Comment: Power of LNP incumbency will be too hard for Patrick Condren to overcome

Labor’s Lord mayoral candidate Patrick Condren faces an uphill battle to unseat sitting LNP mayor Adrian Schrinner, with a number of hurdles, including incumbency standing in his way, writes Paul Williams. VOTE IN OUR POLL

WIN, lose or draw this Saturday fortnight, Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner and his Liberal-National Party team won’t be breaking any records.

The honour for the longest continuous grip on Brisbane’s mayoral office is comfortably held by Labor and its eight three-year terms between 1961 and 1985. The second-longest is the current Newman-Quirk-Schrinner administration that has already won four terms, of four years each, to chalk up 16 years at the helm.

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Even so, a fifth term is something the LNP will crow long and loudly about. It will also put a spring in its step and cash in its vaults as we near the October state election. And it will equally demoralise a still-bruised Labor party wincing at the thought of four more years in council opposition.

Labor lord mayoral candidate Patrick Condren. Picture: Peter Wallis

That’s why Labor chieftains last September cruelly binned the affable but unelectable Rod Harding as Lord Mayoral candidate and installed some star-power in the form of Patrick Condren. Condren got such a cracking start hammering pollie perks and City Hall waste that many – including this scribe – were convinced a shake-up was in the offing.

But as 28 March draws closer it’s becoming clear that, for a number of reasons, Labor and Condren will likely fall short of their goal.

First, the LNP enjoys all the trappings of incumbency – including rate-payer funded glossy brochures of a still-new Lord Mayor now successfully building a brand.

Second, the LNP protects that incumbency by a huge margin. Needing an 8 per cent swing to win the 14 wards required for a chamber majority – and a 9.3 per cent swing to win the mayoralty – Labor’s coming from too low a base.

Third, Adrian Schrinner – in his own quiet yet deliberate way – is sandbagging even that handsome lead with some clever targeting of disparate demographies. Already countering Condren’s anti-pollie populism with a pledge to review free bus travel for long-serving councillors, Schrinner also paints himself greener than predecessor Graham Quirk – with promises of more tree-planting and “green bridges” and a ban on townhouses in “single home neighbourhoods” – while presenting as worker-friendly with pledges of rubbish tip vouchers for renters.

Lord Mayor of Brisbane pictured at the bushfire relief ticker-tape parade pictured in the Brisbane CBD. (AAP Image/Josh Woning)

Fourth, while Condren last year began his war on waste vigorously, the knockabout former television journalist lost critical momentum between October and March. Opposition candidates cannot appear casual blow-ins and expect to win. As grass-roots representatives they must imbed themselves in the community before steadily releasing policies.

That brings us to the campaign’s low-energy that will invariably advantage the LNP. If there’s little excitement on the ground, there’s little impetus for change.

This dovetails into a sixth problem for Labor: an inability to ignite a genuine ‘barbecue-stopper’ issue to force swinging voters to rethink any default vote for the LNP. To be fair, Condren has tried. Promises of $100 refunds for on-time rates payments, rates increases in line with inflation, and a review of parking fines are all attractive if you don’t think too deeply about where the money is coming from. But none of these policies has the power to galvanise a Brisbane so clearly over politics. And let’s not even talk about Pat’s plan to put boutique beers on tap in City Hall.

Sadly, the one policy that has meat on its bones – Labor’s move to attain a 50/50 gender balance on BCC boards – will probably be lost in the crossfire.

Then there’s the changing appetite of an electorate that appears very much over flashy ‘celebrity’ candidates. Indeed, a key element of the success of such state premiers as Annastacia Palaszczuk, Gladys Berejiklian and Daniel Andrews is their unpolished ordinariness. Voters today want hard-working civil servants not flamboyant rock stars.

Eighth, Labor might also have scored an own goal by adopting a negative tone. In labelling the Lord Mayor ‘Shifty Schrinner’, Condren now risks the sort of backlash Labor suffered in 2012 when pillorying Campbell Newman’s integrity.

Last – and perhaps most critically – is the lack of public mood for change. We saw this last May when, despite solid opinion polling, Australians just weren’t enthused about electing Bill Shorten. We should have listened to the Uber drivers more than the polls. Brisbanites, like most Queenslanders, are inherently conservative: we need good reason to invoke change.

Yet none of this means this election will be a stroll in New Farm Park for the LNP, especially given the very large shoes Graham Quirk left a still largely unknown Schrinner to fill.

But Schrinner today is glad he’s not Condren whose climb to the top will be steeper than Red Hill.

Paul Williams is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University