Pineapple Coup Is The Fruit Of Fertile Northern Minds

The Age

Tuesday April 15, 2008

Tony Wright

QUEENSLANDERS tend to become puffed up with such provincial self-esteem they're in danger of bursting when sons and daughters of their state gain notoriety.

"You beauty!" gushed a Brisbane Courier-Mail letter writer at the news Quentin Bryce was being promoted from Queensland Governor to Governor-General.

"Queensland holds the Prime Ministership, the Treasury, and soon the Governor-Generalship. Now fill the High Court with Queenslanders and our conquest of Australia is complete!"

It's the sort of yokel ballyhoo that would have Queensland as the natural home of golf because Greg Norman was born there, of tennis because a young Pat Rafter swung a racket in the state's humidity, of modelling because Kristy Hinze took to the catwalk there, and of country music because Keith Urban first yodelled in the town of Caboolture (though, like Joh Bjelke-Petersen, he was born in New Zealand).

No matter that all of these worthies flew as far and as fast as they could from the cane toad state in search of fame and fortune (rather like Qantas, come to think of it). Yup. Arthur Hoey Davis, who as Steele Rudd wrote On Our Selection, which became the radio series Dad and Dave, was born in Queensland, so naturally the state's got to be home to soap opera, hey?

Kevin Rudd himself, currently Australia's best-known son of a Queensland sharefarmer, lost very nearly all sense of proportion when he bowled it up to the President of the United States, George Bush, a couple of weeks ago.

"I come from the great state of Queensland," Rudd bragged. "It may surprise you that it's bigger than Texas."

"Yeah?" deadpanned Texan-born Bush, not bothering to point out that Texas, though a million square kilometres of clapped out spinifex short of Queensland's greatness, has a state domestic product of rather more than $1 trillion (larger than Australia's entire GDP) and a population of 21 million.

It seemed a neat juxtaposition of the night a Texan oil man, offended by Kerry Packer's manner in a Las Vegas casino, told Packer he wasn't a man to be trifled with because he was worth $250 million. "Toss you for it," Packer responded.

Still, Quentin Bryce's imminent move to Yarralumla has got folk thinking about what some creative soul has dubbed a "pineapple coup" descending upon Canberra.

Let's see. Kevin Rudd is a Queenslander.

Treasurer Wayne Swan comes not only from the same state, but the same school (Nambour High).

The new head of Rudd's Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Terry Moran, met Rudd in Queensland in the 1990s when Moran worked as head of the Brisbane-based Australian National Training Authority. Uh-huh.

And then there's Glyn Davis, who spent years in Queensland, succeeded Kevin Rudd as director-general of the Queensland cabinet office and is now heading up Rudd's 2020 Summit of Ideas. The plot's thickening.

Up to a point. For this northern takeover to fly, you'd need to set aside the inconvenient business of Moran not only spending most of his working life in Melbourne, but actually having been born here. And Davis? Originally a Sydney boy who is now vice-chancellor of Melbourne University.

It seems as though the Sunshine State boosters might be grasping at the rough end of the pineapple.

© 2008 The Age

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