the National Party left office in 1989, it was the only government in Australia which had legislated to permit direct bargaining between employees and their employer as an alternative means to industrial awards for determining wages and conditions. It had legislated to ensure that the public was not inconvenienced by wildcat strikes, and to protect the export trade from industrial action[22].

These measures, vehemently attacked by their critics in the Labor Party at the time, have stood the test of time. The Voluntary Employment Agreement legislation formed the legislative basis for the Greiner Government’s introduction of a similar concept in New South Wales. Indeed, from the standpoint of the current industrial relations debate, the measures were, if anything, conservative, with even the Labor Party recognizing that direct employer/employee negotiations have an important role to play in this area.

All this was swept away by the Labor Party as soon as it came to power. On the very day that the Cooke Inquiry into misconduct by Union officials handed down its first Report which indicated deficiencies in legislation then before the parliament and recommended strengthening of provisions to protect the rights of members of trade unions not to contribute to a political party to which they were opposed, the Labor Party enacted the legislation, limiting the opportunity for the Opposition to move amendments or fully debate it, and repealed the Political Objects Funds provisions in breach of its promise at previous the State election.

From being at the forefront of industrial relations reform in Australia, Queensland now has amongst the least progressive industrial relations legislation.

Labor in power 1989-2012

There followed 22 years of Labor government, interrupted only by the short interregnum of Coalition government from 1996 to 1998. One of the first matters attended to by the Labor Party was an electoral redistribution, and the Liberal Party, believing that this removed its obstacle to achieving supremacy over the National Party, refused to enter into a coalition in opposition despite it being invited to do so. The 1992 election largely reproduced, in terms of seats numbers, the results of the 1989 election although, given the changes in boundaries, this represented a significant gain for the National Party. A distinguishing feature of the election was the aggressive campaign run by a Liberal front bench member against the Leader of the Opposition in his own seat of Surfers Paradise.

In the following year, the National Party reversed its many years of opposition to non-Labor unity, and adopted a policy of seeking to merge the Parties in Queensland. It was not possible to negotiate such a merger prior to the 1995 State election, but a coalition was formed on terms which reduced the number of three cornered contests to one (Barron River) and the parties campaigned jointly on common policies. One of the significant aspects of preparation for the campaign was the work done by the organisations on policy development, through a joint process in which both sides were equally represented, and during which there was no policy divide on party lines, indicating to any objective observer that there were no philosophical grounds upon which merger could be resisted.

The Goss Labor government can be seen, in retrospect, to have laid the seeds of the economic problems which came back to haunt the Labor Party in later years. However at the time it was seen as being mildly reformist rather than potentially damaging. If anything, its failing was to elevate process above outcomes – arguably a reaction to its National Party predecessor which, it might be argued, was overly concerned with outcomes to the detriment of proper process. Interestingly, the head of the Cabinet office for this period was Kevin Rudd who went on to become Prime Minister and whose government exhibited many of the process failures which Queenslanders had observed in his earlier role.

Somewhat unexpectedly, the coalition won the 1995 election easily in terms of the popular vote (with 53.4 per cent of the two-party preferred vote) but lost in terms of seats, a result corrected when a re-election in early 1996 brought about the election of a further Liberal member of parliament.

The Coalition government which then took office managed to address a number of significant infrastructure issues, and privatized the former state government monopoly of workers compensation, but was hampered by lack of a majority in the Parliament and constantly distracted by an Inquiry commenced by the Criminal Justice Commission (CJC) into an understanding reached by the coalition with the police union in relation to a matter number of matters of police administration. Whilst the Inquiry finally determined that there was no misconduct on the part of those in the Coalition who had entered into the understanding (and an inquiry into the CJC established that the CJC had received advice to that effect from the state’s most senior barrister prior to commencing the Inquiry) that, the unpopularity in Queensland of early measures taken by the Howard Government and the emergence of Pauline Hanson as a political figure campaigning on federal issues put paid to the government’s prospects in the subsequent State election, which again resulted in a hung parliament, a newly elected independent representing a traditionally non-Labor electorate delivering government to the Labor Party.

One interesting feature of the 1998 election campaign was that it was the first occasion on which the non-Labor parties had to make a decision as to whether or not preferences would be allocated in favor of the Labor Party or Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. After anxious deliberation, both Parties decided to preference against the Labor Party. This resulted in the defeat of a number of Labor sitting members, compensated for by a swing against the non-Labor parties in the metropolitan area reflecting the distaste of the electorate for this decision.

It is difficult to imagine how, had they set out deliberately to do so, the Liberal and National Parties could have established themselves in the public mind as unelectable more comprehensively than they were to do in the 2001, 2004 and 2006 State elections. In the first of these, the Liberal Party sensibly reversed its previous decision and allocated preferences against One Nation. Despite the Leader of the Opposition indicating his preference that the National Party organisation should do the same, it failed to do so, thereby damaging his electoral credibility. The result was a very substantial Labor Party victory, repeated in 2004 because the Opposition Parties had failed to resolve their differences about leadership or policy.

Merger

This led to a recognition on the part of the organisational and parliamentary leaderships of both parties that in the absence of a merger, there was simply no prospect of putting together a workable coalition arrangement. Agreement was reached for a merged party to be formed in 2006 following successful joint campaigns which resulted in by-election victories in Labor seats, but federal parliamentarians in both parties were obstructive and these difficulties resulted in the merger not progressing. The State parliamentary leadership of the Liberal Party changed. The Queensland Labor Party, not believing its luck, called an early election and after the parliamentary leaders of the National and Liberal parties were unable, at the first joint press conference of the campaign, to answer the question who would be Premier if the Labor Party were defeated, the result of the campaign was inevitable.

In the ensuing federal election, the Liberal and National Parties suffered substantial losses in Queensland as part of their nationwide loss. But that loss did mean that the possibility of destabilisation of the federal government was no longer an impediment to merger, and the risks to the federal non-Labor forces attendant upon a debilitated organization in Queensland became more obvious. At the same time, proponents of the merger came to more fully understand that obtaining federal acquiescence, if not active support, for the merger was an essential part of the process.

Over the following three years, satisfactory merger terms were agreed and implemented. A detailed history of that process is outside the scope of this paper. Suffice it to say that the final constitution of the merged party – to be known as the Liberal National Party of Queensland or LNP – broadly reflected the 1993 proposal put forward by the National Party with one exception: the original proposal was for a standalone non-Labor Party, in this respect modelled on the Country Liberal Party of the Northern Territory.

The final version adopted involved the LNP being a division of the Liberal Party of Australia, whilst maintaining its status as a State Party of the federal National Party. Existing federal members stayed where they were, and as the federal representation has increased, new federal members have sat with the federal Party which traditionally represented the area in question. A precedent had been set for this by the Liberal Country League in South Australia, one of whose federal members sat with the Country Party although it was a Division of the Liberal Party. This is undoubtedly an improvement on the original proposal, and addressed one of the principal objections to it, perhaps most clearly articulated by John Howard –merger in Queensland should not lead to a process of balkanization of the non-Labor side of federal politics.

The final version of the constitution had been developed over many years, in a process commenced in 1984 and involving both Nationals and Liberals. Those involved were well aware, from a perspective of both parties, of the contribution made by organisational weakness to the ongoing failure of the non-Labor parties in the State, and were determined to establish a Party which would not only be enduring bur also would make a major contribution to the development of the state and the welfare of its people.

Despite the overwhelming superiority of members of the former National Party in the LNP[23], care was taken to ensure that at State Executive and parliamentary levels former Liberals were afforded an equal share of the positions to be filled so the result was a true merger, not the takeover which some in the Liberal Party had feared.  The process of building an organisation which could match the Labor Party began. Some idea of the parlous state which had been reached prior to the merger can be gained from the fact that the Liberal Party’s Queensland Division pre-merger had no significant net assets and found itself in a challenging financial situation.

The LNP in action

The first electoral outing for the merged Party was the 2009 state election. It performed credibly, gaining 49.5 per cent of the two-party preferred vote and winning 9 seats but, by reason of imbalances in the electoral system, the result was a Labor majority of 17. The LNP is generally regarded as having won the campaign up to the point of the last week, during which a ferocious Labor Party advertising campaign focusing on the statement by the Leader of the Opposition, Lawrence Springborg, that Australia was not in a recession and therefore there was no excuse for the state’s poor economic performance, being treated as evidence of economic illiteracy when in fact he had done nothing more than state the truth. Nevertheless, the ferocity and effectiveness of the Labor campaign made clear to the LNP what it would confront in the following election, as well as identifying the huge task it faced in needing something in excess of 53 per cent of the two-party preferred vote to win if the swing were uniform.

Opponents of the merger seized on this result as suggesting variously that the LNP was conceptually flawed, or alternatively incompetently run, or both.

A key point on the 2009 state election results that is often ignored is the breakthrough in Brisbane. The Liberals and Nationals had been mutually unsuccessful in breaking Labor’s lock on Brisbane’s 24 seats since 1989. In fact, in 2001 and 2004, the Liberals only won one seat (Moggill). In 2006, only Clayfield was recovered. One of the central arguments against amalgamation was that a Party with the word “National” in it would never gain the acceptance of metropolitan voters. Yet in its first outing, the LNP won Aspley, Clayfield (which had become notionally Labor in the redistribution), Cleveland, Indooroopilly and Redlands. This breakthrough was critical to demystifying the LNP in Brisbane and laid the groundwork for the results in 2012. It was also a greater number of gains in Brisbane than the 1995 swing (where the Liberals won Mansfield, Mount Ommaney and Greenslopes) on the back of the Koala Highway debacle. Most importantly, it showed that traditional conservative voters in suburban Brisbane were entirely comfortable supporting the LNP brand and possibly more inclined to support the LNP than the Liberal or National parties.

The next electoral outing for the LNP was the 2010 federal election. The results provided a comprehensive answer to the critics, the LNP two-party preferred vote being 54.93 per cent, 7 new seats (Leichhardt, Dawson, Flynn, Longman, Brisbane, Forde, Bonner and Wright) being won and two notionally Labor seats following redistribution (Dickson and Herbert) being held.  Collectively, these represented three quarters of the gains made by the federal coalition in the election.

The LNP’s selection of 19 year old Wyatt Roy in Longman, and its expulsion of former Ryan MP Michael Johnson for integrity related issues, had been the subject of particular criticism as likely to lead to the loss of these seats.  The expulsion of Michael Johnson raised a number of difficult issues. As part of the negotiations to secure federal Liberal approval for the merger, it had been agreed that all sitting Parliamentary members would be grandfathered for the 2010 election. This meant that there could not be candidate selections (which under the LNP constitution involve all local members and the State Executive) in any federal seats, notwithstanding that in at least two [Ryan and Fisher] there was considerable agitation amongst the local membership for the right to have a selection.

Johnson’s expulsion meant that the Ryan members were to have that choice. The inability of the LNP under its proposed constitution to hold a selection in Fisher was one of the matters of concern to the Liberal President at the time of the merger, former Howard government minister Mal Brough, and with the benefit of hindsight it can be seen that the price paid in order to secure federal Liberal agreement to the merger was a very high one.

Success at last

The final term of the Labor government involved many chickens coming home to roost. Almost immediately after the election, the government decided to terminate the state’s petrol rebate scheme, which returned to motorists the amount of the tax collected by the Commonwealth for the other states whose petrol taxes were declared unconstitutional and had to be imposed in Queensland because of the requirement for non-discrimination in Commonwealth taxes.  This broke an explicit pre-election promise by the Treasurer and Deputy Premier.

Although not specifically a broken promise, the announcement of an asset sales program shortly after the election led many to believe that this was both intended and concealed at the time of the election. In addition to economic decline[24], a miasma of sleaze and corruption emerged, in which the activities of Labor-linked lobbyists were prominent.[25] The relationships of third parties such as lobbyists and the trade union movement with successive Labor governments and the running of parallel campaigns created a structural imbalance in funding of political parties and electoral outcomes. [26] Two former Ministers were convicted and jailed respectively for corruption and extortion[27].

What made this more than a problem of a few rotten apples in the barrel were the subsequent steps taken by the Labor Party to lower standards of public administration, perhaps best demonstrated by its response to the long running Nuttall affair.  It is instructive to consider the details: [28]

• 8 July 2005:            The former Health Minister Gordon Nuttall was found to have lied to the Budget Health Estimates Committee hearing over his knowledge of issues relating to the qualifications of overseas trained doctors;

• 15 July 2005:           The Leader of the Opposition wrote to the Queensland Police Service requesting that an Investigation be conducted to ascertain whether, by his answers to certain questions, Nuttall had committed an offence against section 57 of the Criminal Code of Queensland.

• 28 July 2005:           The Queensland Police Service referred the complaint to the Crime and Misconduct Commission (“CMC”) which formed the view that it had the power to conduct an investigation, and it did so.

• 9 August 2005:        The Parliamentary Opposition referred to the Members’ Ethics and Parliamentary Privileges Committee the matter concerning an allegation that Nuttall deliberately misled a committee of the House.

• 7 December 2005:    The CMC released its report recommending that Nuttall (by then Minister for Primary Industries and Fisheries) be considered for prosecution;

• 7 December 2005:    Executive Government considered the report as matter of urgency.  Minister Nuttall, after meeting with Premier Beattie and Deputy Premier Bligh, resigned his portfolio.  The Premier put in place arrangements for a special sitting of Parliament.

• 8 December 2005:    Legal and parliamentary experts within the Government examined precedents that were relevant to the findings of the CMC and to the circumstances of Nuttall.  This work allowed the government to frame a motion for resolving the matter to its satisfaction.

• 9 December 2005:    At a special sitting of parliament, Premier Beattie moved and Deputy Premier Bligh seconded a motion that included that Nuttall’s conduct be dealt with by the parliament as contempt, ensuring that he was not prosecuted.

The Opposition drew the Speaker’s attention to the referral of the matter to the Members’ Ethics and Parliamentary Privileges Committee and the Speaker’s strict ruling that the matter could not be mentioned in the House, before the Committee reported. The Speaker ruled that any resolution of the House overrode any other decision.

The Opposition moved to amend the motion that the CMC’s report into the allegations concerning Nuttall be referred to the independent Director of Public Prosecutions for consideration.  The amendment was defeated and the government’s motion was agreed, legalising lying to a Parliamentary Committee.

• 9 January 2006        Acting Premier Bligh announced that the state Labor government would amend laws to make it legal for Ministers to lie to parliament and parliamentary committees.

• 9 May 2006             Under the cover of the Federal Budget and the euphoria of the miners’ rescue in Beaconsfield, the Labor government introduced laws to legalise lying in State Parliament.

• 26 May 2006           The Labor government amended the Criminal Code Act 1899 to make it legal for premiers and ministers to lie when under investigation by a parliamentary committee. The amendment exonerated Nuttall (who was later convicted for corruption and subsequently five charges of official corruption and five charges of perjury[29]) from possible criminal changes for lying to the Budget Health Estimate Committee, and removed Section 57 from the Criminal Code[30].

It was against this background that the LNP made a conscious decision to elevate integrity issues to the forefront of its campaign against the Labor government. That involved the preparation of a comprehensive paper on Integrity and Accountability in government, prepared by the party organization and its then Parliamentary leadership, and a number of decisions in relation to its own internal management including the prohibition of members of the State Executive engaging in lobbying activities[31] or being working journalists.

The federal Liberal Party’s Fund Raising Code, which whilst formally applicable to its Queensland Division had been largely ignored, was refined and rigorously applied.  Party members who are registered lobbyists are not permitted to engage in fund raising. These measures were more than mere electoral opportunism: the LNP was acutely conscious of the electoral consequences, and subsequent economic damage to the state, of the perceived ethical failures of members of the Bjelke-Petersen government, and determined to prevent their recurrence – to the point that all potential candidates had to acknowledge the requirements of the LNP’s Ethics Statement which is drawn in uncompromising terms.

The Integrity Paper has informed a number of the decisions of the newly elected government, including its decision to restore the criminality associated with Ministers lying to Parliament. Other aspects of the Paper have been superseded by the change of leadership which occurred in early 2011, but the Paper’s commitment to accountability in government has been reinforced under the new leadership, with (amongst other things) the individual ministers accepting office against the background of a published charter outlining their responsibilities[32] and ministerial changes following incomplete disclosure of information relating to driving offences by a (former National) MP, unanimously supported by the LNP State Executive.

One of the results of the merger was that time and effort could be spent building up the membership and finances of the Party organisation. Membership, approximating 8,000 at the time of the merger, now exceeds 14,000 – the largest of any Party at State level in Australia. The 2012 state election would be the first in the memory of many Queenslanders in which the non-Labor forces were competitive in organizational terms against the Labor Party. And the capacity to build a financially secure base as opposed to that which existed prior to the merger proved to be of immense value when the LNP’s highly successful Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Campbell Newman, was approached to become the leader of the State Parliamentary party for the state election.

Although unprecedented in Australia, similar circumstances did exist in other comparable countries such as Canada. However it required, since Newman was not able to access the resources available to the Opposition in the state parliament, that the Party organisation supply him with staff, infrastructure, and provide further resources. Indeed, one of the lessons of the merger is that unless the non-Labor forces are organisationally competitive with the Labor Party, it is very difficult to win an election. That requires a substantial membership base, which will only be achieved if membership is meaningful to members, a purposeful approach to sound governance principles ahead of factional game playing, and a disciplined and focused approach to the management of the Party.

Confronted with unfavorable opinion polls, the Labor Party decided to rewrite the rules on election funding for the 2012 election. This was said to be in response to public concerns about integrity in government, but the funding model adopted did not reflect any of the submissions made to the government’s Inquiry, which was conducted within the Premier’s department, rather than on the open model adopted by the National Party when it set up the Fitzgerald Inquiry as urged by the LNP.  Rather, it came from a somewhat surprising source if one were concerned to improve integrity and other standards of public administration, the former New South Wales Labor government.

Under the model adopted, expenditure by political parties was capped, but expenditure by unions affiliated with the Labor Party was not within the cap, giving it a substantial advantage. In addition, instead of the pro-rata funding support which had been a feature of all electoral funding arrangements in Australia until the Labor Party in New South Wales changed it, funding was provided on the basis of a percentage of electoral expenditure incurred up to the expenditure cap. Figures are not presently available to establish precisely the extent to which this has advantaged the Labor Party, but it seems likely that the Labor Party has received almost twice as much for each vote it received as the LNP did.

Much has been said about the campaign which I will not repeat here. The most notable feature of it was the ferocity of the personal attacks levelled at Campbell Newman, which were very much in the mould of those launched against Lawrence Springborg three years beforehand. That there was no basis for the campaign became clear when the CMC investigated the allegations, and found them to involve no misconduct on Newman’s part. To make matters worse for Labor, former Premier Peter Beattie publicly acknowledged Newman’s honesty two weeks before the election[33], so the campaign did not reflect any belief in its truth on the part of the Labor Party. The Premier personally asserted that one of the matters which justified the campaign was the fact that a land developer had its registered office in a building owned by Newman’s father-in-law’s superannuation fund. The CMC’s observation that as this was in the office of an accountant who was a commercial tenant of the premises there was hardly any basis for concern gives some idea of the flimsiness of the assertions.

The ferocity of the campaign, and the fact it continued even after the CMC cleared Newman, almost certainly contributed to the scale of the Labor Party’s defeat.  However, as one Labor operative was quoted in the media as saying in defence of the campaign, the Labor Party could hardly campaign on the achievements of Queensland Health.

Analysis of the results reveals some interesting features. The overall two-party preferred swing was of the order of 16 per cent. That this was no mistake was demonstrated five weeks after the State election when, in the former Premier’s seat, vacant because, contrary to an election promise, she refused to serve the term for which she was elected, the LNP vote improved by a further 3 per cent. In all but one seat West of the Great Dividing Range, the Labor Party ran third in what had been its traditional heartland. The first ALP member to represent a seat North of the Brisbane River represents the electorate of Rockhampton. Brisbane, previously held by the Labor Party in all but 4 seats, now has only 3 Labor members, the remainder representing one seat in each of Cairns, Mackay, Rockhampton and Ipswich.

Not even the most enthusiastic proponents of merger could have contemplated such a result.

The 2012 results demonstrate the potency of the LNP brand with non-traditional conservative voters in Brisbane. This is best demonstrated by the fact that the CBD of Brisbane, a city with now over two million people, is represented at federal, State and local levels by the LNP, with the party holding Brisbane, Brisbane Central and Central respectively.

The demographics of the LNP Parliamentarians are also significant. The LNP 2012 intake is a diverse group that is reflective of contemporary Queensland. The intake represents an atypical gene pool for non-Labor politics, reflecting the strength of the LNP pre-selection process, which empowers local members and fosters the identification of talented individuals with an interest in public policy.

At a macro level, the 2012 result is not simply the pendulum swinging back to the right. This is something more than that. Labor with 20-30 seats would demonstrate a natural swing. Labor with 7 seats suggests something much more profound. It demonstrates that Labor has deep and debilitating brand weaknesses in Queensland that will not be resolved by a new leader. They may not even be resolved with the passage of time. Labor is fundamentally broken in Queensland: it has lost its ideological moorings and is adrift in a sea of irrelevance.

The comprehensive loss of its working class base (best demonstrated with the results in seats like Lytton, Logan and Ipswich) show that Queensland Labor is now a party without people.  It also demonstrates the appeal of the LNP stretches across the political spectrum and across Queensland’s increasingly diverse geographic and demographic profiles. The LNP have built a brand that attracts the support of traditional Labor, Liberal, National and Independent voters. That it has done so attests to the fluidity of modern political allegiances and the power of sensible, mainstream, practical conservatism in the 21^st Century.

 

Looking forward

I commenced by discussing the differences between Queensland and the rest of Australia, and it is perhaps appropriate that I finish by asking the question whether the Queensland experience offers any guide to the remainder of the country, and its implications for the future of federal politics.

The style of the LNP government has already been widely remarked upon favorably. Of particular note in the present context is the Premier’s personal commitment to, and articulation of, the principles of competitive federalism.  There is, in truth, no conflict between proper process and successful outcomes. Both are possible when those in the political system display both integrity and conviction. That having been said, the LNP government lacks the constraints which others have, particularly, in New South Wales, in not always co-operative upper houses.

There is not, at federal level or in any other state, an irreconcilable conflict between separate Liberal and National Parties. Unlike the position in Queensland, the National Party does not seek to be anything other than a representative of rural and regional electorates and the demography of the other states is such that in those circumstances it could never aspire to be the major party in the coalition. That does not mean that conflict is impossible: there will always be the risk that while there are separate parties, an outstanding individual in the minor party will have no prospect of holding the most senior political office in the state.  In the same way, local selection decisions will not necessarily produce the best outcome. But there will not be an overarching conflict over who will the Premier or Prime Minister if the non-Labor parties win an election. Nor will the likely holders of the major offices of state be unknown.

On the other hand, there will be wasteful conflict, particularly when three cornered contests are involved, and it is a tragedy to see such waste occur when the non-Labor parties are so desperately short of resources when compared with the Labor Party.

Policy conflicts have not occurred in the Eastern states in recent times: indeed the Parties have campaigned as a coalition, with a joint campaign headquarters, in each of the most recent state elections in Victoria and New South Wales, and in the most recent federal election. Whether the badging is that of the Liberal Party and the National Party in coalition, or of the Liberal National Party, makes little difference in the minds of those parts of the electorate not conditioned by the long running disputes in Queensland.

Merger in other states will happen when the members and supporters of both parties want it to happen. As the Queensland experience shows, self-interested attempts to prevent it at parliamentary level will ultimately fail.  The LNP has made it clear that it does not seek to impose Queensland solutions on the rest of the country. But the LNP experience does demonstrate that those in the National Party who are concerned that the rural and regional voice would be swallowed up in a merged party have overstated concerns which can easily be addressed in the context of the rational planning of a framework for a merged party. After all, under the Coalition model parliamentary members of both Parties need to meet to resolve what the common program of the Coalition parties will be. If that can occur, it seems difficult to understand why members of the Party organisations could not meet to address their areas of common concern. The combination of resources, and the capacity to ensure that there is optimal candidate selection must ultimately advantage the non-Labor cause.

What has been plain for many years is that there are really only two viable models –merger or coalition. The Western Australian experiment of an alliance is, at least at state level, coming increasingly to resemble a coalition and the 1983 Queensland experience leaves little doubt as to what would happen if the WA Nationals were to abandon that alliance.

At the federal level, the position is even clearer that the Coalition is now more than a marriage of convenience which could be unstitched.

After 30 June 2011, the Nationals’ party room consisted of 19 members: seven from Queensland, six from New South Wales, three from Victoria and one each from the Northern Territory and Western Australia, the last-mentioned of whom until recently refused to sit in either the federal Nationals Party room or the coalition joint Party room.

Of these, 7 (including the Leader, Deputy Leader and Senate Leader) were elected as representatives of merged parties (LNP and CLP).  A further four (Senator Boswell and the Victorian and NSW Senators) were elected on joint tickets by the grace and favour of the Liberal Party. None would be in the Senate without it – in the last separate Senate contest in Queensland, the Liberals outpolled the Nationals in Longreach!  So a clear majority of their Party room has no interest in policy differentiation for its own sake. The LNP is totally opposed to it.

That is not to say that the distinct interests of rural and regional Australia should be in any way ignored.  Rather, it is to ask how best they will be advanced.  The view that a separate political party is necessary for that purpose has not commended itself to rural and regional voters in any comparable democracy, or indeed within Tasmania or South Australia where the National Party is either non-existent or is barely represented.  Following the 2010 election, the coalition joint Party room comprised 36 House of Representatives members representing rural and regional electorates from a total of 72[34], but because these were split between the Liberal Party (23) and the National Party (13), metropolitan members dominated the Liberal Party whose members chose the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Opposition and hence the alternative Prime Minister and Treasurer.  What truly made a separate Party necessary in the early twentieth century was the interaction of now past industrial relations and tariff policies, since the economic costs of these policies were largely borne by the export industries based in regional and rural Australia.

The parallels between the 2012 State Election and the forthcoming federal election include a government conspicuously in breach of an election promise (the carbon tax), demonstrably unable to maintain appropriate public standards (Thomson and Slipper), unable to prevent massive waste of public resources (the pink batts and BER fiascos) or to satisfactorily implement policy (border protection). Attacks on the personality of the coalition leader seem likely to feature heavily also.  It is not surprising that recent published opinion polls show a federal Labor vote lower than the 2012 State result, at which point Labor would lose all its seats, as would the Speaker (Slipper) who by his defection for all practical purposes may as well have become a member of the Labor Party.

To these issues should be added the Mineral Resources Rent Tax and more recently the federal government’s interference in the development approvals for major projects. Paul Keating is credited with the aphorism that whoever seeks to rob Peter to pay Paul can usually rely upon the vote of Paul. The corollary is that it is more than a little unsafe to continue to expect the support of Peter. Whatever the merits of the argument that governments should extract higher benefits for the community from the mining boom, the notion that the federal government should extract them rather than the States in which the minerals are located, and utilise the proceeds to subsidise the genteel mendicancy of those States which have chosen to not develop their resources, is one which is unattractive to Queenslanders.  So too is the notion that federal governments should seek to buttress their electoral support in inner city seats in Sydney and Melbourne at the expense of development in Queensland.  Campbell Newman has already made it clear that he will stand up for Queensland on these issues, and given his administration’s environmental record in Brisbane attempts to paint him as an environmental vandal or laissez-faire developmentalist in the alleged mould of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen are unlikely to be successful.

One of the concerns expressed within the federal Liberal Party had been that the LNP, like the former Queensland Nationals, would become excessively state focused to the detriment of the federal cause. Nothing could have been further from the intentions of the merger proponents, who were and remain well aware of the primacy of federal political issues to the well-being of the state and its people.  Even victory in all of Queensland’s seats will not secure federal office if the non-Labor forces interstate are unable to carry their share of the burden in securing the defeat of the Labor Party. The LNP has a vital interest in their success and stands ready to actively and constructively participate in the maintenance of an effective political organization at federal level.

Historically, Queensland has punched well below its weight in federal politics. It has produced four prime ministers, only one of whom (Fadden) was non-Labor, and only one of whom (Fisher) served a full term. Despite it providing the bulk of non-Labor majorities since World War II, it has not been significantly represented at leadership level in either the Liberal Party or, from 1958 to 2008, the National Party or its predecessors. The key to redressing this imbalance lies in rigorous attention to candidate selection, now that the risks associated with three cornered contests no longer exist. The LNP’s enhanced vetting procedures will be of considerable assistance in this area.

Australia can only benefit from these developments.

ENDNOTES

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[1] The traditional practice was to appoint either the President of the Legislative Council or the Chief Justice: see (ed.) Murphy and Joyce, Queensland Political Portraits, p.317.

[2]                     Constitution Act Amendment Act of 1922

[3] Rodney Sullivan: William Lennon (1986) Australian  Dictionary of Biography Vol. 10

[4]                     Constitution Act Amendment Act of 1922

[5]                     Murphy, op. cit, pp.315, 320, and Cilento and Lack, “Triumph in the Tropics”, pp.403-4, accept it.

[6] For abolition, 116,196: against abolition, 179,105 (figures quoted in Murphy, op. cit., p.277).

[7] Irwin E. Young, Theodore: His Life and Times, Alpha Books, p.27

[8] See, e.g., B.H. McPherson J.A., The Supreme Court of Queensland, 1989, Butterworths at pp.290-1.

[9] Section 3

[10]                   Constitution Act Amendment Act of 1929 (No.2)

[11]             Constitution Act Amendment Act of 1935

[12] State Governor Sir Walter Campbell, a former Chief Justice, in the 1992 John Oxley Memorial Lecture described these events as involving “impropriety and abuse of power” and “deserving of condemnation”.

[13] B.H. McPherson J.A., op. cit., p.399.

[14] quoted in Murphy, Queensland Political Portraits at p.322

[15] State Governor Sir Walter Campbell, a former Chief Justice, in the 1992 John Oxley Memorial Lecture described these events as involving “impropriety and abuse of power” and “deserving of condemnation”.

[16] B. H. McPherson J.A., op. cit., p.338.

[17] Report of Royal Commission appointed to inquire into and Report upon certain matters relating to Mungana, Chillagoe Mines etc, Queensland Parliamentary Papers 1930 Vol.1 p.1366.

[18] B. H. McPherson J.A., op. cit. p.295

[19] The identity of those who appeared may be found in R. v. Goddard and others [1931] Q.W.N. 37.

[20] From 1897 to 1900

[21] Moroney, Tim: T.A. Foley Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 14, (MUP), 1996

[22] a more complete record can be found in Sir Joh’s speech opening the third meeting of the H R Nicholls Society in 1987.

[23] There were approximately 2,500 Liberals and 5,500 Nationals whose membership was financial immediately preceding the merger

[24] Queensland’s former AAA rating was downgraded to AA+ immediately before the 2009 State election and according to recent media reports (Courier-Mail 12 June 2012) a further downgrade to AA is imminent.

[25] Marriner, C, “Lobbyist one day, campaigner the next,” Sydney Morning Herald, www.smh.com.au. August 7, 2009. The lobbying firms Hawker Britton, Enhance Corporate and CPR Communications all lent key staff for free to the Queensland ALP to assist in the re-election of the Bligh Government. After the campaign in March, the workers on loan returned to lobbying the Queensland Labor Government on behalf of paying clients, raising more questions about the ability of lobbyists to influence government decisions: Mitchell, A, “Bye bye Crosby/Textor hello Hawker/Arbib”, www.crikey.com.au, April 16, 2008: “Now you get the picture?  Hawker Britton staffers move in and out of Labor administrations with seamless ease, almost treating them as work assignments.”

[26] Ibid. and Wardill, Steven, “Labor Party failed to declare $225,000 donation on time”, The Courier Mail, July 27, 2009.  ($225,000 from Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union of which $170,000 was utilised in the marginal electorate of Mirani in an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to defeat LNP candidate).

[27] During the Labor term, two other Labor MPs (or former MPs) had been convicted and jailed for sex offences involving children, and two members of Parliament (one a Deputy Premier) forced to retire from the Parliament as a result of their involvement in electoral offences.  The former became a highly successful lobbyist, while the latter was appointed to senior offices within the New South Wales, Queensland and Federal governments.

[28] Hansard, Recall of Parliament, “Member for Sandgate, Crime and Misconduct Commission Report, www.parliament.qld.gov.au/hansard, December 9, 2005.

[29] Fraser, A, “Ex-minister Nuttall jailed for corruption”, www.theaustralian.com.au/news, July 17, 2009; and Guest, A, “Nuttall found guilty of efficient corruption”, The World Today, www.abc.net.au, October 27,2010

[30] Section 57 of the Criminal Code: “Any person who in the course of examination before the Legislative Assembly, or before a committee of the Legislative Assembly, knowingly gives a false answer to any lawful and relevant question put to the person in the course of the examination is guilty of a crime, and is liable to imprisonment for 7 years.”

[31] Some idea of the benefit perceived to flow from use of Party connections for lobbying purposes can be gained from the Statement of Claim lodged in 2011 by a former Party officer against the LNP, claiming that the losses to his lobbying business flowing from the Party’s refusal of a life membership and certain Party commendations exceeded $2 million.

[32] http://www.cabinet.qld.gov.au/charter-letters.aspx

[33] Australian Financial Review 10 March 2012

[34] Western Australian National Tony Crook and the Speaker have been included in these figures.