Newmania: Six Months Out

If a day is a long time in politics, the six or so months between now and the next Queensland election is an eternity. Weekend polling has the renascent ALP candidate Kate Jones sitting comfortably ahead of Premier Campbell Newman, while the latest Newspoll is positive for the LNP. Translated to an election result, Queensland would retain its LNP Government, but without figurehead Campbell Newman. 

Currently, the LNP hold Ashgrove with a 5.7% margin. In Queensland, in 2015, that’s probably small enough to class it as marginal, particularly in light of recent by-election swings of near 20% away from the LNP. 

Senior LNP QLD boss Bruce McIver must be feeling some stress, despite the stubborn insistence from a column of current ministers that their leader will win Ashgrove. Local Government Minister David Crisafulli, Racing Minister Steve Dickson, Tourism Minister Jann Stuckey, Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek and others all sang from the party hymn-sheet yesterday: voters can judge Mr Newman on his strong performance as premier blah blah blah. Even the Australian has Newman losing to the ALP’s Kate Jones, although that little prediction is buried in paragraph 4. 

But what happens to Campbell Newman if Ashgrove voters don’t like his track record of savage cuts to services, the arts, and environmental programmes, his antagonistic approach to problems with unions, bikies and security, and his perceived arrogance?

The reality that Campbell Newman might lose his seat is one that must be faced, regardless of what the LNP want to believe. If the LNP state bosses Bruce McIver and Gary Spence aren’t chained to a whiteboard right now, devising Plan B, they’re completely crackers.

The first item for the whiteboard should be determining just how important Campbell Newman is to the Queensland LNP. He was brought into state parliament to provide leadership into the 2012 election. After years in Opposition, and with a series of failed leaders behind them, the LNP needed a new leader with name recognition and a track record who could get them into Government. He’s done that.

Is he still useful to the party? His personal popularity has been sinking for most of his term as premier, and his lead over Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszcuk as preferred Premier owes as much to Ms Palaszczuk’s blandness as it does to anything positive Newman may have done. Does the LNP still need Newman to lead them to victory?

The answer is probably yes, because without Newman, the LNP in Queensland is basically the same LNP that failed time and time again in opposition, albeit with a single term of governmental experience.

McIver and Co are certainly not afraid to parachute a candidate into a safe-ish seat, so should they move Newman out of Ashgrove now into a safer seat? . In fairness, Premier Newman himself has ruled out playing electoral hopscotch. He says he is committed to Ashgrove. 

On paper, a move is an option, but an option with consequences in the form of undecided voters who would see the move through cynical eyes. No electorate would not look fondly on a premier bumping an established local member to remain in power, and particularly not in a seat which was any distance from the Newman family home in inner-city Brisbane. There aren’t that many safe LNP seats close to centre of Brisbane from which to choose.

Just playing the hypothetical card for a moment, the most likely casualty in the event of a seat switch would still be Moggill, held by hapless former state Liberal leader Dr Bruce Flegg. Since the LNP came to power just two and a half years ago, Dr Flegg has attempted to fight off rumours that he continued practising as a GP while he was also Minister of Housing and Public Works. He’s also been engaged in very public spats with various members of his staff. It’s possible that the LNP might be glad to see the back of the negative headlines he generates.

Other candidates to step aside should Newman take up musical chairs may include Tracy Davis, currently Member for Aspley and Minister for Communities, Child Safety and Disability Services. Ms Davis’s single term in government hasn’t been smooth sailing either, with controversies around her daughter’s drug problems while working for yet another LNP Minister, Ros Bates.

The other possible shuffle would be Newman moving to Tim Nicholls’ seat of Clayfield, but it’s unlikely that the LNP would consider punting the Treasurer.

The red herring could be a move to Townsville where Campbell Newman’s experience as an Army man might work in the garrison town. The problem there is that the current member is John Hathaway, another former Army Officer, so any benefit would be negligible.

If Newman chooses to fight to Ashgrove, as he says he will, and he loses, the LNP must consider who is next in line to lead the state. The ReachTEL poll conducted over the past weekend asked the question about potential LNP leaders, but left Newman in the mix. The next most popular, after Campbell Newman, was Lawrence Springborg, who has lead the National Party to two electoral defeats in Queensland. A career politician from the National Party side of the LNP merger, he is unpopular in Brisbane, and the probability of Mr Springborg as potential Premier could cost the LNP several marginal seats in Brisbane. 

Other names to emerge from the ReachTEL poll were current Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney, Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek, Treasurer Tim Nicholls and Attorney General Jarrod Bleijie. Of the four also-rans, Langbroek fared best with 13.3%.

For now at least, the LNP seem to be backing Newman. It paid off last time, but the election is at least six months away. Six months out from the 2012 election, when ReachTEL conducted a similar poll in Ashgrove, Mr Newman’s primary vote was close to 20% ahead of Ms Jones. This time around, he doesn’t have that advantage. 

A Plan for the Future

It seems that the Queensland Government has a plan for the future. Right now, their plan for the future is to add the words “and a plan for the future” to their branding. The obvious question is “why” – and the only answer is to tie the Newman-led government’s branding to that of the LNP prior to the election campaign. The message is this government has the plan, so don’t change the government. 

The real advantage, though, is not only in the wording. The new branding will appear on official state government stationery, websites and even offices in the six month lead-up to the election. Regardless of how clever an opposition campaign might be, or how much money is spent to distribute it, it can’t compete with the government’s taxpayer-funded initiative.

It’s a smart, subtle tool to bolster the LNP vote, before the campaign proper has commenced.

Traditionally, state slogans have been vaguely descriptive, without any political governmental reference points. State slogans – as opposed to political slogans – are just a few words that appear on state letterheads, websites and licence plate to evoke images, memories and emotions. Victoria was The Garden State and The Place to Be, New South Wales used The First State, The Premier State and Towards 2000, South Australia was The Festival State and Tasmania’s most famous slogan was The Apple Isle. Note the absence of verbs.

In contrast, political slogans may be slightly longer and usually contain a statement of values or intent, an aspiration or an urge to action: Turn on the Lights (Federal Liberal campaign, 1975, after Whitlam dismissal), Keep the Bastards Honest (Democrats), Real Change for NSW (NSW 2011) and Go for Growth (Liberal/Howard).

The last Queensland election, in 2011, was a lopsided tussle between the LNP’s all-conquering “Can-Do” campaign, which completely overshadowed the party’s official “Time for Change” campaign, versus the Queensland Labor’s slogan, which despite being less than three years old, has been comprehensively forgotten.

The Queensland LNP is hoping their branding for 2015 won't be forgotten as quickly. According to the ABC, a spokesman for the Premier's Department confirmed that the addition to the government’s tagline is a deliberate attempt by the Newman government to move attention away from the past. 

"The additional line reflects this Government's strong plan for a bright future and reflects the state's 30 year vision for the state, the Queensland Plan," the spokesman said.

The unthinking spokesman also admitted that the new slogan is about the LNP Government, and not about the state of Queensland.

A spokesman for Premier Campbell Newman said the new catchphrase drew attention to the LNP's "strong plan" for Queensland.

After a cursory look at some Queensland government websites this morning, the enhanced tag line was nowhere to be seen. The Queensland Government’s extensive online guide to branding does not mention the new tagline, and was last updated 18 months ago.

Changing branding is always an expensive exercise – consider the hours involved in updating every page of every government website, the cost of reprinting every piece of printed material – from business cards to brochures to forms to letterhead and envelopes to posters – plus signage on buildings and building sites, departmental cars, asset labels, road signs…strictly speaking, everything which carries the logo would need to be changed. Because this change is officially a government change, taxpayers will pay, despite the benefit going to LNP’s re-election campaign.

This is the second change to state branding since the LNP government won power less than three years ago. The existing tag line “Great State. Great Opportunity.” was introduced shortly after the Newman government came to office, when they replaced the famous Beattie Burger logo with the traditional Queensland crest.

Early indications are that the 2015 Queensland election slogans will follow tradition. The LNP website homepage is perilously close to the new tagline being added to the state logo; the state branding omits the word “strong”, which must test well with LNP members – consider the recent “Strong Choices” market research exercise.

The ALP appears to favour the blandly generic “for Queenslanders”…which may have been the slogan used in 2012’s catastrophic loss to the Can-Do team. Who can remember? Palmer United Party’s “Bringing People Together” and “Reunite the Nation” vie for warm and fuzzy attention, and the Greens favour the predictable “Make a Difference for Tomorrow”. These slogans may all change during the next few months.

The one thing we know, six months out, is that the Newman LNP government has a plan for the future, and that plan is to win re-election in 2015.

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