On the same day as it is announced that the latest poll shows the Turnbull government is behind the ALP , it has been officially declared that the massive attempt by the LNP and Liberals to grab control of the Townsville City Council in the Queensland local government elections was a total failure.
The conservatives threw a large amount of money and effort into challenging sitting mayor Jenny Hill and her unaligned team, and ended up being run over by their own buses , still running about the city after the vote with their costly advertising sign .
The true blue Jayne Arlett's team failed to win one seat . Playing a big part in the Arlett campaign were a former Liberal member for the House of Representatives seat of Herbert , Peter Lindsay , and former LNP Member for Local Government , Community Recovery and Resilience in the Campbell Newman Government , David Crisafulli , who pulled out of Townsville and went to live on the Gold Coast after losing the seat of Mundingburra to Coralee O'Rourke at last year's shock state election.
A former deputy mayor of Townsville , Crisafulli was a onetime media advisor to Liberal Senator Ian Macdonald , who , aged 70, late last year announced he intended staying on instead of retiring . This statement no doubt prompted Crisafulli to realise there was no use staying on in town and possibly becoming a senator , so he folded his tent and departed for the Gold Coast, where it has been reported he will stand again at a new seat to be formed at the next state election in 2018.
However , the abject failure of the campaign to unseat Hill and her team , in which he played such a large part , must raise questions about his ability to win seats and his future as a possible political candidate , seeing he lost his Townsville seat. Strangely, the editor of the Murdoch owned Brisbane Courier Mail , Lachlan Heywood , formerly at the helm of the Townsville Bulletin , tweeted Crisafulli and thanked him for his local government election predictions, which apparently did not include Townsville .
It is evident that Heywood does not closely edit tweets sent to him as evidenced when it was announced for only a matter of hours that ousted former premier Campbell Newman , like Joh Bjelke-Petersen , intended to go to Canberra . An uncouth tweeter responded : Oh for fucks sake Campbell . You're the biggest failure in political history . Stay in the rubbish bin pal .
Just before Xmas , it was rumoured in Brisbane that the current LNP leader, Lawrence Springborg , with a Galaxy Poll standing of 26 per cent , would face a Tony Abbott like spill . So far it has not happened . Then there was the strange case of Jeff Seeney, a former LNP deputy premier , who recently said he would quit Queensland politics and stand for the House of Representatives seat of Wide Bay vacated by Nationals leader Warren Truss. Seeney declared his political skills would be put to great use for the Sunshine State in Canberra. Then , suddenly, he decided, no, he would stay in Queensland , without really adequately explaining why .
However , another Queensland politician , John McVeigh, a former agriculture minister in the Campbell Newman Government , member for Toowoomba South , at the same time announced he was also keen to join the Canberra stampede , saying he intended to stand for Groom , vacated by gravel voiced Liberal Ian McFarlane , dumped from cabinet, who said he wanted to quit the Libs and become a National, but changed his mind .
For the two Queensland politicians to quit, there would have to be by-elections and who knows what the outcome would be after the Newman earthquake ?
Dear reader , we appreciate all this toing and froing is hard to follow , but it is the Year of the Monkey and because the Queensland ALP government is hanging on by a thread, the opposition and some of the media are behaving like the screeching Abbott opposition during the reign of Julia Gillard , even to the use of using frequent disparaging names and expressions for Annastacia Palaszczuk and deputy premier Jackie Trad in text messages and letters to editors , in there way as highly offensive as " Juliar".
No doubt , editor Heywood , appointed to the premier's advisory board on domestic violence when he was in Townsville , will look into this situation as this yobbo denigration in print demeans women in general .
However , another Queensland politician , John McVeigh, a former agriculture minister in the Campbell Newman Government , member for Toowoomba South , at the same time announced he was also keen to join the Canberra stampede , saying he intended to stand for Groom , vacated by gravel voiced Liberal Ian McFarlane , dumped from cabinet, who said he wanted to quit the Libs and become a National, but changed his mind .
For the two Queensland politicians to quit, there would have to be by-elections and who knows what the outcome would be after the Newman earthquake ?
Dear reader , we appreciate all this toing and froing is hard to follow , but it is the Year of the Monkey and because the Queensland ALP government is hanging on by a thread, the opposition and some of the media are behaving like the screeching Abbott opposition during the reign of Julia Gillard , even to the use of using frequent disparaging names and expressions for Annastacia Palaszczuk and deputy premier Jackie Trad in text messages and letters to editors , in there way as highly offensive as " Juliar".
No doubt , editor Heywood , appointed to the premier's advisory board on domestic violence when he was in Townsville , will look into this situation as this yobbo denigration in print demeans women in general .
