A political dynasty that should have lasted years

It should have been the start of a political dynasty, a rebirth of Queensland conservatism finally made palatable to an electorate still wary of a return to the corruption, cronyism and cruelty of the Bjelke-Petersen era.

Campbell Newman, who as lord mayor of Brisbane enjoyed cross-party appeal among voters, led the Liberal National Party to power 10 years ago to the day, for the first time in its merged history.

Nobody would have thought Campbell Newman’s government would be a one-termer after its stunning 2012 victory.Credit: Michelle Smith

But that feels like an understatement. The sheer scale of it, the total annihilation of Labor, was more than a victory. It was a wipeout of historic proportions.

Seventy-eight seats, to Labor’s seven. It should have been enough to keep the LNP in power for at least a decade.

Instead, Annastacia Palaszczuk – one of those seven Labor MPs left standing – is well into her third term as one of her party’s most successful Queensland premiers.

So where did it all go wrong for Newman?

Let’s start with what made Newman popular in the first place. He was an extraordinarily well-liked lord mayor in a Brisbane that was, ostensibly, a Labor city.

He got stuff done. A 2004 election stunt, in which he (slightly illegally) rolled up his sleeves and filled a pothole in Red Hill, was a sign of things to come.

The “Can Do” moniker was not just a gimmicky political slogan, it was the ethos of his lord mayoralty, even when he had to contend with a Labor majority in City Hall.

This non-ideological pragmatism made me feel comfortable working as a media adviser for Newman during this period, despite having no ties to what was then the Liberal Party.

I saw a lot of this “Can Do” ethos first hand. Many a conversation during a journey through Brisbane’s suburbs would be interrupted by a quick call to the council’s call centre to arrange, say, grass-cutting at a park we had just driven past.

That pragmatism also saw Labor premier Peter Beattie famously endorse Newman’s re-election for a second term, just after he reflected on his fractious relationship with former Labor lord mayor Jim Soorley on the floor of the Queensland Parliament.

“I think Brisbane is well served by having a Labor majority in the council and a Liberal lord mayor,” Beattie said in October 2006.

“I think that is what is best for this city, having a Liberal lord mayor with whom we can work and a Labor majority at the council is a great outcome.

“I urge the people of Brisbane to keep the balance – keep it exactly as it is.”

But that changed when the newly merged Liberal National Party rolled the dice and selected Newman as its leader, despite not being in Parliament.

He entered the big leagues. Party matters at that level of politics, and Newman became the biggest cog in the party machine.

No longer was he seen as a political outsider. (Of course, he was never a political outsider – both his parents served as ministers in federal Coalition governments – but perception is everything.)

For many observers, the brutal 2012 election campaign changed Newman. Labor’s intensely personal campaign, which went after the Newman family’s financial interests, deeply affected the LNP leader.

The negative campaign backfired on Labor and Newman was elected with more political capital than any premier in living memory.

“He saw [the Labor campaign] as vindictive,” Beattie told me in 2016.

“... He never forgave the Labor Party for it and I think it consumed him, so what he did then, he wanted to get even and I think that he overplayed his hand in every way.

“Politics became very nasty, they became excessive.”

Labor insiders quietly concede they might have gone too far, especially given the beast it unleashed.

And premier Campbell Newman was indeed a different beast to lord mayor Campbell Newman. While still a shrewd politician, lord mayor Newman largely stayed above politics in the eyes of the public (Labor councillors would disagree), while premier Newman was fighting spot fires everywhere.

Stoushes with the media, stoushes with the judiciary, stoushes with the community at large.

1043 days later...Credit: Glenn Hunt

Not every opposition voice was a Labor plant.

The Newman government was one of missed opportunity. It did not govern from the middle, instead letting the LNP’s ideologues run roughshod over policy, shifting Queensland further to the right than it was prepared to go.

Certainly, further to the right than the Campbell Newman Queenslanders thought they knew.

Civil libertarians argued parts of his legislative agenda were authoritarian and his purging of the public service, despite telling public servants they had “nothing to fear” before the election, broke many voters’ trust.

The perceived threats from within the government, levelled at private companies and not-for-profits, of consequences if they employed former Labor political staffers showed the big end of town just how vindictive the government could be.

Premier Newman spent all his political capital and, ultimately, had little to show for it. He could not – or would not – bring the hubris on display throughout his supermajority of MPs to heel.

And so it was, exactly 1043 days after he triumphantly declared victory at Brisbane’s Hilton, that Newman faced an altogether more sombre election-night gathering across town at the Convention and Exhibition Centre.

He didn’t learn the lessons of defeat. No self-reflection; it was the media’s fault he lost.

Even now, more than seven years after returning to government, Labor is pointing to the LNP failures of the Newman era to justify its own performance in power.

Palaszczuk clearly still sees mileage in the anti-Newman sentiment, even if the former premier has now distanced himself from the LNP.

These days, Newman has taken on new political stripes, and he is almost unrecognisable from the man who wore the mayoral chains.

As the Liberal Democratic Party’s lead Senate candidate for Queensland, Newman has thrown in his lot with the far-right fringe of Australian politics.

He is a regular on Sky News and has buried the hatchet with Clive Palmer, who once called him a “little Hitler”, agreeing to a preference deal with the mining magnate’s United Australia Party on a mutual platform of opposition against COVID-19 vaccination mandates.

Just last month, he spoke alongside One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson, and others, in front of the Red Ensign.

Newman is a well-read man, with a keen eye for politics. He ought to have known what that flag has come to represent.

Just another step to the right, and away from what made Campbell Newman one of the most popular politicians in Queensland history.