QUEENSLAND politics has flipped around in a polar reversal
this year, and we’re still trying to get a grip on the churning state of the Newman
State.
To explain it all to the Gen X and Gen Y kiddies, some of Queensland’s
Baby Boomers are sagely pointing to Bjelke-Petersen as a political ancestor to the
Premier.
But history provides a much more vivid political doppelganger for Campbell Newman.
Perhaps the Premier Newman most resembles is Thomas McIlwraith,
a mercurial Scotsman who was in charge from 1879 to 1883.
Both are engineers, both burn to deliver big engineering
projects as political leaders, and their corporate-style political outlooks are
surprisingly similar.
The question is: will Newman’s path go the same way as that
of McIlwraith?
Let’s look at the similarities of the two men.
Early Life As Engineers.
 |
| Thomas McIlwraith. Courtesy Wikipedia |
In Queensland, they started as outsiders – but of place, not
class.
McIlwraith was born in Ayr in
Scotland, and moved to Queensland at the age of forty.
Newman was raised in Canberra and Tasmania,
and moved to Queensland in his thirties.
Their prosperous and privileged backgrounds ensured they
slotted into Queensland’s upper classes when they arrived. McIlwraith was the son of a shipowner, Newman
is the son of two Liberal Federal ministers.
Both became king of the jungle after starting as engineer –businessmen,
a breed not often seen on the political savannah.
McIlwraith was more the entrepreneur who formed pastoral and
land development companies, and speculated in copper mining, brewing and
sugar. Newman is more the manager, once managing
operations at the agribusiness Grainco, and was a consultant in “bulk commodity
logistics.”
Both commenced working life as civil engineers. McIlwraith studied civil engineering at Glasgow
University, and Newman got his degree in civil engineering from Royal Military
College Duntroon.
And both carried their engineering enthusiasms into
office. McIlwraith’s great obsession was
railways. He started as a railway
engineer, and reached his political Stalingrad when he tried to create a transcontinental
railway through the Queensland outback.
For Campbell Newman, it is tunnels and bridges.
Engineering As Political
Character: The Burn to Build
Here we delve into the “political
character” realm. Neither Newman nor
McIlwraith are timid, and both display a streak of audacity.
 |
| Campbell Newman, copyright Brian Cassey |
Both are firmly fixated on grandiose
engineering schemes to deliver a political outcome, and both stick to these
ideas in a strong, jarring manner.
And whilst both are advocates of private enterprise, they
rely on the public purse to fund these projects.
Raymond Evans writes that public debt hit 50 million pounds
under McIlwraith. This debt figure vastly
outweighed the total productive value of the colony, and was the highest per
capita debt in the British Empire.
More than half of the borrowings were expended on railways.
At Brisbane City Council under Campbell Newman, debt has
reached $2.1 billion whilst revenue sits at $2 billion, leaving Council with a
debt / revenue ratio of over 100%.
Political Outlook and
Philosophy
Besides their drive to deliver expensive civil engineering
projects as political panaceas, there are many striking similarities is in
their political philosophies.
One. Both see the business
of government as helping business.
Raymond Evans describes how McIlwraith “facilitated the entry of
corporate capitalism into the colony with his expansive laissez faire approach”.
Like his antecedent, Newman certainly wants to rein in
government so as to unleash business activity.
He favours removing strictures from the EPA and other government
agencies on land development.
Two. There is a strange
lack of empathy for Struggle Street. It
was written that McIlwraith “lacked that burning sense of humanity and passion
against injustice”, and instead was committed to a narrowly conceived notion of
success built on business enterprise.
It was Housing Minister Flegg, not Newman, who sent out brusque
and ill-judged letters to public housing tenants stating they may have to share
or look at moving.
But the fact that Newman made no empathetic response to the subsequent furore (did he think it
was a good idea or did he even care?) convinced many public housing tenants
that they simply did not register on Newman’s political radar.
Both Premiers are judged not for actual statements they made,
but the lack of them.
Those For and Those
Opposed
Three. For both men,
the political world is divided into people for them, and against them. Those against them earn their continual
enmity.
Read the article in The
Monthly by Nick Bryant on how Newman needlessly bristled when confronted by
Greens in street campaigning in Ashgrove.
Byrant reveals Newman’s deep seated enmity towards Bligh, but strangely,
not towards Beattie.
McIlwraith’s ministers were desperate not to fall on the side
of “the outsiders”. According to the Queensland Worker newspaper, his
ministers would “count his approbation for anything they do. They yearn for his smile … and his nod of
approval fills and thrills them with the most exquisite delight”.
Sound familiar?
Four. There is forcefulness
in their political character, almost to the point of recklessness. The Australian
Dictionary of Biography wrote that McIlwraith had a “habit of getting his
own way through sheer force of character.”
That could apply to Newman, who doggedly implemented and
stuck with his yellow bike scheme, even though it will cost at least four times
the $2.2 million over four years originally budgeted for it.
McIlwraith’s Fate,
Newman’s Lesson
How it all ended for McIlwraith may be the true lesson that
everyone is looking for here.
He was first Premier from 1879 to 1883, and lost the election
to rival Samuel Griffith. Why? McIlwraith struck political rocks as he
desperately searched for innovative ways to fund his infrastructure and colonial
development program.
He wanted to bring in “coolie labourers” and fund his
transcontinental railway through excessively generous land grants to private
railway companies.
McIlwraith was only defeated because of a split in
conservative ruling class ranks.
Traditional pastoralists were horrified by his planned creation of
powerful landed railway companies in their own fiefdom.
But he was also opposed by a working class horrified at waves
of coloured workers competing for their jobs.
These were big, unusual projects. McIlwraith was convinced of his own vision, was
uncompromising, and was brittle when faced with criticism.
The criticism probably made him an even more entrenched
proponent of his project, even when its flaws and economic failings become more
obvious.
Strangely, McIlwraith can be characterised as having a crash
or crash through approach, like Whitlam.
It is far too early to say if Newman has the same
characteristic, or will suffer the same fate as these two predecessors. But there are interesting similarities between
them all.
If in future years we are looking at where it all went wrong
for Newman, we may wonder why we did not pay closer attention to the career arc
of McIlwraith.
Sources.
A History of
Queensland, Raymond Evans, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne 2007.
“Thomas McIlwraith: A Colonial Entrepreneur”, DB Waterson,
in Queensland Political Portraits
1859-1952, edited DJ Murphy and RB Joyce, University of Queensland Press, St
Lucia 1978.
