Mike O’Connor: Don’t let Qld politicians use you, Police Commissioner Gollschewski

Politicians love surrounding themselves with people in uniform, such as our new Police Commissioner, hoping they’ll add gravitas to their otherwise colourless selves, writes Mike O’Connor.

One of the more enjoyable aspects of writing a column is the opportunity it provides to hand out gratis advice and I’ve got some for our new Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski.

Travelling around the state visiting police stations and hearing at first hand the challenges facing officers on the front line is a good thing, though you might think that as a serving police officer of some years standing, you would have a fair idea of what the issues were.

Flying around the state in the company of government ministers and their mobile phone-clutching minders and appearing in a series of stage-managed, politically-driven media conferences is, alas, not a good thing.

Politicians love a uniform.

They don’t like wearing them, particularly those that might place them in harm’s way.

Queensland Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski had barely pinned his new name badge on last week when he was on a plane to Townsville.

Heavens no, but they do love to use those people who do wear them as stage props for their media appearances.

They feel or rather hope that the uniformed person will add some gravitas and authority to their otherwise colourless selves.

Military uniforms are favoured, the more medals the better, but police uniforms are well regarded as are senior ambos and fireys.

In emergencies bus drivers, ice cream sellers and uniformed workers on their way to start their shift at Macca’s might be conscripted but generally the aforementioned are preferred.

A warning then to all those senior uniform-wearing persons that with an election due in five months, invitations to accompany Premier Steven Miles and assorted ministers on a free ride on an expensively chartered private jet to appear in a political puppet show will begin to appear in your inbox.

Premier Steven Miles (right) was joined by new Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski and Police Minister Mark Ryan to announce a $20m upgrade to the Bundaberg Police Station.

Claim an urgent trip to the dentist and politely decline to add to the politicisation of the public service that has become a sad feature of life in this state.

Mr Miles’s ill-advised two-jet excursion of last week must surely have marked the beginning of the phony war, the election campaign that you have when you haven’t really started campaigning.

So look forward to carbon footprints to equal those of a Chinese coal-fired power station over the next five months as the chartered jets scream off into the wild blue yonder.

A lot of money, yours and mine, will be spent in the ill-founded belief that flying to Townsville or Cairns and walking through a shopping centre wins votes.

The reality is that the more most people see of politicians, the less they like them.

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli. Picture: Nigel Hallett

Voters hard pressed to differentiate between two leaders whose combined presence makes US President Joe Biden appear charismatic should look to their ties – the ones around their necks, not the ones to their financial supporters – because in spite of his 46 years on the planet, Mr Miles has never learnt to successfully knot a tie, whereas Opposition Leader David Crisafulli has conquered this Everest-like sartorial peak.

Neckwear aside, there is one issue which will divide voters and it edged on to the radar last week with the announcement that the First Nations truth-telling inquiry will begin within a few weeks.

Mr Crisafulli and his merry band, showing themselves to be as out of touch as Labor with the mood of the electorate, voted in favour of the laws establishing it.

But on seeing the gale of public opinion that blew the Voice into the wilderness, they wisely changed tack and will no longer support it.

To do so, he said, would create “further division”.

New Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski and Premier Steven Miles. Picture: Evan Morgan

He might also have recalled remarks made by then-Queensland Labor cabinet minister Craig Crawford, who said when the treaty legislation came to the fore that the area of land taken in colonial times and claimed massacres could be key considerations in formulating the value of each deal made with local Aboriginal groups.

He said that in New Zealand the cost varied depending on the number of people said to have been killed and the amount of land taken and that the numerous treaties entered into with the Maoris cost “tens or hundreds of millions of dollars”.

“So I think that will give us a bit of a guide to get an idea as to what that looks like in a Queensland context,” he said, a context unlikely to be embraced by many.

The bookmakers who successfully forecast the outcome of the Voice referendum have cast an eye over the Queensland political scene and have the LNP at $1.20 to form government and Labor at $4.

What to do – save your money for the Melbourne Cup or take a punt on a two-horse race?