The Courier Mail has criticised Beattie for his backflips - they even had a table of them in yesterday's edition (unfortunately not on the 'net).

I don't know what others think, but my experience, particularly with focus groups, suggests that voters will see this as a positive, not a negative. Howard was doing poorly before the 2001 election then he improved after doing u-turns on beer and fuel, and before the Tampa turned-up to finish the party for him. When we asked voters for their reactions at the time, they didn't care, as long as they were getting what they wanted.

That's why I'm wondering whether the Coalition's theme of "Getting the priorities right" is a good one. Every day Beattie demonstrates that he is getting the message. Backflips have got to improve his prospects, particularly as he does them with such a wide smile.

You are probably right Graham

People generally perceive backflips as pollies listening to the people. The term ‘backflip’ is a bit unfortunate because of its entirely negative connotations. It does have a strong air of positivity.

I can understand that some pollies express strong ideas initially and declare their intentions….. and then sometimes change tack if those notions are not in keeping with majority opinion or if significant problems are expressed. It is interesting though that this only seems to work for those leaders who are in power, and comfortably so. It certainly doesn’t work for oppositions, or even for ministers.

Conducting backflips and having a propensity to say sorry or to admit that one is not doing as well as we would like is not hurting Beatty. In fact it is helping him, by way of expressing honesty, and fallibility in a complex world… or at least giving that impression. And yes, his smile and general body language do help a great deal.

As a politician and a humanitarian, I think Beatty is pretty good. I’d say the same about Howard.

But gees, both of them are taking us so strongly in the wrong direction in terms of their pandering to continuous human expansion and hence unsustainability!!

I'd say both Beattie and Howard are pretty good con-men!

Backflips are better than not declaring policies at all. Every decision made alienates a part of the population. That's why Politicians try and declare as few policies as possible. It's a rational approach to winning as even popular promises get stolen by the opposition but people want to know what they are voting for. I actually admire a Politician who can reconsider and reverse his stance on an issue rather than pigheadedly pursue the same tired position despite it's unpopularity among voters. The exception being where the Politician knows he's right. Pandering to voters and sacrificing your moral beliefs is weak and most voters will see through it.

Waynesmith you stated:

"Pandering to voters and sacrificing your moral beliefs is weak and most voters will see through it."

When?

When are voters going to see that the vast majority of jobs and economic growth that Beatty forever praises his government for creating, are actually created by rapid population growth, pretty automatically by way of ever-increasing demand for all manner of goods and services. Basically, all the government has to do is just allow this rapid growth rate to happen!

This is the same rapid population growth that is causing SEQ massive problems with water, traffic congestion, overloaded infrastructure and services - not least the health system, and all sorts of other problems.

The fact is that the very things that are causing problems, or at least adding greatly to them, are also providing the primary ‘achievements’ of this government.

But of course per-capita job creation is hardly different to the rest of the country, and the same applies to per-capita economic growth. The same also applies with increased expenditure on all sorts of things (which is made possible by the ever-bigger economy and tax base) – few have actually significantly increased in per-capita terms, which means that on average they just keeping up with population growth, if that. I’m talking about things like police, education, national park management and hundreds of others.

So we have a government that continues to take us rapidly away from sustainability, while at the same espousing false virtues of this underlying policy, or continuous growth paradigm.

For as much as I like Beatty and think he is a good operator in many ways, as long as he stays on this mad rapid and unending growth track, a vote for him is a vote for the continued strong momentum away from sustainability in Queensland.

The crying shame is that the opposition would be no different in this regard….. and even the Greens just don’t get it.