Rocking the suburbs: Labor’s plan to win back City Hall

He sits in the Opposition Lounge, nestled in Brisbane’s City Hall, declaring with confidence he does not mind being the underdog.

On the contrary, Jared Cassidy holds the firm belief a scrappy upstart – as he calls it – with the right priorities and the right ideals has a pretty good shot at winning.

Opposition Leader Jared Cassidy. Credit: Fairfax Media

And besides, the leader of Brisbane’s Labor councillors believes 5500 votes are all that stand between his party overthrowing lord mayor Adrian Schrinner’s administration.

Just 5500 votes.

Labor hasn’t had someone wear the mayoral robes in City Hall since Tim Quinn, who took over from long-serving lord mayor Jim Soorley in 2003.

Since then, the Liberals have benefitted from the popular Campbell Newman era and more recently Graham Quirk, but Labor’s success has largely been at a state level, not local government.

Those who have challenged the LNP stronghold include Labor mayoral candidates Pat Condren – who had a determined ‘stop the rorts’ campaign in 2020 – and his predecessors Rod Harding and Ray Smith.

Schrinner remains popular and is becoming more powerful, particularly now Brisbane has secured the 2032 Olympics.

But the city may turn, the Opposition Leader postulates, as suburban residents become fed up with their neighbourhoods being left behind, feeling overlooked as development continues apace in the inner city.

“I don’t think people look to their council as being a big part of life now,” Cassidy says.

“There’s no great leadership at the moment.

Former Brisbane lord mayor Jim Soorley.Credit: Not for syndication

“Council will always roll on ... but the opportunity you have in this role ... is to make a really big difference in your city.

“Your vision, I think, needs to be one about the people of Brisbane.”

The 33-year-old promises a Labor council would pivot the city back to the ideals of the Soorley and Clem Jones days, with an unashamed laser-like focus on suburban Brisbane.

“They certainly introduced things – Soorley introduced CityCats and opened up the river – but it was always a view for all people, never an exclusive thing when they did it in the inner city,” he says.

The late Brisbane lord mayor Clem Jones (centre) during a 1975 Commonwealth Games Association meeting at the NSW Leagues Club in Sydney to decide the place for the 1982 Games.Credit: Antonin Cermak/Fairfax Media

“Brisbane, when Clem Jones became mayor, was just a dirty, dusty, big old country town, you know? People didn’t really have toilets in their houses, no sewers, most of the roads when you got out north of Bowen Hills or Albion were dirt roads.

“All those sorts of basics that actually make a city more liveable for working people and that’s what Labor administration has always been about – unashamedly about people, residents, about making suburbs more liveable for everyday Brisbane people. That’s very much what we’re about.

“Instead of having these glitzy, easy to announce, easy to put in newsletter projects, like the Brisbane Metro and the five green bridges – which are now three green bridges – and overcooked projects like Kingsford Smith Drive ... all that necessarily means is that people are getting the idea they’re paying more and getting less in the suburbs.”

Having the Olympics and Paralympics in Brisbane could be a catalyst for changing the way governments invest in the people, Cassidy suggests, particularly around community sport.

Infrastructure investment for the Brisbane Olympics is tipped to boost property prices.Credit: Albert Perez/Getty Images

“At the moment, I’ve got [sports] clubs that, you know, the carpets are ripped up and the roofs are falling in and they cross their fingers when they turn the lights on for night games and hope they work and they just barely get through.”

Liveability, at its basic level, correlates with housing, education, and social disadvantage, he says.

In Cassidy’s ward of Deagon in Brisbane’s north, the impacts of housing affordability can be seen across the board.

In Shorncliffe, where he grew up with a father who worked for Queensland Rail and a mother who worked in phlebotomy at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, the struggles of working class are evident, he says.

Everywhere I go, everything I see, points to the fact that one of the biggest issues facing us in Brisbane ... is housing security, economic security generally.

Jared Cassidy

“A lot of people think Shorncliffe is a very ritzy suburb, but it’s a great example of an interventionist government model of providing a mixed community, so there’s a whole lot of public housing in among the million-dollar houses,” he says.

“There’s literally millionaires and paupers living alongside each other, which actually makes the community more dynamic.

“There is a reason Shorncliffe is not Ascot, it’s because of that mix.”

Closer to the city, he pinpoints northern suburb Zillmere as one of the most socially disadvantaged.

Cassidy on his dad’s motorbike in his family’s Shorncliffe backyard with Winny the German shepherd.

“There’s a measure of social advantage or disadvantage in terms of quintiles...the bottom quintile, 20 per cent of people are basically in poverty. Fifty per cent of the people who live in Zillmere are in that bottom quintile,” Cassidy says.

“Education is power, having good public schools that give everyone great opportunities is so important.

“If a kid is growing up in a back seat of a car or couch-surfing or living in emergency accommodation with predominantly – usually their mother – a single parent, moving all the time, they can’t get a start in life. That becomes generational disadvantage.”

A safe and secure home, Cassidy says, is fundamental for children.

“I see it in my job now, the precariousness of people’s economic security, rising inequality generally. There’s a whole lot of wealth going on fewer and fewer people and the vast majority of people aren’t benefiting from economic growth at the moment, which is a dangerous thing.”

Cassidy recalls his time working for Wayne Swan when Swan was the federal Treasurer as the world was left reeling by the disastrous Global Financial Crisis.

“He talked about the economic response to the GFC and so much of it was developed and influenced by sitting on the back deck of his home in Kedron talking through that in suburban Brisbane and being out hearing those real-life stories from people,” he says.

The global economic situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is not dissimilar even to the postwar era, Cassidy says, citing former British prime minister Winston Churchill as one of the great leaders of the time – but not for his party affiliation.

“Not a Labor guy in any sense,” he laughs. “But when you look at the way in which he was able to lead a nation, bring a fractured parliament together and provide that single point of leadership, not just his country, but the world needed at the time.

I think largely Australia has come out of it (COVID-19) very well because the leadership the state premiers provided.

Jared Cassidy

“To be able to weaponise the English language, can be quite amazing.”

Leadership and a key vision in Brisbane would create a successful administration, Cassidy says.

Which brings the Opposition Leader to the man who wears the robes at present.

“I don’t hate the guy,” Cassidy laughs, when asked about Cr Schrinner.

“I really don’t have particularly strong feelings in that way. I think he lacks integrity and that’s probably worse than saying I hate him, I suspect.

“I’m not sure what he stands for. I’m not sure what his vision of Brisbane is.

“I just really don’t know what he’s about. I think people knew what Campbell Newman was about, whether they agreed with it or not, he had at least a sort of vision and a narrative.”

At a state level, Cassidy says Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will leave a lasting legacy for her strong response to the pandemic that “put people first, not themselves, as a government”, despite “intense campaigning and bullying from the national government”.

“All the evidence points to an economic and social recovery – a community recovery – if there’s a strong health response. It naturally follows that. We see it around the world.

“Our Labor vision is all about the people.”