Peter Lawlor
Peter Lawlor is an Australian former politician. He was the Labor Member for Southport in the Queensland Legislative Assembly. He served as Queensland Minister for Tourism and Fair Trading. Prior to his term in state parliament he served as a councillor on the Gold Coast City Council.
Gold Coast City Council
Lawlor served as a Gold Coast City councillor for two terms up to 1994; he chaired the council's planning committee for three years. During his time on council, Lawlor campaigned on environmental issues and to preserve the Gold Coast Broadwater.At the time Gold Coast City Council had nine aldermen and a mayor. Areas to the north and west of the Gold Coast came under the separate Shire of Albert until the amalgamation of the council and shire in 1995.
In March 1988 Lawlor was elected as Division 3 alderman. At the same election new Mayor Alderman Lex Bell ousted former Mayor Denis Pie. Lex Bell went on to be elected as the independent member for Surfers Paradise at a by-election in 2001 soon after Lawlor's own election to parliament.
Lawlor and Bell were both re-elected in the March 1991 election for a second term. At this election the previously all-male aldermen were joined by three new women aldermen.
As alderman for the Southport area, Lawlor campaigned for the preservation of The Spit as "one of the few undeveloped areas on the Gold Coast". Lawlor blamed the previous Waterways Authority and previous state government for approving resorts that the council did not want to go ahead, neither had required council approval. Vacant land to the south of the Sea World car park was zoned as special purposes under the draft development control plan and could have been developed with a low-rise resort or international hotel. Chairman of the Finance Committee of Gold Coast City Council was concerned about valid compensation claims against the council from developers if previous approvals were revoked now that they came under council control.
Lawlor, Bell and Gary Baildon were the only three aldermen to vote against the amalgamation of Gold Coast City and Albert Shire.
In 1996 after Bell and Lawlor had been ousted by the new Ray Stevens administration, Stevens proposed a relocation of the Gold Coast Indy Grand Prix from Surfers Paradise to Southport. Lawlor teamed up with the new premier, Rob Borbidge, together with local National Party MP and racing driver Allan Grice to oppose the proposed relocation. As the former Planning Committee chairman, Lawlor said that the previous council had decreed that no further commercial development or reclamation of the Broadwater would take place. Mayor Stevens responded that the policy direction of the previous council was irrelevant. Borgidge indicated that the state government would never support the proposal to reclaim any part of the Broadwater.
Chair of the Planning and Development Committee
Lawlor served as the chair of the Planning and Development Committee from 1991 until he left council in 1994. This period of time was within a national recession however he held the view that "The Gold Coast has always been the last place to be affected by recessions and the first to recover..." Environmental protection was a theme to come from his time as Committee Chair.As the council Planning and Development Committee chairman, Alderman Lawlor lad a plan for Southport to become a future CBD heartland of the Gold Coast which would be supported by regional district and local centres appropriately located throughout the urban area. At the time 159 ha of the 317 ha of zoned commercial land in Southport was vacant. Council lobbied for the creation of a state government precinct in Southport.
Another victory claimed by Lawlor on behalf of the council was the 1992 prevention of commercial development proposals for Crown land on South Stradbroke Island, including a golf course by Christopher Skase. Several hundreds of hectares of land were rezoned for environmental use after a five-year council battle. The vacant Crown land on the island was declared an environmental park under joint trusteeship of the council and the National Parks and Wildlife Service. Meanwhile, in 1991 council acquired 4ha of privately owned land near the southernmost tip of the island and had it rezoned to public open space.
In 1993 council tightened the town plan to outlaw prostitution in residential areas. At the time prostitution with two or more operators were banned by state law but single operators were not covered, until then council had gained prosecutions against prostitution by deeming it a business activity in a residential area. The new town plan specifically defined and excluded prostitution from being a home occupation from residential areas.
Southport
The Electoral District of Southport is based in the northern part of the Gold Coast. It is named for the largest suburb within the electorate of Southport, and also includes the suburbs of Arundel, Ernest, Labrador, Molendinar and Parkwood. It was re-created for the 1977 election after having been a previous electoral district throughout the 1950s. The suburb of Southport was named so because it was the southernmost port of the colony of Queensland.Lawlor has been the Labor-endorsed candidate for the Southport Electoral District at every state election since 1992. He marginally lost the 1992, 1995 and 1998 elections against the long term incumbent National Party Member Mick Veivers. Veivers was Minister for Emergency Services and Sport in the Borbidge Government and had been a Rugby League international before being elected to the seat in 1987. Lawlor finally succeeded in gaining the seat from Veivers on behalf of the Labor Party in 2001 with over 60% of the two party preferred vote and maintained that high margin until a swing against him in the 2009 election brought his share of the vote down to 53.48%.
Candidate
As a sitting Alderman and local solicitor Lawlor ran for the Electoral District of Southport for the first time in 1992 as a candidate for the incumbent Labor Goss Government. Sitting National Party Member Mick Veivers had a 5% margin, the Liberal Party also ran candidate Tim Baker who had previously been a teacher at The Southport School. Veivers' margin was reduced to 2.3% with Lawlor attracting 45% of the primary vote, the conservative opposition won six of the eight Gold Coast electoral districts.In the lead up to the 1995 election Veivers argued that his small margin was only "on paper" as this campaign would not be a three-cornered contest involving both major conservative parties. Issues raised during the campaign included a government proposed Gold Coast tolled motorway with the Opposition promising an alternative 18 month upgrade to the highway. Additionally Lawlor raised issues of education, crime and health care, he also emphasised that having a local member in the ruling government was the way to capture public funds. During the campaign Veivers' campaign distributed leaflets in the Southport electorate saying that Labor and the Democrats wanted to legalise homosexuals marrying, adopting children and holding mardi gras parades in Southport. Opposition Leader and Member for Surfers Paradise expressed his concerns to Veivers about the leaflets. Veivers said that he was not "poofter-bashing" but was speaking out against militant homosexuals who wanted to force their ideas on everyone. Lawlor said that these issues were not on the agenda, that it was dirty politics and that it misrepresented the facts and Labor policy, "it is absolute lies". Veivers increased his primary vote to 51.7%, the first time Southport had been won on primary votes, however he still only had a 4.81% two party preferred margin. The Gold Coast conservatives all retained their seats with large swings towards them.
The Goss Government was re-elected with a one-seat majority however after a by-election in North Queensland Bob Borbidge was able to form a minority government. Merri Rose was the only Labor Party Member based on the Gold Coast and Premier Borbidge was a local himself. The election was unusual and difficult to predict because the One Nation Party had gained significant momentum locally and across the state. Labor focused the bulk of its Gold Coast campaign funds into Lawlor's campaign for Southport. The Southport area was seen to be a traditional Labor area and local Member Mick Veivers was now a Minister.
The Borbidge Government retained all their seats on the Gold Coast in 1998 however they lost seats elsewhere and the one term government fell to the Labor Party. Peter Beattie became the new Premier, sole Gold Coast MP Rose became the Tourism Minister. Between 1998 and the 2001 election the minority Beattie Government held a knife edge majority in the Parliament relying on an independent.
Election
The 2001 Labor election campaign was dominated by the leader Premier Beattie, voters were told to "just vote 1" in a tactic to deprive the conservatives of the benefit from One Nation preferences.Controversially Veivers entered into a local preference deal with the One Nation Party for a second time. One Nation had attracted 21.7% of the Southport vote at the 1998 election. Veivers recommended that Southport voters give the One Nation candidate their second preference ahead of both Lawlor and an independent candidate, this deal was in defiance of a ban on such preference deals by Opposition Leader Rob Borbidge. Days before the election Borbidge announced that Veivers would head a bid for the 2010 World Expo which provided a last minute boost for the veteran MP.
Lawlor defeated Veivers on 17 February 2001 becoming the first non-conservative politician to be elected to the Electoral District. He was one of 66 Labor candidates elected as part of a landslide swing towards the Government. On the Gold Coast Labor won seven of nine electorates, previously they had only had one Government Member.
Lawlor's 2001 campaign office was run by his daughter Jane and his campaign manager was Terry Callaghan. He won all 14 electoral booths with 50.9% of the primary vote and 60.8% of the two party preferred vote. These results were a 14.1% primary vote swing toward Lawlor and a 13.9% two party preferred swing against the sitting Member Mick Veivers.