Labor MP for Thuringowa (and Minister for just about everything) Craig Wallace has a 17% margin. He’s in one of the safest seats in the state. He barely even needs to advertise.
So why jump the shark and be filmed holding a puppy?
His ad is positive though. It talks about “delivering” for North Queensland and highlights projects “he has delivered”.
Grade: B
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if your home town was bombed – and where you’d be safe in the event of an early warning – you can now find out. Thanks to this “Ground Zero Map” tool. If my workplace was bombed I’d be safe at home.
Murray Hurst, The LNP candidate for Townsville has a problem. He’s been pigeon holed as “the former North Queensland Cowboys coach”. Which he was. In 2001. After that he was a councilor at Thuringowa City Council – a much more credible position if you’re running for election. Unfortunately Mr Hurst has a problem. His campaign strategy seems to be to remind people that he was the Cowboys Coach.
“In many ways it’s like a rugby league team at the highest level,” said Mr Hurst, who coached the Cowboys in the 2001 and 2002 NRL seasons.
“You’ve got to worry about your own backyard without being overly concerned about who you are facing in the election.
“It’s always a case that you’ve got to have a good team behind you. Obviously now with a new opponent, one I didn’t expect, it may be different but it’s me and my team against the Labor Party.
In this interview from the Brisbane Times he goes on to talk about important stuff. Like infrastructure spending and health. But it’s too late. The horse has bolted. If you’re reading this Murray – and no doubt your crack campaign team has a google alert set up to tell you when people are mentioning your name – no more football analogies. This is an election campaign.
The quality of advertising in regional Australia lags about 15 years behind the quality of spots produced in capital cities. Local advertising can be frustratingly bad.
Townsville suffers from a paucity of quality ad producers. Too many advertisers rely on quick fix production from the local networks. There’s a massive gap in the market for a creative video producer to come in and change that status quo.
There are three local advertising phenomena that I think are particularly odd.
1. Patio World v Superior Patio Systems – how is it that two competitors in a very narrow niche can afford to wage a long running advertising battle. One featuring an annoyingly catchy jingle – the other featuring a good looking girl the local paper rated as one of the region’s most famous faces. I don’t get it. Is it a perpetual motion loop where one advertises and the other can’t be out done so they advertise and the other can’t be outdone so they advertise… To end this viscious cycle both would have to stop at the same time – otherwise there’d just be one patio company out there on the airwaves.
Rachel - the face of Patio World
2. There’s an ad for a local computer repairs company where the young lady requiring computer repairs calls up using an iphone – and in what could be described as a continuity error – is calling up about a beige computer tower that looks like it was built in the 80s or bought at an ex-government auction.
3. There’s a Kip McGrath Tutoring ad that has just started running locally that I think was probably actually produced in the 80s. This is not a figure of speech. The tutors feature moustaches and are wearing brown. It’s like one of those dodgy, dodgy corporate training videos. I know economic times are tough but rerunning ads from 20 years ago to cut costs is ridiculous.
Stuss has a great post today about news coverage of disasters. With particular reference to the current fires and the saturation of “special news editions” on commercial television.
“This week I am again appalled at the news coverage. As far as I’m concerned, it is just not appropriate to show extended footage of any disaster. Regular updates, fine, good even, but not regular as in replace everything you would normally be showing.”
As a journalism graduate working in PR I’ve got some thoughts on the issue. I reckon these are probably worth posting here – even though they’re pretty much verbatim what I posted as a comment on Stuss’s post.
As a “journalist” I’m in two minds on this. Disasters like this are real news – and there are people who want to know every bit of the story – particularly if they have friends or families in affected areas and haven’t been able to make contact. But, sometimes not a lot is happening and there’s a whole lot of repetition – and then there’s the talking to about 10 secondary sources.
Experts in their fields. So you have the eye witnesses, the firefighters, the fire commissioner, the politician, the police and other involved parties having their say… then you have the behavioural psychologists, the weathermen, the university professor, the opinion columnist, etc, all throwing their opinions into the mix.
If you consider the September 11 story – the news coverage started off reporting just the facts. From and objective point – two planes crashed into the World Trade Centre buildings. There were plenty of “objective” updates. The buildings collapsed. The rescue effort. All of these were newsworthy elements and there were lots of primary sources to be talked to.
Then, in the days following the actual moment of impact there was a heap of other stuff thrown into the coverage. Speculation on why the buildings collapsed, interviews with engineers about the tower’s structure, interviews with people who knew about the effect of heat on steel. That sort of thing. Then there was the “why” element – terrorism experts, politicians. Everyone had two cents worth to throw in. Reporting a disaster is like peeling an onion – you can split a story into layers and layers of complexity.
There’s an inverted relationship between time and newsworthy content – unless new things are happening all the time.
Because of ratings pressure and the desire not to be “one upped” if something significant does happen all the networks are simultaneously peeling the onion. They need to keep doing that to keep the coverage rolling.
There should be a dedicated “disaster channel” and each network should donate resources to a pool of talent – and they could all draw stuff out of that pool for nightly bulletins.
As a viewer, I tend to get sick of the special coverage pretty quickly if nothing new is happening. The fact that I keep watching comes from my inner news addict than from any form of compelling content.
Having dedicated event coverage is also good for continuity of viewing. The nature of big stories is that there are lots of new bits happening all the time. I would be very frustrated if my regular programming was constantly interrupted by updates. At that point I think keeping the “special news bulletin” thing running is less disruptive than otherwise.
Extended coverage of disasters can have a demonstrably large effect on children. I did an assignment on that at uni once.
The other problem with the reporting aspect comes when circumstances are blown up to pad out bulletins. Take the current flooding in North Queensland as a case study.
Ingham is underwater. That’s bad for Ingham. But news bulletins around the country have been featuring journalists based in Townsville in their weather updates. Townsville has had some water. Yesterday’s king tide didn’t help things.
But to use images from the small percentage of streets in Townsville with flooding and tar everywhere with the same watery brush is unconscionable reporting and does significant damage to the city’s reputation and its economy. Tourism bookings to Townsville are being canceled all over the place. We’re in contact with Tourism Queensland’s international offices daily because people think Townsville is underwater.
Overstating the case in a disaster is a spur of the moment decision by news producers with pretty big consequences for those on the ground. This is particularly problematic when secondary source experts with no bona fides are thrown in front of a camera to spread their particular brand of hysteria.
Try being the person who has to fix the idea that Townsville will be closed for the next two months due to flooding.
The mighty Ross River is filled to bursting and the dam gates are being opened to reduce pressure on the dam wall.
This presents a sticky situation for the Townsville City Council – flood the streets or risk the structual integrity of the dam. Tough call. Not what I’m writing about though.
When I moved here I was really excited to be living life on the edge. Crocodiles, stingers, etc – you know the drill. And the dreaded Ross River Fever – named for Townsville’s iconic waterway. Or so I thought. Until a couple of old, wise, boaties in Hinchinbrook “set me straight.” They laughed at me. To my face. They told me that Ross River Fever was named after a Ross River in Darwin. I was adamant they were wrong. But they swore black and blue that the it were true… and I believed them. Any time it came up in conversation at future points I spouted this fallacy fed to me by two wizened fishermen. I staked my reputation on it. I scoffed at those ignorami perpetuating the viscious slur on Townsville’s reputation. I apologise. Ross River Fever is in fact named after the river in Townsville. For that we can be truly thankful.
I’ve learned a lesson here. Never believe a fisherman, and if something sounds dodgy you should look it up on wikipedia.
Perhaps Bill Gates needs to visit Townsville to release a swarm of mosquitoes on those paid to promote the city, who clearly know so little about the local landscape.
Imagine workplace “water cooler” conversations today at this Townsville workplace…
“so, used toilet paper lately?”
Background: this guy was originally sacked because his toilet hygiene was considered inappropriate. He used bottled water rather than paper for his ablutions. He’s back at work today after the company backed down.
Stuss has posted a little bit of news that has been circulating on the local radio today. A crocodile – reported to be between 2.5 and 3 metres – was hit on one of Townsville’s main roads at 3am today. You need to remember that most people* in north Queensland are fishermen so that figure should be taken with a grain of salt and some chips.
One of the things that is particularly idiosyncratic to the North Queensland psyche is this “siege mentality”, or something close to that, regarding how the rest of the world sees us. The rest of the world thinks North Queensland starts at Gympie. When as far as we’re concerned North Queensland (the government statistical region) starts at Ayr and extends to Cardwell. Townsville is the capital of this region. Far North Queensland stretches from Cardwell to Cooktown. Townsville is also the capital of that region.
We, in Townsville, don’t like it that people attribute things, like Port Douglas’ population of crocodiles that regularly “interact” with local children and animals, to everyone in “North Queensland”. And we don’t like it when cyclones hit somewhere more than 200km away and we all get tarred with the same brush. The confusion is widespread.
Greater north Queensland is anything from Mackay North – and again, Townsville is the capital of that region. Confused? Well weather producers around the country are too – so much so that I was once asked to draft a letter to send to them pointing out that Townsville is much bigger than Cairns and has a bigger economy. We don’t have the penetration in the national psyche that Cairns does thanks to its position as a tourism destination.
Much of the confusion was initially created by Townsville’s “twin city”, Thuringowa, which robbed us of vital population statistics for many years. That confusion has not yet been eradicated by the council amalgamations. But maybe one day Townsville will receive the recognition it deserves.
This is particularly likely if we continue to experience phenomenal weather events and have crocs wandering the streets at night.
It’s a problem of capitalisation. Townsville sees itself as the “capital” of all the different nominal definitions of north Queensland. We are the largest city in northern Australia. Bigger than Darwin (which also suffers a “split personality”). The other “capitalisation” confusion comes when describing north Queensland – we describe greater north Queensland with a little “n” but specifically refer to our part of north Queensland with a capital N. North Queensland is at the heart of north Queensland. Townsville is at the heart of the heart of north Queensland – so we are rightfully the capital. Confused? Good.
*gross exaggeration
“Life in the Tropics” is our tagline for tourism and relocation promotion here in the ‘ville. It’s one of those suitably generic lines that is meant to be partly aspirational and partly functional. I don’t like it. I do like life in the tropics. We have water, sunshine and temperate winters. And air conditioning. Suffer in your jocks Melbournians (literally).
There are plenty of bad things that come along with the good. When I moved here an ex-Townsvillian friend from Brisbane warned me of several of them. Lets just call her Donna. That’s her real name. She told me that if the crocodiles, stingers, tropical diseases, cyclones, or sunshine didn’t kill me – I’d probably die due to lack of water. She said “it never rains in Townsville”…
For two many years Townsville was known as Brownsville. See what I did there. Two instead of too. I did that on purpose. Townsville started receiving pretty regular rain, and looking green all round, for a couple of years before the rest of the world caught on. Townsville is actually nice. And we have secured water supply. More than four times the size of Sydney Harbour.
What we no longer have is the 300 days of sunshine we claim in our marketing material. There is no way that’s true. Well, it might be, depending on your definition of “sunshine”… I think it rained on about 90 days in my first full year here. And it has rained pretty regularly since.
But I digress. I can put up with that sort of hyperbolic description of tropical life from a jaded ex-resident trying to scare me. But when the same sort of thing comes from a Channel Ten reporter bundling all of those together in the name of “news” I get upset. It creates work for me for one, and number two – it’s shoddy reporting.
So reporters of the world – you can’t have it both ways. Townsville can’t be “brownsville” on one hand and a flooding tropical metropolis on the other.
I don’t even know why I wrote this post. But it was cathartic.
EDIT: Looks like BOM have removed Ellie’s tracking image thing. So there’s no image for you to watch anymore.
That heading is bad. Really bad. If you didn’t bother reading to the end of my last post, and haven’t been listening to your local ABC today – you may not be aware there’s a cyclone coming for North Queensland. It’s no big deal. Unless you haven’t been in a cyclone before, then perhaps you should tape up your windows, fill your baths with water (unless they’re outdoors – then there’s a dengue risk), buy lots of canned food, batteries and candles (although you should read this first).
What I think is particularly funny about cyclones is what it reveals about the inner psyche of North Queensland. North Queensland is demographically bi-polar. A 50/50 split between “locals” (those who have been here all their lives, or for longer than 20 years) and us “ring ins” who are here for a couple of years of “career progression” only to pull up stumps and leave. Townsville has a massively transient population thanks to the army, the university and the mining industry. It makes for an interesting dynamic all year round – but particularly when there’s a storm brewing.
There are two reactions to a cyclone’s impending intersection with the coast line. The understated approach, preferred by locals, where you insult “ring ins” for making a fuss. Point out “this is only a category one”. We’ve been through much bigger before. Pick up potential flying objects from your yard, and go about your daily business almost as usual.
The other reaction is what leads to mile long lines at the grocery store and a region wide shortage of milk and survival equiptment.
I subscribe to my friends Facebook status updates via RSS (which is pretty cool because it gets around the workplace Facebook ban) – and I’m thinking that I might collate responses to cyclone related Facebook status updates to use social networking to report impending disaster – that’s the done thing these days. What do you think Facebook friends/blog readers? Is this a horrible invasion of your privacy – I’m looking at you Leah and Stuss.
So says Google. Who today, for a brief moment, applied their “content may harm your computer” disclaimer to every result. Even Google, as noted in the Flickr image below…
It’s the ultimate catch all disclaimer. Any website may harm your computer. It’s not surprising that Google have made this strategic decision to avoid law suits. The Bureau of Meteorology has been doing the same thing for years – issuing severe storm warnings at the drop of a hat, just to avoid liability when a storm hits and people weren’t ready.
Incidentally, there’s a category one cyclone bearing down on North Queensland. Batten the hatches. It’s a big one. Maybe. It will hit sometime tomorrow. Maybe. It will intensify. Maybe. You have been warned.
Now is an appropriate time to panic. It’s what everyone else is doing. The mob mentality means massive queues have formed at local shops as people stock up on supplies. Tropical Cyclone Ellie is not even predicted to come that close to Townsville and it’s not particularly likely that flooding will cut of access here at this point in time. Unlike in Cairns. They should panic buy. Who’d want to live there.
Now that I’ve said all this the cyclone will either hit Townsville directly, or by some quirk all the rain it brings will cut off road access and we’ll run out of milk by Tuesday. Better hit the shops. Just in case. And remember. You have been warned. This site may harm your computer.
The Map
We’re about to hit the road for our garage sailing techstravaganza. So that any of you following with interest know just where we’re going, here’s a map:
The Map
If you click through to the map page you’ll see a list of the sales and their advertised descriptions (if you scroll down).
First Stop - just around the corner
A Compact Bow - with no arrows - just $15. Robyn said no.
She sells sea shells
The pieces fall into place
Our first stop met with success – a brand new, old chess set complete with glass pieces. They offered $5, we offered 3 and the deal was closed at $4.00 – downward negotiations faltered on the basis of a complete set with new box.
Pictures here
Garage sailing came to a close today at about 11:50am. You can check out geotags on the images in Craig’s album linked above.
I’m calculating my total spend from today – and will get figures from Robyn, Craig, Teagen and The total so far is $84.90 – but I still need to get a figure from Chris, here’s the purchase summary:
1. Glass chess set – Nathan – $4 (asking price $5).
2. Table – Chris – $4.50 (asking price $5).
3. 3 tealight candle holders – Chris – $2 (asking price 2 for $2).
4. Set of magazines/recipes/craft books – Craig and Teagen – 4 for $1 (asking price 3 for $1).
5. Four playstation one games (to be used on a playstation bought at a previous garage sail) – Nathan – $5 (asking price – part of a $35 bundle).
5a. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego PC game – Robyn (for educational purposes) – $0.20 (by negotiation)
6. Round plate/platter/dish – Chris – $3 (I’m a bit shady on that price) (asking price around $5).
7. Set of dominos – Craig – $0.20 (asking price unspecified but original recommended retail price $1).
8. Round the Twist complete episodes DVD bundle and A-Team DVDs – Nathan -$15 (asking price $20).
9. Craig got a $0.20 platter thrown in free with my purchase.
10. The guys selling the DVDs (and the platter) had a tub full of unopened Star Wars figurines from about three years ago for sale for $5 each. 13 in total. The gentleman in question used to collect Star Wars merchandise with a friend. His partner was clearly not as enthusiastic about Star Wars as he and his friend – so we took the collection of figurines off his hands to sell on eBay. We will list them after our Summer Holiday – but if anyone wants to make an offer in the meantime leave a comment on this post. We bought the lot for $35.
At this point we were feeling pretty good about ourselves and were on the home stretch. We made one last stop. En route to our home base. Where we found the best garage sale ever. Everything was for sale. Even the house. The neighbour was piggybacking on the sale – selling books on the street.
11. Two books – Corcisan (some sort of gangster thriller) and The Douglas Adams Dirk Gently Omnibus (a book I leant somebody years ago and haven’t seen since. You know who you are. Ben.) – Nathan – $2 (asking price $2. I offered $1.50 and was refused).
We probably spent an hour at this next house. Which had been lovingly renovated in a really classy way by a former surgeon who due to a horse riding accident no longer works. It was a really nicely furnished Queenslander – and she’s selling it herself hoping to move to Mexico. Craig became a real estate photographer – and I’ll add a link to the listing when I find it.
There was some great stuff for sale from her collection of jewellry, kitchen appliances, clothings, shoes, antiques, furniture, glassware – you name it. It was for sale. Under the house there was this wooden box with two massive grindstones in it – it was an old grinder used by farmers to grind wheat and barley for their beer. She used it for bread. I almost bought it. But instead settled for my next purchase:
12. A hand turned chrome coffee grinder – Nathan – $10 (asking price unknown – price agreed on by negotiation).
13. A bracelet – Robyn – $3 (again price agreed on by negotiation).
14. A funky tealight candle tree thing – Chris – price unknown.
15. A set of coffee cups – Nathan – free on the basis of Craig’s photographic services.
Craig’s had so many freebies off my back that I thought it only fair to get in on the action.
Here’s the photo of our swag…
Our purchases
Ok, so these ones do. And that title is a really bad pun. But fresh from talking about a sticky situation involving the Coogee Bay Hotel, we have been confronted with our own PR crisis.
For those of you not familiar with the story here’s the précis, the tourism dependent community of Magnetic Island was recently in lock down as a rogue crocodile terrorised the bays and streets of the island. But the plot thickened – it turned out the EPA, in its infinite wisdom, had captured the crocodile in Far North Queensland and released it near Townsville. Then, as it began wreaking havoc upon the poor island, they couldn’t catch it. This of course led to calls from the ever reliable walking quote machine, Bob Katter, for a croc cull. Crocodile leather is desirable for shoes, hand bags and other accesories – they also interfere with our right to enjoyment of nature – or so the argument goes. It was eventually caught – only to die in captivity a day later – an autopsy revealed that the croc’s stomache was lined with plastic bags, and other rubbish which led to its untimely demise. Untimely, arguably because it should have died three weeks earlier.
This was a PR nightmare for all involved (except Bob Katter).
In particular:
The EPA now stand accused of killing some small businesses due to their ridiculous “crocs in space” program. They had an electronic tag on the crocodile and still couldn’t find it. They mishandled the situation allowing operator after operator to front the media lambasting them and demanding compensation – the State Government pretty much ruled it out on the spot – and now can count on no votes from Magnetic Island at the upcoming election. Even the greenies hate them because the croc died. It’s all their fault.
The Magnetic Island operators themselves have done as much as possible to tarnish the region’s image – by yelling “CROC” from the roof tops and going about dealing with the Government in an inappropriate manner. They shot themselves in the foot (they should have just shot the croc). The local tourism industry – Magnetic Island is the “jewel in our crown.” That’s the official line. I know because I wrote it. Now, in the mind of the uneducated consumer it is no longer a pristine island destination with safe beaches – it’s a garbage filled wasteland populated by deadly crocs. The tourism minister proclaimed crocs as “good for tourism.” That, according to those on the ground was untrue. That line only works when describing Australia Zoo and other crocodile farms. Crocodiles on public beaches are bad for tourism. The plastic bags, in all likelihood, came from far north Queensland, where the waters are messy. I wanted to run a media release on that basis titled “Far North Queensland full of old Cairns and plastic bags” – but I was outvoted. Common sense prevailed.
It’s been an interesting week in the election campaign – the Coalition’s Abbott showed why he’s unlikely to become a monk with a foul mouthed tirade at the health ministers’ debate, Peter Garrett unwittingly revealed Labor’s intentions to just “change everything” when/if they get into power. And Peter Costello and Wayne Swan traded barbs while in Townsville…
“Mr Swan is one of those cyborgs who repeats the same line in the hope that the media will pick it up”
“Sightings of Mr Costello in Townsville are about as rare as sightings of Migaloo”
The role the media plays in the election has also been under a bit of scrutiny with a few people whinging about favouritism – and incompetence.
And no surprises on the last one… here’s a paragraph from the SMH website today
“Man turns himself into police after another man was shot twice in the head in Sydney’s north west”
Vigilante justice? Or a bizarre case of metamorphism… or perhaps a typo.
Rudd is famous for his glass chin (and wax ear) when it comes to media criticism – he scored points this week for his humour when handling questions on the wax incident after the video of his waxy snack made it onto Jay Leno’s talk show. He lost points for refusing to talk to Townsville’s most popular radio breakfast host on 4TO because it’s the wrong demographic. Rudd is pandering to the young vote – possibly at the expense of everyone else.
Queensland’s state pollies – particularly the Labor ones (who can still count on the support of Liberal leader Bruce Flegg) had a rough week. Following leadfoot MP Andrew Choi’s admission that the beeping speed monitor just fades into the background when he’s speeding Deputy Premier Paul Lucas launched an extraordinary attack on the media. It seems he thinks it’s unfair that pollies have to face such intense scrutiny while journos don’t have to disclose anything about their speeding record. He’s kind of missed the point – journos don’t drive around in government funded cars or get paid to reduce the road toll like the Parliamentary Secretary for Roads.
Robyn wants me to tell everyone that she’s got a black eye. I want to make it clear that she needs to have my dinner ready on time… and point out that indoor soccer seems to be a dangerous game for her to play.
I know I said at the end of my last post that I’d be posting my forecasts for the year to come in “tomorrow’s” post. Clearly I was referring to tomorrow as an abstract concept… It won’t be in today’s post either – I’m about to go to bed ahead of a very early morning trip to Cairns to drive some Japanese tourism VIPS to Townsville.
As I was making sure I had my head around directions and stuff once I get to Cairns and pick up my hire car I stopped in to check my email only to discover that the site You Have Bad Taste In Music has a new video up where the host with the curiously reversable name “Eman Laerton” has confronted John Mayer fans with a game of teakettle – a truly wonderful celebration of the homophone. Here’s a Youtube example of his previous work…
After a previous post Eman Laerton promised to launch stage 2 of his master plan to capitalise on the emergence of convergence – the use of the internet as a source of media content – the John Mayer effort contains a sneak peak of stage 2 – Church Across America – and while I’m not prepared to endorse the content (because I haven’t seen it yet), it may be worth a look when it goes live.
I also caught a particularly funny television show – Balls of Steel – on the Comedy Channel the other day… The Annoying Devil has to be the funniest character on television… there’s a slight language warning on this one, and my favourite bit is about 4 minutes in…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmJhK3pu_1Y]