LNP official found in contempt over abortion vote threat to own MPs

An email threatening disendorsement sent to Liberal National Party MPs before they voted to decriminalise abortion has been found to be a contempt of the Queensland Parliament.

However, there will be no punishment meted out following the ruling from the Parliament's powerful ethics committee.

Former LNP leader Tim Nicholls was one of three MPs to be threatened with disendorsement. Credit: Dan Peled/AAP

With both the major parties allowing a conscience vote, three LNP members - Tim Nicholls, Jann Stuckey and Steve Minnikin - voted against the majority of their party colleagues in supporting the bill on the night of October 17, 2018.

However, on the eve of the vote, LNP Pine Rivers state electoral council (SEC) secretary Patrick Collins emailed the electorate offices of all LNP MPs about a motion which had passed unanimously at one of their meetings.

The resolution said: "Like all LNP members we believe our elected representatives must abide by our party's values at all times. The Pine Rivers SEC calls on the State Council to dis-endorse elected members of the LNP who support the Termination of Pregnancy Bill 2018."

Pine Rivers Labor MP Nikki Boyd wrote to Speaker Curtis Pitt to complain the email amounted to contempt because it attempted to intimidate LNP members and disadvantage them based on how they acted in Parliament.

"The motion passed by the LNP Pine Rivers SEC must be viewed in the context of comments made recently by Mr Gary Spence, the state president of the LNP," Ms Boyd stated.

"At a LNP party room meeting [in] September 2018, Mr Spence told LNP members they could be putting themselves at risk of having their preselection to run again at the October 2020 state election overturned by the LNP state council."

Mr Collins apologised and said he was not threatening, instead merely informing LNP politicians about the motion and that he had requested a debate at the next state council.

But Mr Pitt referred the issue to the ethics committee, which has the power to force apologies, issue fines and order time in jail for acts of contempt.

The ethics committee found Mr Patrick committed contempt of Parliament, his email threatened MPs and was an attempt to "improperly interfere with the freedom of members of the Parliament to perform their duties".

But the committee decided to take no further action, stating the conduct fell at the lower end of the spectrum.

In its report, the ethics committee said on one view, internal party machinations could involve political pressure on MPs to vote a particular way.

"On another view, it is an extraordinary act for a body outside of the Parliament to seek to influence members' votes in the House by way of threats of disendorsement from the party, when the parliamentary party had announced to the public its decision to allow its members to vote in the House according to their conscience, and not be bound to a party position," it wrote.

However, the ethics committee noted Mr Colllins' apology and his "layman's understanding of the political process" as he had only recently taken over as secretary of the Pine Rivers SEC, which indicated he was unaware his behaviour could be viewed as an attempt to intimidate MPs.

At last year's LNP state convention, party members voted to reject any attempts to change existing abortion legislation in Queensland, with almost every person in the room supporting the resolution, although the decision was not binding on the parliamentary team.

Mr Nicholls is also the current deputy chair of the ethics committee.

The Termination of Pregnancy Bill removes the procedure from the Criminal Code, allows abortion on request up to 22 weeks and introduces safe access zones of 150 metres around clinics to shield women from harassment.

It also allows abortion after 22 weeks with consent from two doctors, and requires conscientious objectors to refer women to a medical practitioner who will perform a termination.