Playing the race card in Townsville - again!

Dale Last moved his Mayoral campaign up a notch today just as it looks as if Lez will have to do a humiliating backflip on water rates.

And what a better way to move your campaign along than by playing the race card - it's an old trick, 'sucessfully' deployed by Mooney for years after he'd learnt it from the old CLP in the Territory.

Last's latest effort here in today's Bulletin shows him and his tactics for what they are:

• " ...investors were raising serious concerns about developing in the city." Last claims!  Of course, the investors are unnamed and, as such, the claim should be treated as nonsense.  I defy Last to produce one investor who's pulled-out of the inner-city (or any other part of the city) because of small groups of parkies - because of the lack of speed in increasing population densities in the inner-city or because of the lack of parking or simply because the inner-city can't compete with suburban shopping malls maybe, but because of a few parkies - no way.  If there was money to be made, they'd be there, parkies or no.



• The "...Urban Quarter (is) on its knees with businesses going broke because of the public disorder and the problems associated with this group of people there, constantly harassing people." Last proclaims.  This is not just nonsense, it's bullshit.  Businesses in the Urban Quarter are going broke because if its location.  Completely predictable before it opened, until the redevelopment of the old rail yards is complete there is not the population to support two supermarkets in the city centre.  With Coles (the most poorly located of the two) not able to attract enough punters into the building, the rest of the tenants in the Urban Quarter have been pushing it up hill ever since it opened.

Blaming bad planning and business decisions on a few parkies is laughable simply playing the race card.

As for the reporting of Last's campaign launch, the Bulletin could not have made him happier than with the headline "Shops 'go bust' in city of drunks".  Of course neither the Bully or Last were game to admit that if the city deserves such a tag it is because of what happens in Flinders Street most nights.

Had they looked at the source of most serious alcohol related crime and hospital admissions in the city - you won't find a few parkies - you'll find middle-class kids and boy soldiers (predominantly white) behaving badly and a few club owners (and supporters of Last and major advertisers in the Bully) getting rich! 

And of course they wouldn't see any irony (or is that contradiction) in the Bulletin running at least 1 1/2 pages of liquor adds today while also running Last's latest little race-card play