The Games’ chairman appeared on Seven’s Sunrise ready to give himself a good belting.
“You can have a blame game from now until eternity but the reality is, I’m chairman of the organising committee, the buck stops with us. I’m not interested in blaming anyone but us,” Mr Beattie said.
“That’s our fault ... that’s my fault ... I apologise to you and anyone else.”
He continued the calm remorse of which Queenslanders would be familiar, saying: “That (the entry of athletes) wasn’t shared with viewers. That was clearly a stuff-up. If I get a chance I’ll apologise to (Australian flag-bearer) Kurt [Fearnley] this morning.”
Perhaps thinking he had not lashed himself viciously enough, Mr Beattie took to Twitter: “The speeches were too many and too long. I was part of that and I acknowledge it. Again, we got that wrong.
“It is very simple. I should not have spoken.”
Mr Beattie was Labor Premier of Queensland from June 1998 to September 2007 and quit of his own volition. You don’t get that type of record by being a cookie-cutter politician.
One of his strategies was to give voters what they wanted — a politician admitting mistakes. And he did it with a robustness which raised questions about whose side he was on.
The joke those days was that if there were a march through Brisbane protesting against Peter Beattie, it quite likely would be led by the premier.
One example of this came when he ended a petrol subsidy and transferred the savings to reduce the cost of vehicle registration, ensuring motorists from other states could not benefit from the lower fuel prices north of the Tweed.
But voters believed they were being dudded and no amount of explanation would soothe them.
Mr Beattie’s advisers told him the hostility would not go away and he agreed to reverse his decision.
“But not yet,” he ordered, wanting another week for the public anger to flourish.
Sure enough, a week later, Mr Beattie was out in public admitting he had made a mistake, he had stuffed up and the buck stopped with him. The voters were right, and he had listened to them.
It was a brilliant political move, although it involved dumping a sensible policy and some cynical manipulation of public attitudes.
Peter Beattie gets things done, which is why he was put in charge of the Commonwealth Games, was given a senior position with the NRL and has a slot on Sky News, not to mention nearly a decade as premier.
His secret wasn’t the overdone apology. It was what usually followed.
When premier, Mr Beattie would admit his mistake, but then tell voters that he was the best person to correct it. And for close to 10 years, they agreed.
The Closing Ceremony will be a mark against his management of the Commonwealth Games, but stand by for the apologies to be followed by an exhaustive itemisation of what he got right.
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