Opinion: Liberal candidate for seat of Ryan, Julian Simmonds, a poster boy for irony

IF ever there was an elephant in the room amid the Liberal Party’s struggles with female MPs and candidates, it’s this candidate for a federal seat in Brisbane. But unless voters express their displeasure, nothing will change, writes Margaret Wenham.

LNP's new candidate for Ryan, Cr Julian Simmonds. Picture: AAP image, John Gass

• Turnbull minister loses preselection for Brisbane seat
• Liberal bullying claims going public is ‘progress’: Gillard

IT’S morning peak hour and along with thousands of other long-suffering commuters in Brisbane’s west, you’re sitting in the car park that is the main arterial road into the city.

And then just when you’re thinking things couldn’t get any more aggravating, your attention is caught – no, arrested – by a gigantic beaming face on one of those very big electronic billboards right beside the traffic jam.

“Oh no,” you gasp, “it’s him – it’s Julian Simmonds.”

Yes it is and, thanks to the density of the traffic, you’re forced to sit there for quite a few beats, the fixed cheesy smile of the erstwhile chairman of the Brisbane City Council Planning Committee turned Liberal candidate for the federal electorate of Ryan bathing you in, well, cheese.

There’s even time to note that obviously this ambitious young man – the one who took down Jane Prentice, the sitting Liberal member for Ryan who employed him as a staffer when she was the Liberal councillor for Walter Taylor ward, a post she bequeathed him in 2010 when she switched to federal politics – is wasting no time in getting his face in the faces of the residents of Ryan.

LNP's new candidate for Ryan, Cr Julian Simmonds. Picture: AAP image, John Gass

But there’s a little pleasure to be had, too. This is the extra irony accorded by the revolving ads on the billboard, one of which is for an acreage subdivision at Moggill, the application for which likely sailed through the above-named committee. It’s no doubt yet another subdivision that will add more commuter pain in the leafy outer west, where greenfield developments and high-density redevelopments have flourished, while transport infrastructure has shrivelled on the planning vine.

But I’ve whinged about this before and, to be fair, it’s not just successive council administrations (though a Liberal majority one since 2008) that have failed to provide the level of transport and other infrastructure necessary to meet the long-known-about and much-touted population explosion in Brisbane, because just about all of our major cities have been strangled by this major political and policy failure.

State governments are also culpable, but particularly so the Federal Government, the sticky partisan fingers of which hold the strings of the biggest purse.

Which leads me back to Simmo’s hostile takeover of one of the few senior Liberal women in federal politics – Prentice was an assistant minister – because, with the hindsight afforded by the recent ugly Liberal leadership spill, which included former foreign and deputy prime minister Julie Bishop being wielded as a pawn, and all the subsequent claims of bullying and intimidation, one could argue that what went on in the Liberal preselection process for Ryan was and is a nasty microcosm of the party.

Jane Prentice lost the Liberal Party preselection for her own seat. Picture: Kym Smith

Since Malcolm Turnbull was toppled and Bishop became collateral damage, she and others have spoken about the need for the Liberal Party to cure its ills when it comes to attracting and retaining talented women candidates. Ryan’s new grinning candidate must surely be a very big elephant in the party room.

I’m not suggesting Simmonds is a bully, and obviously he couldn’t have struck the fatal blow to his former mentor without the support of those in the local branch.

I wonder how many of the 256 people in that branch who voted for him (Prentice, apparently caught napping while he was out hustling, attracted just 103) are now having second thoughts. If they’re not, they should be because they might find, come the next election, a great many voters in Ryan – and not just of the non-Liberal variety – who were disgusted about what happened to Prentice will have that on their minds thanks to all the hatchet wielding on a grander scale that’s since gone on.

And there may even be a few others who will hold the former planning committee chairman at least in part responsible for the further destruction of the amenity of their electorate.

A little while back I wrote about the evolution of the liberal democratic state – our preferred system of government – and pointed out that the early liberals worried about the sacrificing of individual freedoms necessary to create an overarching apparatus (the state). But it was reasoned that a small amount of liberty could be traded for the establishment of a government system that would provide the means and stability for us to better flourish.

Liberal worries then focused, not just on the size or reach of the state, but on how to ensure our chosen type of government – a representative democracy – was in fact representative and democratic, and that it didn’t fall captive to elites and egoists with agendas that may not be in the best interests of the state.

Former Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Picture: AAP Image/Lukas Coch

I look at our major political parties and I think they, though particularly and saliently the Liberal Party because they’re in government, have far too many elites and egoists among them, along with ambitious careerists, including those who seek power for power’s sake. How else can what happened be explained? How else to explain the apparent triumph of ideology over practical, sensible, evidence-based policy, even to the point of policy paralysis?

What can we, the people, do? Perhaps we’ve cut these types too much slack. Perhaps the time for minimalist involvement, in trusting those who we vote to represent us to do the right thing, is over – at least until we can give them a smack about the chops and get them to smarten up.

Perhaps the price to pay for the best system of government the world has is for we, the people, to get off our apathetic arses and engage with our local members and the executive of government. Make our approval or disapproval known. Pick up the phone. Write that email. Post that letter. Sign that petition. And, at election time, if need be, change your vote. But if you do that, for God’s sake be discerning and exhaust your preferences ... wisely.

It’s time to send loud and clear messages that we’re no longer to be taken for fools – that the jig, chumps, is up.

Consider it a small but important investment in our country.