Dunno. Terry was in my class at primary school. Yup - he did not seemed destined to be anything other than the welder that he became for a while but I recall that even in primary school, he was heavily influenced by family affiliations with the Labor Party.
That he held me back from escaping a thumping by someone in about grade 8 at lunch time tells me that he was probably always well qualified to be what an ABC announcer once described him to me as being - ie a (politcal) headkicker.
Terry was good for the electorate though - very hard working for the electorate - and very good for community activities like girls' netball where I know that he was very active. That is where a lot of politicians fail but where the likes of Rudd and Mackenroth and Bob Katter and Iron Bar Tuckey survive and thrive. Viz the harder they work, the luckier they get when the electoral tide goes out.
As you will recall, Greg, this electorate was well served with Labor stars including Clem who drove a very active organically grown, community progress theme producing gems like what we now know as the Clem Jones Centre encompassing many sports facilities within the one block of land.
I reckon that the new member could do little worse than to explore how the State Government might help in updating those facilities. I am not sure that they have improved much over the years since Clem, apart from the pokie funded expansions of the football club.
Of course, another way that both Mark, and the new man in my electorate, could make a valuable name for themselves, is to get themselves on a state government committee to explore liquor licensing laws in this state and remove the restrictions of supermarkets being able to sell me a bottle of plonk whilst I am shopping for groceries.
I have just been watching a bit of Saturday afternoon TV and have seen the TV advertisements for various forms of gambling on mainstream media. If anything was soft porn, those adverts are in relation to how they make online gambling seem like a bit of innocent fun. I cannot understand how governments can allow that soft brainwashing of children to happen on free-to-air TV and yet ban the sale of a bottle of plonk in a supermarket as happens in the other states.
(Footnote for the youngsters under sixty in this forum, until 1963, Queensland primary schools included grade 8.)