I saw Curtly McGee yesterday in a second hand store in Morayfield. I asked if he’d been released from prison or if he’d escaped. He told me to get fucked.
– Long time McGee adversary Matt Watson
Back in 2010, before Curtly McGee was about to go back to prison, I asked him to write a commentary on the Federal election. His story may have been one of the least read Ramble’s, but it summed up the situation succinctly.
With Queensland set to go to the polls on 24 March, I’ve asked McGee to do it again. Despite his chequered career and regular incarcerations, he remains qualified.
Back in the eighties McGee was a rising star of the ABC. In 1983 he was sent to prison for theft, assault, drug cultivation and dealing. McGee’s defence was flimsy.
‘Bundaberg is a boring town,’ he told the court. ‘So I had to create the news,’
McGee received three years. He’s spent ten of the past 30 years in prison, mainly for defamation. Far often too loose with the truth, McGee has been sued seventeen times, a record for an Australian journalist.
A month ago he was released from the Woodford Correctional Centre after serving eighteen months for defaming Bob Hawke. McGee’s story contained allegations of extra-marital sex and binge drinking. Hawke got angry. McGee’s defence, I thought Hawke was dead, didn’t impress the judge.
Although McGee was banned from reading and writing in jail, his skills haven’t deteriorated. This is what McGee has to say about the 2012 Queensland election…
When I was released from prison following the Hawke story, Matt Watson asked me to contribute another article on another election. I didn’t want to do it because no one reads The Ramble.
Following a few beers in a park while waiting for crisis accommodation, I thought I’d take Watson up on his offer, not just because he’d bought the beer.
I’m writing because I hate politics, all sides of it. The 2012 Queensland election offered the chance to release that hatred again.
I never understood how my colleagues stayed on the political rounds all those years. I did five years in Brisbane, three election campaigns, writing guff every day. Though politics is interesting, I never got caught up in the importance of it. I didn’t mind the leadership challenges, righteous outbursts and classic blunders, but it was never my preference.
Though most politicians are honest and work hard, I ended up disrespecting them, my cynicism overcoming the saccharine admiration. It didn’t matter their jobs are tough and they live life publicly. It made no difference how their decisions affect all of us. I just wasn’t interested.
At a press conference in 1992, I lost my calm. It was cold. Federal politician Toni Candy was demanding the government build an odour free sewerage treatment plant on the outskirts of Rockhampton.
‘Have you ever been to a sewerage treatment plant,’ I asked her. Candy hadn’t, so I decided to describe the smell.
‘When you speak shit, your breath smells like a sewerage treatment plant.’
Candy was shocked. She went red.
When I got back to the office, my editor was shocked too, and red.
‘I didn’t think you’d come back,’ he said.
‘Neither did I.’
‘Well,’ he grumbled. ‘If you don’t like it here, fuck off.’
So I did. I’ve written one political story since, at Watson’s behest.
Since 2008, though, I’ve been lecturing at Queensland University of Technology, a subject called Politically Scientific Journalism. I’ve shown the students how powerful journalists can be and how the public can be fooled.
Last year I created a bogus opinion poll that showed 70 percent of Australian’s believed Kevin Rudd was going to be replaced as Prime Minister by Julia Gillard. One of my students created a website called Dynamic Surveys. I sent the media a press release and link to the website.
The fake data caused major panic. The mining industry went nuts. The opposition leader, I can’t remember his name, spoke intelligently for a while, without mentioning lycra and speedos. The fake data put the government under immense pressure. Suddenly the public wanted change. Two weeks later Rudd was gone.
Gillard became Prime Minister because of a university research project.
Amazing how politics works. What’s more amazing is how journalism works, especially when it’s done without ethics.
I was disgusted when Gillard chastised the media last year, don’t write crap, during her famous press gallery performance. What a hypocrite. She knows, with great accuracy, she’s only Prime Minister because of my bullshit poll.
Unfortunately, the bullshit poll got me in trouble. After being charged with knowingly deceiving the public, I was sacked by QUT. Given my history, I pled guilty. Sentencing is in two weeks, probably another six months in prison.
I’ve been banned from reading or writing for two years.
Getting sent to prison for knowingly deceiving the public seems absurd. Politicians get paid to knowingly deceive the public.
As I’ve already asserted, I hate politics, but, like most people, I have an opinion. This election will go down in history as the Great Campaign Stuff Up.
The 2012 election campaign has been a disaster for Anna Bligh and the Labor party. Midway through last year, Bligh declared families were sacrosanct. She must’ve meant Labor families.
A few months after making that pledge, Bligh attacked. During the last week of parliament in December, she shrieked about Campbell Newman’s wife, brother in-law and father in-law. According to Bligh, they were being investigated by the FBI, and Newman could conceivably go to jail.
Bligh later admitted she’d been too passionate. Without parliamentary privilege, she could’ve faced defamation charges. I know all about those.
Newman’s in-laws are rich. They’re involved with property development. As Brisbane City Council Lord Mayor, Newman was accused of making favourable decisions in his extended family’s interests. The Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) carried out three independent investigations and exonerated Newman each time.
Throughout the first three weeks of the campaign, Bligh attacked Newman’s links to developers, largely on allegations of impropriety over donations totalling $72,000. Newman says he’s clean, but those donations were made by seven different companies controlled by developer Philip Usher.
It sounded odd. Newman set a basic defence, I only met him once, but once is often enough. People get naked together after meeting once. A lot can be achieved after meeting once.
On Thursday, 15 May, Bligh called a press conference to make another revelation about Newman’s links to Usher. According to Bligh, while Usher’s Woolloongabba development was being assessed by the Brisbane City Council, he ran a business from an address linked to Newman’s in-laws.
The address, unfortunately for Bligh, was a registered office for about 300 companies – Usher’s was one of those. At that moment, journalists stopped taking Bligh seriously.
Her campaign strategy has been dreadful. Negativity has ruined any chance of victory. She has been exposed as desperate, focusing on Newman rather than policy. It’s also exposed the limitations of her team. They’ve learned nothing from campaigns past.
Back in January 2009, the LNP led the opinion polls. Their leader back then was Lawrence Springborg. The polls gave Springborg confidence. Leading into the election, during a press conference after parliament, Springborg said he would make 12,000 public servants de-necessary if he won the election.
The unlosable election was lost the moment Springborg uttered those words.
Bligh must’ve instantly doubled over with laughter. To win, all she had to do was protect the public service. In 2009, her election campaign was positive. She was going to rebuild Queensland by creating jobs, not making people de-necessary.
Bligh will look back on this campaign with regret. She will find out the hardest part about the future is leaving the past behind.
Despite the massive building program, new roads, hospitals, schools and bridges, she went too hard at Newman, not the LNP’s policies or the fact they’ve been out of government for fourteen years. Bligh should’ve been bragging about the building program, the jobs she created, the hospitals rebuilt.
Instead, all her achievements have been wasted. Her negativity annoyed people.
The LNP remembered hard lessons from 2009. Instead of recycling, they employed a proven politician to lead the party. Newman made a lot of mileage from Brisbane’s floods, particularly with the Mud Army. He had credibility.
Newman must’ve hated the continued scrutiny about his family affairs, butside from the CMC investigations, there have been few gaffs during their campaign.
Ashgrove is crucial. It makes the battle for power in 2012 unique. If Newman doesn’t win the seat, he can’t lead Queensland, or so he says.
The election campaign has had predictable moments, grandiose promises of new hospitals, early learning centres, helicopters and extra police. These pledges will cost millions. Right now, they’re mostly empty, unfunded promises.
Newman says he’ll fix health, the police, fix education, fix obesity and be tougher on criminals. Most importantly, Newman says he’ll eradicate $85 billion in debt and, in the process, fix Queensland.
Bligh says she’s been fixing Queensland for years. The state’s hospitals, from Cairns to the Gold Coast, have undergone major upgrades. Labor, in the past fourteen years, has built police stations, fire stations, schools, train stations, roads and bridges. The state has undergone the biggest building program in history, hence the $85 billion debt.
If she’s re-elected, Bligh says all Queenslanders will economic prosperity that’s just around the corner. She might’ve said light at the end of the tunnel, or all the hard work will be worth it.
The cliché doesn’t matter. I’m sick of hearing Newman’s promises and Bligh’s pleas.
Blah blah blah.
They can say what they want. It hardly matters what they say. Elections are reduced to personalities. On Saturday 24 March, millions of people will vote for Bligh because they don’t like Newman. They’ll sink their ballot for Newman because they hate Bligh.
Elections are that simple. They’re not decided by policy, but by personality. On Saturday, many Queenslanders will vote by criticism, dislike instead of policies.
Labor under Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh did great things for Queensland. The building program has been impressive. Electorates, though, remember the failures. There has been too much embarrassment.
The Traveston Crossing dam fiasco, the Queensland Health payroll debacle, Joel Barlow and his fraud, the water grid and desalination plants cost more than a billion dollars. These were massive stuff-ups, money for nothing.
There are matters of trust one must consider, and that’s where I’m having real issues. Bligh’s asset sales were unpopular. Many Queenslanders hated her for it. She rebounded during the floods, but emotions can cause misjudgements. It didn’t take long for the polls to sag.
Newman has his own issues with trust. CMC investigations don’t help. Based on a personal incident that occurred in 2008, I can’t trust him and never will. When Newman was Mayor, a former staffer asked me how I felt about cover-ups.
‘The kind that never get found out,’ I said.
‘They’re the best kind,’ he said.
That’s a true story. It left me wondering what kind of office Newman was running.
It appears he’ll now be running the State office…
In the past week, Bligh has changed strategy, from attack to pragmatism. She had to, but it’s too late. Only a fool would believe in victory now. Most polls suggest annihilation, Labor winning ten to fifteen seats. Bligh’s latest ads warn Queenslanders not to give too much power to Newman.
When you lodge your vote on Saturday, don’t be conned into thinking life is going to suddenly be easier if your choice of party wins. There will be subtle changes, but nothing dramatic.
If the LNP wins government, don’t expect utility bills to get cheaper. Food won’t be cheaper. The government won’t give out free air conditioners. Traffic congestion won’t suddenly disappear. Trains still won’t run on time. Chunks of income will be spent on electricity, water, public transport and toll roads.
Life will not be cheaper or easier. It can’t be.
Unions will still ask for more teachers, police, paramedics, firemen and medical professionals. The mining industry won’t go away, no matter the damage it causes to the environment.
Nothing will hardly change, and if you don’t believe me, send Watson and email and tell him how your life is going to change, if the government changes or stays the same.
Before you lodge your vote, ask yourself a hypothetical question; what do you want from this government?
What do you really want?
When you know the answer, make your marks.
