Cameron Thompson: From cock-of-the-walk to feather duster!

After 9 years of neglecting the people of Ipswich as the Federal Liberal Member for Blair, Cameron Thompson has finally come out of his cave - displaying the very lack of credentials which induced voters to unceremoniously dump him last weekend.

In a miserable letter of defeat to The Queensland Times, Cameron Thompson is still claiming credit for the so-called Goodna Bypass.

This Bypass never actually got off the ground except for the initial round of property resumptions which hurt many people at Riverview and Moggill.

The Bypass plan - which, along with WorkChoices, was the major reason for Cameron Thompson's defeat - would not have seen one red cent spent by the Howard Government on upgrading the 6km stretch of the Ipswich Motorway from Goodna to Dinmore.

This former member now has the temerity to claim that "local elected representatives of the Labor Party failed to support their own voters" over the doomed Goodna Bypass plan.

Well, Cameron besides being loose with the truth, your mathematical skills are proving extremely problematic as well.

On the latest count by the Australian Electoral Commission in Blair, the 2-party preferred vote is:

Shayne Neumann (ALP) - 42,274 (54.84%)

Cameron Thompson (Liberal) - 34,815 (45.16%).

Shayne Neumann has a commanding 7459 vote lead over the former Member.

Cameron Thompson's swipe at local elected representatives of the Labor Party is totally pathetic.

On Saturday night with the results rolling in, those same Labor Party representatives proved they were totally in touch with the local electorate over the Goodna Bypass issue - a fact which Cameron Thompson conveniently forgets.

Cameron Thompson might have been the cock-of-the-walk last week but now he is just the feather duster from Blair and if he had one ounce of commonsense he would stop blaming everyone but himself for the 10.53% swing against him - one of the largest swings against any sitting member in Australia.

The best thing Shayne Neumann could hope for is for Cameron Thompson to hang around for 3 years trying to win his old seat back.

I will make a prediction now that if Cameron Thompson stands as the Liberal candidate in Blair at the 2010 election, his vote will plummet even further than it did so spectacularly last Saturday night.

Say goodnight Cameron - and turn out the light in the Liberal Party bunker as you leave!

Ex-Member for Blair Cameron Thompson on guilt trip

The ex-Member for the seat of Blair - based on the provincial City of Ipswich - has embarked on a massive guilt trip over his stunning election loss.

Seventy-two hours after his well-deserved defeat, Cameron Thompson has finally emerged from his cubby-hole, blaming everyone but himself for being booted out by the perspicacious people of Blair.

Cameron Thompson has the hide to say that he was not defeated by local issues in the campaign and has the temerity to suggest that the electors of Blair were somehow duped after being overshadowed by national issues.

This ex-ABC rural radio reporter just doesn't get it.

Can't he see that WorkChoices was a real local issue for many locals in Blair?

Can't he see that his one-man opposition to upgrading the Ipswich Motorway Motorway affected 100,000 drivers a day - many of whom were from his electorate?

Can't he see by continuing to ignore important local issues in Blair such as health and education, he would be judged on judgment day?

Can't he see that his continuing brawling with the local Ipswich City Council had put him on the path to certain political destruction?

The people of Ipswich have traditionally shown great loyalty to their local sitting member. Bill Hayden was the only ALP Member in Queensland to survive the massive anti-Labor swing against Gough Whitlam in 1975 because he was a tremendous local member.

When Pauline Hanson won the seat of Oxley in 1996 against the ALP's under-performing Les Scott, she was booted out 2 years later for not looking after the locals and concentrating on her dream of a totalitarian Australian regime under her dictatorship.

Cameron Thompson should stop taking swipes at all an sundry, blaming them for his defeat last Saturday.

Had he stuck to genuinely representing local people, he could still be the Member for Blair.

But this ex-politician who idolises Bob Menzies, supports the Queen of England as the Head of State for Australia and who dreams of the conservative parties one day ruling in perpetuity across the Commonwealth and the eight states and territories, should go back to his cubby-hole and contemplate what might have been, had he been prepared to work for the good of the local people of Blair rather than playing partisan political games for the past 9 years.

Now, he will have plenty of time on his hands to go back to Central Queensland for the ABC, along with his trusty tape recorder and do something important in his life such as reporting on the state of the dunnies in downtown Longreach!

Jim Lloyd - Another happy Coalition loss!

The man who tried to foist the Goodna Bypass proposal on the people of Ipswich, the Federal Roads Minister Jim Lloyd has lost his own New South Wales seat of Robertson in the Federal election with a 7.5% swing against him.

Jim Lloyd would not listen to the people of Ipswich. He would not take a bi-partisan approach to an important local issue in southeast Queensland.

All he could do was to listen to his political mate Cameron Thompson, the Member for Blair who dreamt up the hare-brained Goodna Bypass plan, after all of the public consultation on the Ipswich Motorway upgrade had been completed in 2002.

Five years later, all the people have left are the hollow promises of the Liberal Party but - on the positive side - the political carcasses of Jim Lloyd and Cameron Thompson!

The voters of Blair and Oxley have spoken in unmistakable terms.

The new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the local Federal Member for Oxley, Bernie Ripoll will now formally unveil their commitment to 6-laneing the 6km stretch of the Ipswich Motorway from Goodna to Dinmore.

And the people of Ipswich will be proud for the first time to have a first-class Motorway linking Ipswich with Brisbane.

Cameron Thompson deserved to lose Blair

The outgoing Liberal Member for Blair Cameron Thompson fully deserved to lose his seat in yesterday's election.

This man has treated the people of Blair with absolute and utter contempt and has now been justly punished for his failure to represent the local people.

His own newspaper The Thompson Tribune has thankfully published its final edition.

When local people were hurting over WorkChoices, health, education and a host of other local issues, Cameron Thompson stuck like a political fool to only one issue.

Cameron Thompson turned his re-election bid into a referendum on the dreaded Goodna Bypass as his solution to the problems on the Ipswich Motorway.

And the people of Blair clearly rejected his plan for a $3 billion Bypass, opting to support Labor's proposal for an immediate upgrade of the Ipswich Motorway at a third of the cost.

And what a thumping Cameron Thompson received from the people.

They well and truly gave him his own political bypass.

This ex-rural ABC radio reporter from Central Queensland had a 10.4% swing against him - one of the highest swings against a sitting member in Australia.

His worthy opponent, Labor's Shayne Neumann stuck to his guns throughout the campaign on important local issues, never wavering from his commitments on Workchoices and the Ipswich Motorway in particular.

Over 9 years, Cameron Thompson proved himself a superbly supercilious politician, too-clever by half in his divisive dealings with the people, the press and the Ipswich City Council.

And now that he is gone, a new era of representative democracy has been unveiled in the City of Ipswich.

Cameron Thompson - Gone and soon forgotten!

Say Goodnight Cameron, says Centrebet!

Centrebet's latest odds in the seat of Blair which covers Ipswich and the adjacent rural area are:

NEUMANN, Shayne (ALP) 1.18
THOMPSON, Cameron (LIB) 4.25
CHORLEY, Dale (IND) 101.00
LUXTON, Peter (GREENS) 251.00
WHITE, David (DEM) 2001.00
SMITH, Bevan (FFP) 2501.00
SWANBOROUGH, Doug (LDP) 2501.00
THIES, Richard (CEC) 2501.00

On those figures, Cameron Thompson should be reading Saturday's Courier-Mail checking for ads by the ABC for part-time rural radio reporters in remote Queensland.


Pictured is the ALP's Shayne Neumann who will become the next Federal Member for Blair on Saturday night, according to Centrebet.