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please report any broken links or other errors to › want to come back later? click here to add this page to your bookmarks / favourites Busker set to battle Beattie
In full traditional tribal dress, Adrian McAvoy arrived at the Queensland Electoral Commission's city offices to nominate for the seat of Brisbane Central which Mr Beattie has held since 1989. Nominations for the February 7 state poll in Queensland close at midday tomorrow. Less than a kilometre from the Queen Street Mall where he has played his didgeridoo for the past eight years, Mr McAvoy said the Beattie Government had failed to listen to Aboriginal people. "The treatment of Aboriginal people hasn't changed in 100 years and I'm going to have a serious go at this so Peter Beattie gets the message loud and clear from people who live and work in his own electorate," Mr McAvoy said. "I'm a very well known person and very well respected in my community so a lot people know me not only just as being a busker, so a few votes will come my way, I believe." Mr McAvoy said he hoped to highlight the issue of stolen wages during the election campaign. He said Aboriginal workers had been unpaid or underpaid for the past century and a Beattie government offer of $4000 for former workers in 2002 was an insult. He said $200,000 for each affected person would be a fairer compensation package. Source: AAP
Queensland Premier meets his match Reporter: Louise Willis 20 January , 2004 DAVID HARDAKER: In Queensland, Premier Peter Beattie may have finally met his match in his run for re-election, though not necessarily in the shape of Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg. A world-renowned busker who claims to be more in touch with voters than Mr Beattie, will stand in the Premier's inner-Brisbane seat as an Independent, and will campaign on indigenous rights. Louise Willis reports. LOUISE WILLIS: Peter Beattie has held the inner-city seat of Brisbane Central for 14 years, and has a 25 per cent margin, but the challenge hasn't deterred Adrian McAvoy. (sound of a didgeridoo) ADRIAN MCAVOY: I’ve been sitting in the Queen Street Mall for about 10 years playing the didgeridoo. LOUISE WILLIS: And are you more in touch, do you think, with the people of Brisbane than Peter Beattie is? ADRIAN MCAVOY: I’m more in touch because I’m right there at the ground level. LOUISE WILLIS: How much of the vote do you think you can win? ADRIAN MCAVOY: We don’t want any Aboriginal people to vote for Labor. LOUISE WILLIS: Mr McAvoy's anti-Labor campaign is based on a Government scheme to reimburse Aboriginal Queenslanders for wages lost or stolen by previous Governments. The Beattie administration is the first in Queensland to publicly acknowledge this past injustice, but many Aboriginal groups say the offer of up to $4,000 per person is insulting. And Mr McAvoy, who runs cultural education programs in schools, agrees. ADRIAN MCAVOY: I’ve estimated it to be about $200,000 per person who’s applied. LOUISE WILLIS: So how does that $200,000 figure compare to what the Queensland Government is offering? ADRIAN MCAVOY: $4,000 can’t even buy you a good second-hand car. LOUISE WILLIS: Peter Beattie defends the reparations scheme and wishes all contenders standing against him good luck. His opponent will certainly be hard to miss. ADRIAN MCAVOY: People will see me and they’ll know what I’m doing because I’ll be the only person dressed in traditional dress handing out pamphlets and flyers. LOUISE WILLIS: A full list of candidates standing in Brisbane Central, and in other seats across Queensland, will be known later today, when the Electoral Commission closes nominations. That means parties will start to decide where to direct preferences, or if to direct preferences in the case of Labor. It's considering whether to do a re-run of its successful "Just Vote One" strategy from the 2001 campaign, acceptable under Queensland's optional preferential voting system. DAVID HARDAKER: Louise Willis reporting
from Brisbane. Source: ABC News
Mall busker plays new tune Margaret Wenham and Cath Hart 20 January 2004 - Little did they know it when they sat down to play the didgeridoo together six years ago, but former opposition leader Peter Beattie and busker Adrian McAvoy were destined to become political foes. Mr McAvoy, 43, yesterday walked barefoot to the Queensland Electoral Commission in Brisbane to enrol as an independent challenger for Mr Beattie's seat of Brisbane Central. Better known as a busker in the Queen Street Mall, Mr McAvoy will campaign for the return of wages he said were stolen from indigenous workers by successive state governments. "I want to see Aboriginal people treated respectfully. Mr Beattie needs to reconsider his decision," he said yesterday. In May 2002, the Government allocated $55 million to pay about 16,000 Aboriginal people between $2000 and $4000 each in settlement for unpaid wages for work done last century. A second indigenous activist also registered as a candidate yesterday. Bruce Gibson - running as an independent for the north Queensland seat of Cook - said he planned to draw on his social network to get his message out. "It's very hard for me to get to these communities because it's the wet season so a lot of it (campaigning) is on trust," he said. Transport Minister Steve Bredhauer, the Member for Cook since 1989, is retiring. When state election nominations are made public today, the names of independents Tamara Tonite and Nigel Freemarijuana - who both changed their names by deed poll - will not be in the draw. In November 2001, the Australian Electoral Commission ruled that Freemarijuana's name was fictitious and Tonite's moniker was a stage name. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal subsequently overturned the ruling on Freemarijuana, saying he used the name regularly. However, Freemarijuana has since softened his pro-drug campaign and reverted to his birth name, Nigel David Quinlan, under which he will run for the Greens in the seat of Inala. Tonite said yesterday she would not stand for election because: "I'm not allowed to have the name Tamara Tonite on the electoral roll (so) I can't run and if I run under another name no one would know who I was." Source: The Courier Mail
2 February 2004 - The Greens, Socialist Alliance and other independent candidates have backed the Stolen Wages campaign by allocating preferences according to other candidates views on the issue or nominating because they are not satisfied with the Government's reparations offer and handling of the matter. In Peter Beattie's seat, Brisbane Central, Adrian McAvoy is determined to meet the Premier head to head on this issue and a range of others he said he had become aware of after eight years of playing didgeridoo in the Queens Street Mall. Mr McAvoy said government had failed to listen to Aboriginal people, particularly over the stolen wages issue, and he has had enough. "The treatment of Aboriginal people hasn¹t changed in 100 years," he said. "The government has made this $4000 offer just to try and shut our old people up but it's not acceptable and we're not going to go away. If we had $40 million to fight this - and part of the point about this is we don't - they'd be running scared, there's no doubt about that. This offer has no dignity about it and I want to tell Mr Beattie that to his face and I want the people of his own electorate to know the truth of it so they can make up their own minds." Independent candidate for the far north seat of Cook Bruce Gibson said an understanding of the stolen wages issue underpinned the Cape York region's previous and apparent inability to initiate economic development. "The history surrounding the stolen wages is a history I know well from my immediate and extended family elders in Cape York as well as from my friends in the cattle industry," he said. "How can anyone talk about the onset of welfare dependency and poverty and completely ignore the history of governments stealing Aboriginal wages for their own use?" "Existing industry in the Cape, particularly the cattle industry, was built through the labour of our elders and yet they have never been properly paid for their work, not through any fault of the current cattle industry in the area but because of the refusal of the government to adequately correct mistakes made in the past." "The cattle industry shouldn't be left to explain the history of shonky government administration of Aboriginal wages and I'm hearing across the Cape communities a loud and clear message of dissatisfaction with the Beattie Government for failing to renegotiate the current reparations package directly with those workers." Both Mr McAvoy and Mr Gibson attended a recent Stolen Wages Campaign Working Group meeting in Brisbane where discussion centred on three of the main messages of the campaign which were: to have the current reparations offer treated as a downpayment, to advocate for entitlements to go to the families of deceased workers and to bring Mr Beattie back to the table to renegotiate the current offer. A third Indigenous and independent candidate, former-Palm Island chair Delena Foster, said she was concerned about the Government's failure to listen to Aboriginal people on this issue. "The stolen wages is a human rights issue and through the current offer our people's basic entitlements are being taken away from them so I think what Peter Beattie and his government has done is robbed our people of their human rights." "They should be rightly compensated for the time they¹ve worked."
"You haven't done anything for me and it's as simple as that," he said. "The fact is that Peter Beattie has read the stories and I think he's going to come clean, he can¹t go on much longer. Aboriginal people all around and in the communities, they're all Labor voters and he wants to be careful. They might change this time, people are angry enough. From what I can see the government has got the message but they're just playing hard to get. In a sense I feel angry, they are still trying to pull the wool over peoples eyes. But that's what I like about this campaign, people are starting to wake up to them now and they're on side!" said Mr Edwards. Source: ABC News
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February
26, 2004 - An indigenous rights campaigner and renowned inner-city busker today
announced he would stand for Premier Peter Beattie's seat in the Queensland election.
ours
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