Campbell Newman on a mission for the ‘Forgotten Australians’
As disgruntled LNP supporters pour thousands of dollars into his campaign, former Queensland premier Campbell Newman is plotting to undo “the constant erosion of freedoms by government” from within, writes Des Houghton. VOTE IN OUR POLL
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Campbell Newman wants to shake Canberra to its foundations. If he wins his audacious bid for power, he will drive tax cuts for families and businesses in a powerful bloc of Liberal Democrats holding sway in the Senate
As Queensland’s most successful and controversial premier since Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Newman said he was inspired to run after reading Robert Menzies’ epic 1942 speech, The Forgotten People.
Disgruntled LNP supporters are pouring thousands of dollars into his campaign.
“They are angry,” he said.
Newman is fit and as lean as a greyhound and the political hound is eager to jump the leash and hunt down the hares. You were warned, ScoMo, he says, but you didn’t listen. People were tired of being fobbed off and treated like mushrooms by an elitist group of powerbrokers, he said.
He talks with the zeal of a counter-revolutionary.
He says he is winning grassroots support from people, like himself, who fear “the constant erosion of freedoms by government”. Small- and medium-size business operators are backing him.
“We will be their champions,” he said.
Newman knows Canberra well, after being born there 58 years ago in a family where his mother and father were both Liberal ministers.
He says Jocelyn and Kevin Newman would be proud of him for standing up for Liberal ideals. He can’t wait to attend Parliamentary Estimates hearings to tear strips off senior bureaucrats who frustrate attempts by leaders to fulfil the will of the people.
Newman was delighted by a recent statewide Ipsos poll showing 57.8 per cent of LNP voters still regard him favourably. That score put him streets ahead of other LNP leaders including Lawrence Springborg (49.7 per cent), Deb Frecklington (45.7), David Crisafulli (33.5) and Tim Mander (31.8).
Interestingly, Annastacia Palaszczuk was viewed favourably by 47.4 per cent of LNP voters, outscoring all the LNP leaders except Newman and The Borg.
Damian Coory from The Other Side, who commissioned the poll, said Newman’s rating was “astoundingly high” given the mud constantly thrown at him. “There seems to be a disconnect between the (LNP) party leadership and the active membership,” Coory said.
He added: “Qualitative data from the research indicates the negativity towards Newman stems almost exclusively from his attempt to reduce the size of the Queensland public service too quickly, to get the state out of debt.”
Has history been unkind to Newman’s image?
Despite his spectacular downfall in 2015, his government had an amazingly successful single term.
It ended ambulance ramping, delivered the best surgical waiting times in the nation, reduced crime in several categories by 15 to 20 per cent and gave two pay rises to nurses.
His VLAD laws sent drug-pushing bikie gangs scurrying interstate. Newman and his works minister Bruce Flegg will be remembered for remaking Brisbane. They set in train the multibillion-dollar Queens Wharf project, the demolition of the Executive Building and the Nev Bonner building, while raising the tower of power.
The Lib Dems started to look more appealing to Newman when his efforts to help the LNP were rebuffed earlier this year.
“I was very happy to work from within,” he said.
“I put my hand up to be treasurer of the LNP and was rejected.’’
Next he was asked by then president Cynthia Hardy if he would consider becoming a trustee. “The moment my name was put forward I had (Peter) Dutton, (David) Littleproud, (Tim) Mander, (Jarrod) Bleijie and federal president John Olsen all vote against me.
“I thought, I’m clearly not wanted here.
“So, the idea of trying to get change from within was implausible.”
He may have been shunned by former party colleagues, but not the rank and file, he said.
Newman said the LNP had 15,000 members when he was premier in 2012.
Now there were 10,400 and members were “deserting in droves”.
And there was disquiet at head office, with many resignations.
“They are an unhappy crew.’’
Disenchanted LNP members are even helping him raise funds.
“The trouble with the Liberal National Party is that they do not stand for anything. They don’t stand up for freedom. They don’t stand up for free speech.’’
And they pay lip service to small businesses at federal and state level.
“They have curtailed our freedoms over the last 18 months. They are beyond redemption. That is why I left.”
Newman has been disappointed with the candidates chosen by the LNP in recent years.
Like the Labor Party, the LNP parliamentary team was stacked with political staffers and lobbyists with little experience of the real world.
In this group he included federal MPs Trevor Evans and Julian Simmonds in Brisbane and Dave Sharma in Sydney.
Newman had admired the Liberal Democrats from afar, and jumped ship when it became obvious the LNP were attempting to freeze him out.
“The idea is to have a block of Lib Dems in the Senate to exert significant political leverage. We’d like to have at least three senators including John Ruddock, the former NSW Liberal.
“Menzies spoke in 1942 about the forgotten people. They are the people now being forgotten by the Liberal National Party.’’
Newman is on top of the world. His cluttered office is an eyrie on top of the family home on a hill in inner-city Brisbane. He rolls up a blind to reveal a panoramic view of the city he loves. Then he spins around to pull a large book from the shelf.
With his dog Sassy on his lap, he reads aloud the words of Robert Menzies: “If the new world is to be a world of men, we must be not pallid and bloodless ghosts, but a community of people whose motto shall be, ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’. Individual enterprise must drive us forward.”
Newman likes Menzies’ affection for the middle classes, the “salary-earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers and so on”.
“They are not rich enough to have individual power ... yet they are the backbone of the nation.”
Menzies’ “forgotten people” are being forgotten all over again. Newman even wrote a “revitalised manifesto” for the Liberal Party. It has just been published in a collection of essays in Australia Tomorrow (Connor Court).
His essay speaks to the challenges outlined in the recent Fifth Intergenerational Report.
“The message is clear that the next generations of Australians will be dealing with lower incomes and living standards and potentially higher taxes and reduced services,” it reads. “During the pandemic the move to big government and economic intervention has accelerated. Rather than adopt a mantra of personal responsibility and resilience, the message has been that government has all the answers.”
The Liberal Party had been fundamentally damaged, he writes. Menzies’ Forgotten People speech still resonates nearly 80 years later.
Newman will have no compunction attacking the Coalition in his campaign, even though he hopes the LNP triumphs over the Labor Party.
“This Government (has) introduced more red tape and bureaucracy and has empowered the public sector to lord it over business, especially small business,” he told me.
“I don’t think the country, or the state is going in the right direction, and I want to make a difference. I couldn’t put up with it anymore. I didn’t leave the Liberal Party, the Liberal Party left me.’’
His impact in the Senate would be a positive one.
“By getting that bloc in the Senate there will be (Lib Dem) people prepared to stand up and resist tax increases and fight for lower taxes, and people who will stand up against the ever-increasing size of government.”
He added: “I’ll be a strong voice for sanity. We have got a bunch of political hacks from across the political spectrum. “We have people who have never earnt a real living in the marketplace.’’
Too many arrived in parliament from cushy government jobs or union sinecures.
Newman needs 14.4 per cent of the vote to get a quota to win a Senate spot. If that means he wipes out Senator Amanda Stoker in the process, so be it.
“The Liberal National Party relegated Senator Stoker to the third position, I didn’t do it. If Senator Stoker is the best they’ve got, why isn’t she No.1 on the ticket?
“Since Senator Stoker became part of the ministry, she has toed the party line. I have not heard her speak about freedom. I have not heard her condemn the use of excessive police force against demonstrators.’’
PARENTS WOULD BACK HIM
Fraser government minister Kevin Newman and his wife Jocelyn (pictured above with Campbell Newman and wife Lisa in 2012), a Howard government minister, would be “dismayed” at the state of today’s Liberal Party.
Campbell Newman said they would forgive his departure to the Liberal Democrats.
“They would be dismayed with today’s Liberal Party and LNP,” he said.
“They would see I am genuinely trying to help.
“It’s a party for a political elite. It’s a party of people who are interested in politics and power and not interested in outcomes for the community.
“It’s as bad as the Labor Party. It no longer stands up for the forgotten people.”
Des Houghton is an independent media consultant and former editor of The Courier-Mail, Sunday Mail and Sunday Sun
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