SCHOOLBOY STUFF

I was going to say that Melbourne’s new Lord Mayor should get a grip on himself. But I suspect, from his latest utterances, he already has. This guy is starting to remind me of a eunuch in a brothel. Can’t do anything so he just makes a nuisance of himself. He’s a headline junkie. A media whore. A poor man’s Jeff Kennett.

A full page article in the Sunday Age appears under the headline The Second Coming – Doyle in his Mayoral Element. It says ‘His great, great grandfather, also in office, was a rogue, but not this mayor. I’m not so sure.

Melissa Fyfe writes: ‘Robert Doyle is having a ball as Lord Mayor. The mayoral robes fit well and so does the office, the position. To watch him articulate his vision for Melbourne from the green leather armchairs of his stately Town Hall rooms is to witness a man in his element.

But what is his element? To be merely a verbal agent provocateur? He admits he has very little real power. He says ‘I always knew it was a position of influence rather than direct intervention, but I didn’t realise that in so many areas this is the case.’

And so his solution seems to be to run a hundred colourful flags up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes. And along the way gratuitously insult as many Lord Mayors and Premiers and people in other states as he possibly can.

His latest effort is schoolboy stuff. Our elected Lord Mayor actually told a newspaper reporter that ‘ we should immediately commence the orderly shut-down of Adelaide’ because it has little to redeem itself compared to Melbourne, the country’s artistic heart. He repeated his old gags about Greater Brisbane being ‘almost a contradiction in terms’ and Sydney being a city with a wallet instead of a heart.

It provoked an easy and deserved reaction from South Australian Premier Mike Rann who called Doyle a ‘failed Opposition leader’ who ‘got second prize’ as Melbourne Lord Mayor.

The increasing danger is that nobody will ever take Doyle serious. That he is a motor-mouthed bantam who puts mouth in action before brain is in gear. And that’s a shame. We want and we need fresh ideas to revitalize the city and, as Business Council chief Don Parsons says, he has ‘said and talked about more things publicly in his first 100 days than John So did in two terms.’

And you can understand what he says. Although sometimes I wish I couldn’t.

It’s all very well to fill your scrapbooks Mr. Mayor but it could lead to the scrap heap. Again.

Monday, March 16, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009