Langbroek has job but sadly he's no leader
02.02.2010
By: Tony Koch
It was an over-reaction that further demonstrated why it is safe to predict that his leadership is temporary.
SOME context needs to be given to the latest contretemps within the Liberal National Party that forms the official parliamentary opposition in Queensland.
Aidon McLindon, a former shire councillor who has been in parliament less than a year, announced he wanted to wrest the deputy leadership of the amalgamated party from veteran Lawrence Springborg.
McLindon has yet to make his mark in politics or in parliament. He is a tyro who apparently woke up last Sunday in an excited state and deduced that it meant he was destined for greater things.
So with a guitar in one hand and a white poodle in the other, he posed with his Volkswagon Kombi van for the photograph to announce his challenge. But yesterday, LNP leader John-Paul Langbroek reacted to this nip on his heel by taking the extraordinary step of putting the issue before his partyroom.
It was an over-reaction that further demonstrated why it is safe to predict that Langbroek's leadership is temporary.
Any decent leader would have treated the whimper from McLindon with the disdain it deserved -- and given the recalcitrant young buck a public slapping-down before telling him to get back into his kennel and not to come out again until he was grown up.
Why give credibility to such immature nonsense?
If any further evidence was needed regarding Langbroek's complete lack of political antennae, take the speech he gave to Young Liberals in Adelaide last weekend.
He launched a vitriolic attack on political correctness, particularly where it concerned recognising Aborigines as Australia's original inhabitants.
That effort forced Aboriginal academic and activist Stephen Hagan to accuse the LNP leader of racism.
He also accused Langbroek of indulging in cheap politics at a time when his level in opinion polls was similar to his shoe size.
Which about sums up the entire LNP in Queensland at the moment.
