Willie White Shoes, reports on a
humiliating defeat for the Murdoch family-owned Gold Coast Bulletin in
Saturday’s council election:

Gold Cost Bulletin defeated by the people

Sealed section – 29 March

As discussed on Crikey earlier in the year, there has been an
overwhelming one-eyed bias by the Gold Coast Bulletin for our now “most
immediate past mayor” Gary Baildon. GCB editor Bob Gordon has had Gary
at his beck and call for over four years.

A few years back Bob has a minor bite from a neighbour’s pit ball dog;
low and behold Gary comes out with a plan to ban all pit balls on the
Gold Coast followed up by a spectacular run of “dog bites child”
stories every other week in the GCB.

Bob thinks flood mitigation is on the cards for the City and out comes
Gary, loyally, with a plan to raise the dam for flood mitigation only
when the majority of Coasters wanted it raised for water storage.

Bob thinks light rail is the answer to the Coast’s growing traffic
congestion and, lo and behold, Gary comes out with his light rail plan.
While Ron Clark’s $300,000+ campaign was certainly greater than Gary’s
sub $100,000 run, the GCB certainly made up for the short fall at least
fives times over with positive after positive story right up to and
including Saturday’s polling day “poor Gary” front page corker.

So the loss might be a big one for Mayor Gary but an even bigger loss
for GCB editor Bob Gordon who until Saturday night thought HE actually
ran the Gold Coast, controlling its citizen’s opinions. Ron Clark ran
on a platform of raising the dam for water storage, no light rail etc –
In opposition to countless GCB editorials to the contrary.

Bob, unlike the majority of the city’s residents, knows that the Mayor
is only one vote out of 15 so the GCB had a bit of an agenda running
against a few of the local councillors that had the comeuppance to
question some of these Bob inspired Mayoral policies. In particular Cr
David Power, Cr Sue Robbins and especially Cr Ted Shepherd come in for
hit after hit from Bob Gordon’s own pit bull terrier, council reporter
Alice Jones.

The almost daily Cr Shepherd attacks from the GCB became so obvious
that it seems have had the reverse effect with Cr Shepherd’s campaign.
Cr Shepherd has easily beaten his closest rival 48% to 32% by the end
of counting Saturday night. Cr Power & Cr Robbins hung on after a
strong showing from the GCB backed opposition candidates.

Therefore, the biggest loser from Saturday’s election is arguably the GCB editor himself.

Baildon claims he was attacked by the GC Bully

A Crikey subscriber writes:

Following from Crikey’s very accurate piece on the Gold Coast Bulletin
and now-ex-Mayor Baildon, you will find it interesting that the
Bulletin ran a piece yesterday (29 March) in which Baildon had
the gall to claim that during the campaign he was continually attacked
by the GC Bulletin, and that the media had given him a hard time!

Baildon’s comments are an absolute joke – as are the Bully’s ability to
read the electorate. The GCCC elections on Saturday, are the second
elections they have got totally wrong in the last 2 months:

They were calling incumbent independent Surfers Paradise MP Lex Bell
with a comfortable lead prior to the Qld State Election – only to see
Liberal Candidate John-Paul Langbroek absolutely romp it in (Lex Bell
coming a very distant third); and just before the weekend they had
Baildon with a 4 point lead… although at last count, Ron Clarke has
almost a 12 point lead on Baildon – who is, just for the record, only
25 points ahead of Elvis impersonator Dean Vegas!

Yours truly.

CRIKEY: We’ve been informed that what the Gold Coast Bully actually wrote before the Queensland state election was:

“Politics on the Gold Coast may never be the same again with signs that
veteran campaigner Lex Bell is set to lose his seat in Parliament. The
shock result of an exclusive Bulletin poll has revealed the Surfers
Paradise electorate is ready to turn its back on the popular former
mayor and councillor, who has represented the area in council or State
Parliament since 1985.

“According to the poll, conducted on Wednesday night, the contest for
Surfers will be close, between the Liberals’ John-Paul Langbroek, who
garnered 38 per cent support, and Labor’s David Parrish on 35 per cent.
Mr Bell, who quit the council to run for State Parliament in a
by-election following the resignation of National Party leader Rob
Borbidge in 2001, came in third on only 17 per cent support.”

That seems pretty accurate to us.

As for Baildon and Clarke, the Surfers Paradise nightclubs ran an
unprecedented text message campaign against Baildon a day before the
election which nobody had expected.