Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I want to use this adjournment debate in the Senate to congratulate a number of the new mayors that have been elected in Queensland following the local government elections on Saturday.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Conroy interjecting—

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for the interjection, Senator Conroy. Perhaps you knew what I was going to say. Perhaps the most pleasing result in Queensland was that the 33-year-old Labor administration in Townsville was at last thrown out on its ear. Tony Mooney, the Labor mayor for the last 17 years, was thrashed at the polls by the former mayor of the previous adjoining council, Thuringowa City Council, Councillor Les Tyrell. He romped it in in the new combined Townsville City Council. I am particularly delighted that we have at last got rid of that last bastion of the Labor Party in local government in Queensland. My joy is extended even further by the fact that a former employee of mine, my previous media adviser David Crisafulli, has topped the poll for the councillors in the new Townsville City Council. He is obviously destined for a long career in local government in Queensland.

The result in Townsville was quite remarkable. The Labor Party there had been accused of being part of the big end of town. There were a lot of rumours circulating about a lot of the developments in Townsville over the years. The former Labor mayor—who had done so much to encourage the Chinese Aluminium Company, CHALCO, to Townsville as opposed to Bowen or Gladstone—suddenly, no doubt on the back of opinion polling by Mr Rudd’s advisers who were up in Townsville running the Labor campaign, a week before the election had an enormous about-face on the CHALCO refinery. He suddenly decided, after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of ratepayers’ money to get CHALCO into Townsville, that CHALCO was no good. That was just the way it was. I have to say that I wish Tony Mooney well in his life hereafter. There is a suggestion that he will move to Brisbane and run for Pat Purcell’s seat of Bulimba when Mr Purcell resigns because of his admission of belting up his public servants—physically belting them. He has been forced to resign as a minister, and I suspect he will not be around for much longer.

There are suggestions that Tony Mooney will go down to Brisbane and continue his career in the Labor Party—as they do in the Labor Party; they parachute people from North Queensland into Brisbane and so forth. But I have no ill feeling towards Tony Mooney; he always, I thought, had the interests of Townsville at heart. He was always very inclusive in a lot of things he did. He was a skilful Labor politician. We have a lot of them in Queensland—for example, Peter Beattie. He of course from today has taken on a $200,000-a-year job as the Queensland trade representative in the United States. Talk about jobs for the boys—the Labor Party knows no bounds when it comes to that. But I think Tony Mooney did try hard for Townsville. He did a lot of good things. The rejuvenation of The Strand will go down as a lasting legacy to Tony Mooney. On a personal note I sympathise for him, but on a broader Townsville level I am delighted to see the end of the Labor Party administration and the advent of a community based group that will now run the council in Townsville.

Of course it did not stop there. Campbell Newman, the Liberal Lord Mayor of Brisbane, had a resounding victory in Brisbane. It was quite remarkable, particularly when you think about the fortunes of the Liberal Party in Queensland in recent years. Campbell has had a wonderful victory. Mr President, of course you know that Campbell Newman is the son of our former colleague Jocelyn Newman, a very distinguished senator and minister for many years. Campbell certainly has the political nous of both his mother and his father and it is great to see that the people of Brisbane have come to him so conclusively in the last election. I am delighted that, for the first time, Campbell will have a team that will support what he does. We have had in Brisbane for the last four years this situation where there was a Liberal Lord Mayor but his cabinet was made up of Labor Party politicians. It was just unworkable. In spite of that Campbell Newman, with his can-do approach, was still able to move Brisbane forward. We can only excitedly anticipate how he will be able to do better for Brisbane now that he has a team around him that will be able to work with him rather than against him. So it was a magnificent victory there for the team of Liberals in the Brisbane City Council.

I want to recognise the demise of Ron McCulloch, a character in Mt Isa, a nice enough sort of fellow. The fact that he was a Labor man never really made me hesitate with Ron. He was a good fellow. But again I am pleased to see another Labor Party mayor being thrown out and replaced by a community man, John Maloney, in the election in Mount Isa. In the new Cassowary Coast Council Bill Shannon has romped it in. Bill is a really good fellow, a great friend of Chris Gallus, who many of us might remember from this area. Chris now is a part-time resident of Mission Beach and Bill Shannon is a nearby neighbour. It was good to see Bill get up there. Tom Gilmore, an ex-minister in the state government, an ex-National Party minister, has won the Tablelands, the new council behind Cairns on the Atherton Tableland. Congratulations to Tom. Col Meng has swept the pool in Mackay. Another great man, he had been chairman of the area consultative committee in Mackay for many a year.

Peter Taylor is the new mayor of the enlarged Toowoomba City Council—the Downs City Council, I think it is now called. Peter is a great guy, a former mayor of Jondaryan, a very good and sound person. It is great to see Peter there as the new mayor for that very important part of Queensland. Bob Abbot was the mayor of Noosa Shire, another shire that was forcibly amalgamated by the state Labor government, the smallest of the three councils that were amalgamated on the Sunshine Coast. Bob Abbot has come through and had a resounding victory there. John Brent, former chairman of the Boonah Shire, in the new amalgamated council has won out there. Again, John is a good fellow. He used to be a vice-president of the National Party and that sometimes makes me hesitate a bit. Notwithstanding that, John was always a great man, always a great supporter of mine, and I of him, and it is great to see him now mayor of that new enlarged council. John Wharton out in the Richmond Shire has been there for a long time, easily voted back in, and congratulations to John. A number of mayors from councils out in the west have retained their mayoralties.

It is interesting to remember how the state Labor government forcibly amalgamated a lot of these councils. They put in these coordinating committees to sort of do the transition—stacked with union hacks, I have to say. They would have a couple of elected councillors from each of the amalgamated councils plus they parachuted in unionists to run the transition to the new councils. It is interesting that in the case of most of these amalgamated councils, which the Labor Party thought they would win, they have gone to non-Labor mayors and non-Labor teams. I think there is a lesson in that for the arrogance of the Labor government in Queensland, and indeed a lesson for Labor governments around the states that seem to be very arrogant in the way they act. The people of Queensland last Saturday spoke at a local government level and have resoundingly elected across the state people who were not involved with the Labor Party—people who were there for the interests of the community rather than the interests of the Labor Party. To all of those who were elected on Saturday, I offer my sincere congratulations and wish them all the best for the future.