Paul Kent: Annastacia Palaszczuk practising cynical politics to secure AFL showcase for Queensland
Unless Queenslanders choose to see it differently at the end of next month, as it is, the Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, will be re-elected on the goodwill of a game that has come to the Sunshine State at a hidden cost to them.
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It is too late for Gorden Tallis to run for Queensland Premier.
He would win in a landslide. They would still be counting his votes for the October election in December.
It is not that Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has never cow-tossed a NSW Blue over the sideline, but Tallis carries a decency that is too good for politics. He would be unwelcome in government.
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On Thursday night he revealed the big con being propagated against Queenslanders at the moment.
“It’s strange times,” Tallis said on Fox League’s Late Night with Matty Johns.
“I think the perception is that we bought the AFL grand final. Hopefully it’s not for votes because people who live in Victoria, who love AFL, don’t vote in Queensland.”
It is always so simple when logic is removed from the hands of politicians.
Truth is, the grand final is Palaszczuk’s dip into dirty politics. Better not to ask than be told a lie.
For weeks now the Queensland Labor Party has been lauding the AFL’s decision to play its grand final in Brisbane as an electoral coup.
They say it as if the AFL simply spread all the available options across a table and Queensland jumped up like an ace out of the pack, the best and greatest choice in the country.
Oh, you bet the politicians can see the votes tumbling in their pocket with this.
Yet a commercial in-confidence deal means Premier Palaszczuk does not need to answer questions that her government paid the AFL north of $15 million to play the grand final at the Gabba.
Some believe the figure could be as high as $30 million.
Nor has the government explained its push for the grand final to be played as a perfectly timed lead-in to the election the next week.
Earlier this week, News Corp reported that part of the government’s submission, to host the game in Queensland, said: “Queensland can provide contingencies for the AFL for hosting the grand final on both the 17th and the 24th of October, with Queensland’s preference being the 24th of October.”
No explanation for why those dates were preferable.
What is certain is there would be no point playing the grand final on election day, October 31. It would be too late to influence voters.
It is almost offensive that the Premier and her Labor Party continue to speak of this as a sporting decision when it is little more than cynical politics, inflicted on unsuspecting voters, at a cost to them.
Queenslanders would do well to listen more to Tallis.
“It’s a COVID event,” he said.
“So there’s only 30,000 (allowed inside the ground), and our borders aren’t going to be open so we’re not going to get the windfall of anybody travelling up here and spending their money in Queensland or boosting the local community.”
In other words, there will be no tourism boom. The borders are still closed.
The AFL and Palaszczuk government have put a little lipstick on their pig, though, sending the AFL trophy on a promotional tour around the state.
Again, there is no financial benefit for Queenslanders. Queensland money is simply moving around the state of Queensland.
But unless Queenslanders choose to see it, as it is, the Premier will be re-elected on the goodwill of a game that has come to Queensland at a hidden cost to them.
We should not be too surprised as politics and sport have mixed at least since Adolf Hitler chose Berlin to showcase the might of the Aryan nation and Jesse Owens, bless him, showed Hitler what he could do with that.
The United States famously led a boycott of the Moscow Olympics to protest Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan. Russia replied four years later, boycotting Los Angeles.
For more than 45 years the entire Olympic movement was hijacked as a statement for the ideology of government.
Gold medals were supposed to reveal the superior way of life. Systematic doping of Eastern bloc athletes, later returned by the west, were the dirty secret employed to win the war.
Politics and sport even touched Australian shores at the 1956 Olympics when Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq boycotted Melbourne to protest an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula a month earlier.
Sport as a political tool is not uncommon.
In milder examples, federal and state governments have long funded stadiums ahead of elections to win votes but, in every case, the cost was disclosed.
The Palaszczuk government has made no disclosure for how much it paid the AFL to take the grand final to Brisbane in time for the election, as some believe.
It also works for the AFL, who knocked back bids from several AFL states to take the game to an NRL stronghold, which can only be assumed has the full of support of Palaszczuk, to win the hearts and minds of NRL fans.
Already the AFL has attempted to access the database for NRL members in Queensland.
At the same time as Palaszczuk went on the hard sell, closing its border and talking tough to win votes, she managed to do it without a hint of humanity.
She denied a young woman, Sarah Caisip, the opportunity to see her dying father last week because of COVID restrictions. When she finally relented, Caisip was allowed only to farewell her father, now in his coffin, 20 minutes after his funeral service ended.
Meanwhile, quietly, she allowed 400 AFL executives, staff and their families to fly into Queensland to be in the AFL hub.
They not only flew in, they drunk and swam around the hotel swimming pool, behaviour not allowed for anyone else who must endure the 14-day quarantine entirely inside their hotel room.
How could anyone, in good conscience, vote for a government like that?