Anna Bligh breaks down at press conference today (image from Herald Sun via Channel Nine)
There are times when you want your political leaders to show leadership, true leadership. Leadership of the nation-saving, things-will-be-all-right kind, or as alright as they can in the circumstances.
And for mine, I’d argue that the performance of Queensland Premier Anna Bligh during the past few days has been the apotheosis of her not always stellar political career.
She remained steadfast and calm as deadly muddy waters tore through the hearts, lives and land of rural Queensland, towns many of us had never heard of before, only to push their way to the capital, Brisbane, where flood waters have destroyed tens of thousands of homes, businesses and livelihoods.
I really started listening to her, and watching her, earlier this week when she stood before the press, fighting back tears, concern and fear etched on her face, and said the floods “might be breaking our hearts but they haven’t broken our will”. I felt an oomph. A real physical pulse, a visceral connection. I was with her. I wasn’t alone. Australia was with her. Is with her.
Leadership is about leading. It is about grit, courage, and providing hope in times of crises, all of which Premier Bligh has shown and done since the floods began weeks ago, but even more so these past few days. Her concerns for Queenslanders are writ large. Her devastation at the unbearable tragic loss of life is gut-wrenching, like all of ours, and so intense as to be almost palpable. Her empathy real, sincere.
Premier Bligh has shown extraordinary strength, grace and compassion. Nations need this in their darkest hours, and for Australia but in particular Queensland, there have been many such hours and more to come.
The "inland tsunami" that hit Toowoomba in QLD
The Twitterverse has been alive to Anna Bligh’s character under crisis and marvelled at its strength, composure and determination. And that’s just a handful of the words used in a medium that is more often laced with cruel, razor sharp and destructive invective than it is praise.
I think there is something else. Communication. Connecting with your fellow Australians – not “my constituents” as Kevin Rudd clumsily called the people in his electorate on Wednesday.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt did it during the Depression with his fireside chats, keeping the public appraised of terrible events and giving hope.
Bligh, in jeans and shirt and boots and belt, a sheen of sweat and hair as best as it can look, has not shirked telling us what we want to know: when, where, how and how bad. She has spoken with confidence about how Queenslanders, a tough, resilient breed, will prevail after Mother Nature has done her worst and how the rest of Australia will help them. Confidence in a crisis is king, or queen as it may be in this case.
Bligh has delivered the good news when we most needed it, like yesterday when much of Brisbane was still being threatened by rising waters yet to peak. Our national spirit soared when she revealed that two of the three people who were photographed being swept away on the roof of their white car – a photograph that came to symbolise so much about the humanity of the floods – had been found.
We needed that good news amid the horror and carnage that was played out on YouTube and caught by camera phones, amid the unimaginably heartbreaking stories of families riven by the raging floods, some killed, others surviving – tragic each way. Our hearts sank though when she told us that the search continued for the third person, a racing steward named James Perry whose wife, Jenny, and son, Ted, had been rescued.
There is much more bad news to come, more immeasurably sad stories of death and destruction, and achingly poignant tales of ordinary Australians doing extraordinary things for their neighbours, friends, families and strangers. The heroes among us. The ones who don’t give their surnames, just get on with it.
And the heroes lost to the floods, heroes like Josh Ross who refused to leave his wheel-chair bound mother, Brenda; brave Jordan Rice, just 13-years-old, who perished with his mum Donna Rice after insisting rescuers retrieve his younger brother first; Steve and Sandy Matthews who were swept away after helping save two of their four children. Theirs are names we won’t forget, they are the faces of the floods. There are others we don’t know of yet but when we do, we’ll remember them, too.
Bligh has also done wonders by delivering us heroes to help guide us through the mess, like Major General Mick Slater from the Australian Army who is leading the rebuilding and in whom you automatically have enormous trust.
Major General Mick Slater, who will lead the rebuilding of QLD after the devastating floods
It’s called faith, and we’ve got faith that he will be able to do it and he will, with help from the civilian armies of the State Emergency Services around the nation, the public, and other agencies. We somehow know that Queensland will be rebuilt. There’s no doubt, no hand-wringing. Just doing. It has already begun, he told Channel Seven’s Mel Doyle and anyone else who put a microphone in front of him.
Early today at another televised press conference the enormity of the situation finally tested Anna Bligh’s enormous inner strength, but it didn’t break her. As she addressed the nation again, with her helpers standing behind her, she cried. Australians have been crying for days. We were with her in her tears.
