Opinion: Attorney-General George Brandis right to say Queensland Opposition ‘very, very mediocre’

THE Government can’t even make the trains run on time but the Opposition has gone backwards in recent polling, suggesting that Tim Nicholls’ leadership hasn’t been exactly spectacularly successful.

The fact that George Brandis was silly enough to gossip in front of a live microphone suggests he brings some insights to the subject of mediocrity. Picture: AAP

• Frustration over Brandis’ performance
• Former LNP candidates flirt with One Nation

IN 2004 George Brandis could not convincingly deny referring to then prime minister John Howard as “the rodent’’.

However, with lawyerly precision, he did deny referring to his leader as a “lying rodent’’, a face-saving distinction that was accepted by Howard.

Senator Brandis’s rise to attorney-general suggests he got away with the rodent reference but he can’t so easily disown his claim that the Queensland Opposition is “very, very mediocre’’.

The fact that an attorney-general with the reverse Midas touch was silly enough to gossip in front of a live microphone suggests Brandis brings some insights to the subject of mediocrity.

But, he is at pains to explain that he also referred to the Queensland Government as “very, very mediocre’’.

Badmouthing opponents is what comes naturally to a politician. Panning your own party colleagues is quite another thing.

It is disloyalty-plus, even if the charge of mediocrity is supported by former premier Campbell Newman, who seems to be showing an inordinate interest in the political trade he so publicly abandoned not very long ago.

Given that much of the ministerial core of Newman’s administration survived the electoral bloodbath and largely makes up the Shadow Cabinet, you might wonder at what he thought of the underlying competence of his own government.

His pronouncements are either a declaration of his own omnipotence or a vote of little hindsight confidence in the members of his own team.

But, all that pot-kettle-black stuff aside, just how mediocre are the Queensland Government and Opposition?

The dictionary definition of “mediocre” – “of middling quality; of only moderate excellence; neither good nor bad, indifferent; ordinary” – makes this a matter of selective judgment.

The best we can do to move into the sphere of objectivity is to look at opinion polls. There hasn’t been a lot between them in the past months, but Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Government has had the edge and led more times than it has trailed in polling.

Morgan generally has them neck and neck but Galaxy and Newspoll give Labor a couple of points lead in the two-party preferred vote.

For a government saddled with the over-egged perception that it’s going nowhere fast and bearing the responsibility for all the failures that go with power, that’s not too bad. But, mediocrity is not an entirely unreasonable summation.

However, if there are degrees of mediocrity, the Opposition is looking even more ordinary in the judgment of the opinion pollsters.

The Government can’t even make the trains run on time – or even run – but the Opposition has gone backwards in recent polling suggesting that, among other things, Tim Nicholls’ leadership hasn’t been exactly spectacularly successful.

He is reduced to carping about trivialities without being able to articulate anything particularly inspirational about his party’s famous “plan”.

The fact is that, despite noble words on both sides of politics, any real “plan” is larger in their minds than in the eye of the beholder.

Truth is they are living a Micawberish world in which they are waiting for something to happen.

The Liberal National Party is waiting for something calamitous to overtake the Government and Labor is waiting for some kind of resource-led revenue windfall to get us out of debt and back into business.

Trapped between the realities of a knife-edge Parliament, the implacable public will against assets sales and a shortsighted commitment to eternally low taxes, neither side has much room to manoeuvre.

Each side is so skittish of offending even minor public opinion and looking over its shoulder at the lurking threat of One Nation, that inspirational leadership is at a premium.

Two things strike me as symptomatic of this state of affairs.

One is the Government’s craven refusal to return to its core policy and mandate compulsory fluoridation of water supplies, something made discretionary by Newman.

The other is the LNP’s recently announced plan to ban plastic shopping bags, a worthy adoption of what is actually government policy.

However, this was briefly LNP policy until Newman cut the legs out from under Environment Minister Andrew Powell and declared it a non-event in 2013. Flip flop? Much.

One side appears unwilling to do what it knows is right and the other doesn’t quite seem to know what is right.

Despite some politically-inspired hysteria about an imminent challenge, Palaszczuk is safe unless she takes a big opinion poll fall.

Nicholls may not be as he hovers below 50 per cent and nervous old Nats look at One Nation and hanker for their grassroots base.

Back in May, when Lawrence Springborg was on the way out and the contenders shaped up as Nicholls and Tim Mander, I reckoned neither was likely to set the world on fire.

Now, having tried one, the LNP might be tempted to try the other.

Now that would be very, very mediocre.

Email Terry Sweetman