Opinion: Electoral discontent may see change of heart at City Hall

THERE have been a few announcements in recent weeks that indicate Team Quirk has sniffed the electoral breeze and detected more than a whiff of discontent among the city’s residents. But is it too little, too late?

• Southside rate hikes
• Labor says Lord Mayor’s out of puff
• Quirk ‘shows Labor how it’s done’
• Council budget: How your suburb fares

JUST for a moment, I felt an election coming on.

There was the Lord Mayor Graham Quirk telling us what a wonderful job he was doing while images of CityCats steaming up the river graced the television screen.

A quick check found the next election is not due until 2020 so having announced he would stand again for the city’s highest office, it seemed Quirk was getting in some early electioneering.

You and I were paying for this self-promotion disguised as civic news in the same way that we pay for the newsletters extolling the council’s virtues that clog our mailboxes.

Everybody does it. One of the advantages of political incumbency is the ability to spend taxpayer funds on self-serving advertisements disguised, albeit ever so thinly, as public service announcements.

In these the ministers/councillors are shown in fluoro vests and hard hats while attempting, and generally failing, to look as if they have even the vaguest idea as to what it is they are inspecting.

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk and his team realised Brisbane residents were rallying against overdevelopment and the loss of character in their suburbs.

There have been some other announcements in recent weeks that indicate Team Quirk has sniffed the electoral breeze and detected more than a whiff of discontent.

Suddenly there is talk of changes to be made to limit the building of apartments and townhouses in some suburbs and there will be a forum that will allow people to give their views on the preservation of the city’s architectural heritage.

Public input is generally destined for the rubbish bin.

Forums and public consultations are held to create the illusion that the government actually cares what you think and is listening.

Having held public meetings and earnestly collected local view points, the council or government then goes ahead and does what it intended to do in the first place.

Politicians only listen to the electorate when they think there is a chance that if they don’t, they’ll be kicked off the taxpayer-funded gravy train at the next election.

This may explain why there are signs of a change of heart at City Hall where the wishes of developers have held sway for far too long.

Apartments under construction in Newstead, Brisbane. Picture: Glenn Hunt

People want neighbourhood plans that are set in stone, not some aspirational vision designed to shimmer like a mirage at election time and then be altered to accommodate a proposed development.

It’s taken a while but I suspect that the public is beginning to realise that the pendulum has swung too far and that their quality of life will fall victim to the practise of largely giving developers whatever they want.

A Sydney-dwelling colleague told me recently that he was selling up and moving because life in Australia’s largest city had become unlivable.

Chronic traffic congestion, poor public transport, lack of affordable parking and a general sense of overcrowding and overdevelopment had altered the fabric of his life.

Brisbane isn’t there yet but the warning lights are starting to flash.

The issues of unrestrained development, the “renovation” of the city’s historic and character homes that renders them unrecognisable and traffic and parking issues will dominate the next council election.

It seems that the first shots have now been fired.