Comment: The standard tack of public intimidation over preferences as demonstrated by The Courier-Mail in the lead-up to the 1998 State Elections is repeated once again against the Liberal Party - when they considered a preference swap in the 2000 state by-election in Bundamba.
The Courier-Mail is little more than a Labor Party broadsheet - unfortunately ina "one horse" town... political opponents are cannon fodder in a society where democracy was sacrified on Murderoch's alter long, long ago.
Matthew Franklin, The Courier-Mail 8th January 2000
Just when you thought it was safe to pack away the political straight jackets, the Queensland Liberal Party has shown it is capable of teetering on the edge of madness.
This week, the Liberals almost spun out of control. Wise heads in the party were about to call the doctor. And all this just when the party was starting to resemble a reasonable political operation.
The cause of the madness was the Liberals' familiar demon - preferences. This week they left open the door to a possible exchange of preferences with the so-called City Country Alliance - a rag tag new party made up of the bedraggled remnants of the old Pauline Hanson's One Nation party.
The notion was sheer craziness.
Remember the madness that engulfed the troubled Liberals during the 1988 State election when they delivered their electoral preferences to One Nation ahead of the Liberal Party?
In case anyone has forgotten, Hanson's party opposed multiculturalism and had peculiar prejudices about Aborigines and immigration.
When the Joan Sheldon-led Liberals put One Nation ahead of Labor on how-to-vote cards their moderate city supporters - true liberals who live and let live flocked to the Labor party.
A Peter Beattie-led Labor government was the result.
With One Nation now a rabble trying to rise from the political dead, the Liberal party was prepared to countenance a new preference deal in the upcoming by-election for the Ipswich-based seat of Bundamba, vacated by retiring Bob Gibbs.
Liberal leader David Watson said mid-week he was encouraged by CCA leader Bill Feldman's attempts to distance himself from Hanson's racist rhetoric. And party president Con Galtos said he would not pre-empt the party's management committee by ruling anything in or out.
Watson and Galtos are honest and good men. But they dropped the ball badly by failing to show leadership.
By Thursday an internal party backlash caused good sense to prevail. The pair realised the folly of even thinking about a preference deal.
By not repudiating the CCA outright they had played straight into the hands of the Labor Party.
It was only 18 months ago that Feldman and his colleagues were backing all types of hateful Hansonist dogmatic nonsense. Maybe they have reconsidered. Maybe they now understand that Aborigines receive government assistance because their communities need it, not because they are lazy.
Maybe they have learned that Australia is not being swamped by Asians. In fact, it is laudable that Feldman and his colleagues seek to establish a new niche. Good luck to them and let's hope they carve out a reasonable policy stance and serve their constituents well.
The issue here is not the CCA; rather, the sheer stupidity of the Liberal Party in drawing back the bed covers to a preference swap with the fledgling party.
Some have described the initial decision by the Liberals to leave options open as smart politics.
That's nonsense. The Liberals have only one task in this current electoral term - to re-establish their shattered credentials on race and tolerance or face political catastrophe.
Whatever Feldman and his friends say they stand for everyone knows their form.
Wise people in the Liberal party realised just in time they had to distance themselves from anything or anyone with even a whiff of racial intolerance.
Yesterday, Watson finally decided to put the CCA last on its Bundamba how-to-vote card and leave the party alone until it shows its true colours.
After all, its not as if the Liberals have much chance of winning Bundamba, where One Nation ran second in 1998.
The only possible benefit for the Libs in dealing with the CCA would have been in taking on a spoiler role by helping the new party and likely candidate Heather Hill upset Labor candidate Jo-Ann Miller. That would have been a tough call, with recent polling conducted by CM Research for this newspaper showing Labor well ahead.
While giving the CCA a leg up in Bundamba might have seemed attractive to some Libs, it would have been foolish in the long term.
If Labor lost Bundamba, Beattie would be back in minority government with the support of Nicklin Independent Peter Wellington.
But Beattie has already completed most of his reform programme and the tough issues on which he needed a majority - like prostitution and gay law reform - are already law. He could live with Wellington until the next election, due in about 18 months. He's done it before.
But the Liberals dancing with the CCA in Bundamba would have given Beattie a political bullwhip for the next general election campaign.
He could have flayed his Liberal opponents in the city, portraying them as people who talked about liberal values but cuddle up to extremist zealots.
The Liberals have been working hard to improve their stocks in the city. And their ethnic affairs spokesman Santo Santoro has been rebuilding bridges to ethnic communities that were nauseated by the Liberals' choice of political bedpartner in 1998.
A dumb decision now on the CCA in Bundamba would have seen much of that work go to waste. Even the publicity this week about the possibility of a deal will have caused damage.
Politics is a complex game. It's often about working the numbers to your advantage.
But it is also about standing for something. The Liberals know this and they were reminded of it in the 1988 general election.
Politics is also about carefully calculating risks. Watson and Galtos clearly conducted the sensible political risk analysis.
On one hand, they could give their preferences to reformed Hansonites ahead of Labor on the slim chance that Labor would lose the seat. In this scenario, the Coalition itself would be no closer to government than it is now - a long way. The downside would have been that the race and tolerance issues would dog the Liberals in 2001 and hound Watson to his political grave.
On the other hand, they could do the smart thing - condemn the Hansonites, showing ethnic communities and urban moderates that they actually do stand for tolerance. In that way, they give themselves a decent shot at the next election.
Fortunately for the Liberals, good sense prevailed - eventually.