Opinion: Former premier Campbell Newman says Kate Jones misled community on Cedar Woods
A CAMPAIGN to ‘save The Gap’ helped propel Kate Jones into her seat but after recent backflips on a controversial development, the former Member for Ashgrove, Campbell Newman, says she must resign.
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IF THERE is one thing that scares the hell out of candidates in marginal electorates it is the creation of “independent” lobby groups.
They can sway election outcomes by tapping into emotional grassroots issues such as traffic congestion or the loss of green space to developers.
Such was the case in Ashgrove at the last election when an “independent” group called Save The Gap emerged to back the ALP candidate, Kate Jones, in opposing a 980-lot housing development at Cedar Woods, between The Gap and Upper Kedron.
Jones was seeking redemption and perhaps revenge after being kicked out of the seat by none other than Campbell Newman, the lord mayor turned premier.
In 2015, she got the chance to turn the tables, and she did.
In a letterbox drop, Jones warned that Cedar Woods would be an unsustainable “mega suburb”.
Extra cars would clog Waterworks, Settlement and Samford roads, Jones said.
Cedar Woods was a rare gift to Jones.
“Campbell Newman has refused to listen and stand up for us,” she said in the same letter. Save The Gap gave her springboard into Parliament. Many gullible voters really did think Jones could save The Gap.
But it had little to do with her – or Newman.
Upper Kedron was pegged as a future urban site by the Beattie-Bligh Labor government in 2007, when it insisted council find 145,000 new house lots to meet future housing demand.
Brisbane City Council approved Cedar Woods just before Christmas in 2014 – but scaled it back by a third.
There would be seven dwellings per hectare, about half the density of worthy projects such as Springfield and North Lakes, which have up to 15 dwellings per hectare. As well, 90ha of bushland would be left untouched.
However, Save The Gap’s social media megaphone painted Newman as an environmental vandal.
When Jones defeated him, the Cedar Woods project was called in by Jones’ friend, the imperious Planning Minister, Jackie Trad.
The Trad “call-in” didn’t go as expected, however. State planners asked council to INCREASE the number of Cedar Woods lots to 1500. Jones has been left in an invidious position.
She has been involved in a slanging match with the local councillor.
However, the controversy has taken another twist, with Trad putting up the white flag and giving the project the green light.
“My position is that the density and the yield envisaged for the site is a matter for the council to determine,” she said in a letter to Julian Simmonds, council’s planning chief.
So Trad thinks a “mega-suburb” is OK after all. Jones and Trad have been running around the mulberry bush to get back to where they started. Trad’s letter confirms that council’s original decision for 980 lots was right all along.
Campbell Newman said the campaign against him was phony from the start.
“I call on (Jones) to resign,” he told me.
“She totally misled the community on this.
“She should resign and face a by-election.”
Meanwhile, I haven’t heard a peep out of Save The Gap.
Did retail giants dud their workers?
FOUR years ago, Brisbane mum Penelope Alice Vickers turned whistleblower and wrote to the big guns on the Wesfarmers board alleging she was underpaid for her work at Coles at Mt Ommaney in Brisbane’s west.
Wesfarmers, of course, owns Coles as well as Kmart, Bunnings, Officeworks, Vintage Cellars, Liquorland and a number of coal and gas financial services firms. It is one of the nation’s largest listed companies.
Vickers would not comment, but documents before the Fair Work Commission show she began work at Coles in September 2012 as a permanent part-time shelf stacker working three nights a week – 8pm to midnight on Tuesday and Wednesday, and 6pm to 10pm on Sundays.
For that she got $15,263 a year, but says she should have been paid $21,013.
Vickers, 42, an old girl from St Peters Lutheran College at Indooroopilly, thought an injustice was being done not only to her, but tens of thousands of other Australian workers.
The Jindalee mother-of-two asked her union, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees (SDA) for help. It declined.
So now she is challenging both the union and Coles in the commission. She says they signed an enterprise bargaining agreement that pays her and many of her co-workers less than the minimum wage. Vickers applied to the commission to have the 2011 EBA terminated and all the workers paid under it put back under the award.
Her case is an attempt to unpick controversial deals struck by the politically influential SDA with major companies that have left workers out of pocket.
Although Monday to Friday workers got a pay boost, others suffered.
Indeed, an investigation by The Age newspaper revealed 250,000 workers in Australia were paid less than the award, saving employers at least $300 million a year.
Vickers is representing herself and she had a win last week. Commission vice-president Adam Hatcher agreed it was in the public interest to have her application heard by a full bench.
So the case has hit the big time.
If Vickers succeeds she will shame the union, she will shame Coles and she will emerge the workers’ hero, substantially boosting the shift allowances and penalty rates being paid by Coles, Woolworths, Bunnings, Target, Kmart, Big W, parts of the Metcash group and many other large retailers.
Industrial lawyers I spoke to say the decision may have a flow-on effect to thousands more workers at KFC, McDonald’s and Domino’s Pizza.
And it will expose cosy relationships between the major retailers and the unions. The SDA is one of the biggest funders of the ALP.
Higher weekend penalties are not being paid under the enterprise agreements signed by the big retailers. And the Labor Party is not objecting.
Coles and the shop assistants union and the Australian Workers’ Union turned out in force to oppose Vickers’ application. There were so many barristers, junior counsel and instructing solicitors that there was not enough room for them at the bar table at the last hearing.
Vickers’ action springs from a decision by the full bench of the commission that found the 2014 agreement failed the “better off overall test”. It was brought by Duncan Hart, a Brisbane shopping trolley wrangler.
Coles was forced to revert to an earlier agreement, struck in 2011.
It is that agreement that Vickers is now challenging.
In her application, she accused Coles of keeping the workers in the dark about their entitlements before they voted to accept the agreement.
Vickers’ secret weapon is her dad Allen Truslove, who is one of Australia’s sharpest mathematical minds. He was a statistician and actuary in the Victorian government before being headhunted to chair Queensland’s Nominal Defendant Investment Board of the Queensland State Actuary and Insurance Commissioner.
Vickers now seeks a random sample of retail workers’ pay details to have them analysed by her father to determine how many staff are underpaid. The names would be redacted for privacy.
Vickers claims a bid by Coles and the union to have their own “hand-picked” selection of workers to give evidence to the tribunal would mask the true extent of underpayments.
I’m told this case may go all the way to the Federal Court and the High Court.
Vickers has the virtue of patience.
Wesfarmers will be sorry that it did not take her initial correspondence seriously, or seriously enough.
P.S …
Marathon effort
BANK of Queensland executive David McAdam is about to cycle 4300km from Perth to Brisbane.
McAdam, 42, from leafy Pullenvale in Brisbane’s west, says he will ride 300km a day to raise money for cystic fibrosis research at Lady Cilento Children’s hospital.
McAdam’s two-year-old niece Freya was born with cystic fibrosis.
https://racetothestars.everydayhero.do/
Golden oldie?
THE Queensland Performing Arts Centre is advertising for a curatorial director to replace Ross Cunningham who has held the demanding role for eight years.
The job ad calls for someone who is “hands-on”, “entrepreneurial” and a “team player”. Cliche, cliche, cliche. And the winning applicant will be someone with “commercial acumen” who will “create ‘win-win’ outcomes for QPAC”.
The ad also says the “ideal candidate” will have 20+ years in curatorial or programming roles in the arts. Twenty years? That would preclude many bright young people from applying. Do we really want an old fart running the show?
Lost freedoms
A FREEDOM of information officer has let the cat out of the bag and exposed a worrying lack of independence in Queensland Family and Child Commission.
It happened when the Opposition put in a Right to Information search on documents relating to the tragic death of two-year-old Mason Jet Lee at Caboolture last June. A Child safety RTI officer replied: “I have today decided to refuse access to all 23 pages in full on the basis the information is exempt information or disclosure of the information would, on balance, be contrary to the public interest.”
She added: “The documents located in response to your requests consist only of extracts from a draft of the Queensland Family and Child Commission report. These extracts were provided to the department by QFCC for the purposes of consultation ahead of finalising the report. The draft report differs from the published version.” So the “independent” commission handed its report to the department for vetting.
Opposition Child Safety spokeswoman Ros Bates said: “Queenslanders should be outraged to
know that the secretive and crisis-riddled child safety department is running roughshod over the
body designed to keep it on track.”
Meet market
THE Royal Queensland Steakhouse Restaurant will be running again for the duration of the Ekka from August 11-20. It’s a rare opportunity to sample the very best in beef and lamb and wine and cheese.
The restaurant is sponsored by JBS Australia, part of the Brazilian cattle behemoth. The Steakhouse serves all the Ekka’s gold-medal winning beef. It will be offered with a selection of the show’s award-winning wine.
An opportunity like that doesn’t come around too often. I would like to see the Steakhouse become a permanent restaurant showcasing Queensland’s top produce.
Social whirl
NEW BBC headmaster Paul Brown will have his hands full when he arrives in January to replace Graeme McDonald, whose final years as headmaster were riddled with controversy. The “wangagate’’ controversy is still locked in the courts four years later.
Meanwhile, the exclusive school is dealing with the overenthusiastic “socialising” by staff members in a shed and the expulsion of a student for drugs. Brown has had two decades in executive roles at top schools, including MLC, Knox Grammar and St Ignatius College, Sydney.
He said what?
THIS is the greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.” President Donald Trump reacts angrily to charges of possible “collusion’’ with the Kremlin in the lead-up to his election win.
Irritant of the week
THE NRL for its abject failure to stamp out drug abuse by elite players.
Twitter: @DesHoughton
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