ALP campaign on ‘non-existent rorts’ backfired: Murphy

A LNP Councillor has put Labor’s poor election result in Brisbane down to voter backlash to a “smear campaign on non-existent rorts’.

Chandler Councillor Ryan Murphy during the campaign at the Aminya Street shops in Mansfield, promised a $1.3 million upgrade under the Village Precinct Program.

LABOR’S failure to convincingly pick up any new wards in Brisbane was a backlash to their “smear campaign” about “non-existent rorts” according to LNP Councillor Ryan Murphy.

Despite a 3 per cent swing away from his safe LNP ward of Chandler, Cr Murphy looks certain to win the ward with 65 per cent of the primary vote.

He was parachuted into the safe ward from Doboy last year.

With close to half the results counted, the ALP’s Penny O’Neill had 25 per cent of the vote and The Greens’ Steph Moss close to 10 per cent.

In Doboy his LNP-appointed replacement Lisa Atwood is achieving a swing to the party with 56 per cent of the vote in the two-way contest with Labor.

Cr Murphy said the overall election result showed voters did not buy into any “mud-slinging” from Labor.

“I think the election result represents a repudiation of Labor’s negative smear campaign. For nine months they’ve tried to tell the people of Brisbane that we were crooks and the people of Brisbane saw through that,” he said.

“They spent their nine months doing that instead of developing any kind of coherent policy platform for the people of the city of Brisbane and I think that is a real shame. That has never happened before in a council election and I think you see the results of that strategy laid bare.”

Labor campaigned for the LNP council administration to stop spending $4 million every year on political advertising, cut waste on overseas travel and private Qantas Club memberships for Committe chairpersons, stop wasted expenses on personal taxi rides for LNP Councillors and claims of secret allowances for LNP councillors.

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Cr Murphy said he was proud of the campaign he and his team had run, which had been based on issues important to the eastern suburbs.

“I am satisfied that we did the hard work, developing policies and costing commitments rather than just throwing endless amounts of mud about non-existent ‘rorts’,” he said.

Cr Murphy said some of those commitments including the $1.3 million Village Precinct Project for Aminya Street in Mansfield would not have connected in the late stages of the campaign when the city was in lockdown to deal with coronavirus and he would be working with the Council to help the area recover.

“The coming days, weeks and months ahead will require an administration in Council which has the experience to navigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and assist our city to recover when it has passed,” he said.