George Street Beat: Deputy Premier’s appearance at luxe riverfront launch

Steven Miles’ recent flying visit to Singapore included a dinner date at the luxe Grand Shanghai with a Qld industry heavyweight. THIS IS GEORGE STREET BEAT

The Premier may have been in China but she wasn’t the only one enjoying some recent overseas jaunts.

Her deputy made a recent trip to Singapore, and a read of his report from the September trip reveals Mr Miles squeezed in a dinner date at the Grand Shanghai with none other than John Wagner.

John Wagner (left, pictured with brother Denis) dined with Deputy Premier Steven Miles in Singapore.

According to Mr Miles’ report, the dinner with the Queensland business tycoon – who of course struck the deal with the state government over the controversial Wellcamp quarantine facility – was so Mr Wagner could brief the “on business opportunities under development across the areas of defence, aerospace and emerging industries”.

Watch this space?

DUTTON FROZEN OUT

A war of words has erupted between the state government and the federal opposition leader amid a ribbon-cutting brouhaha at a suburban carpark.

The commuter carpark at Ferny Grove station finally opened on November 10 after a series of delays, with local state MP Mark Furner and Transport Minister Mark Bailey on deck with the developer to celebrate the milestone.

That’s the story presented on the official photographs online, but not everyone was a happy camper with allegations federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was deliberately iced out of proceedings.

According to Mr Dutton’s office he was invited to the event and had been having cordial chats with the two state ministers until he was then told he couldn’t be part of the official ribbon-cutting, and needed to get back and stand behind the barriers.

Mr Dutton said the whole ordeal was “actually quite comical” and queried the state government’s “strange approach”.

“I get on well with (Ministers) Bailey and Furner and they were all chatty before the event started, and then behaved like juveniles pretending not to see me … the main thing is the extra car parks are now open and it will help local residents,” he said.

Mr Bailey’s office’s version of events were different, saying there had been no icing out and it was simply protocol the two sides didn’t mix when officiating these occasions.

But Mr Furner bit back, accusing Mr Dutton of being a sook.

“For Pete’s sake — not his electorate, not his government, not his plan, not his money. Leave the dummy in the cot,” Mr Furner said.

For the record, the electoral map shows the Ferny Grove Park N Ride intensely close to the border of the Dickson and Ryan federal electorates, likely falling on the Ryan side. A third of the funding for the $33m project came from the former Coalition government and the rest from the state government.

LOBO BACK IN THE LNP FORE?

Beleaguered one-time federal LNP candidate Vivian Lobo has popped up again, this time donating $950 to the LNP. Electoral Commission of Queensland records show Lobo chucking in the dollars in the first week of November, simply for the reason of “donation”.

Lobo is famously alleged to have misled the electoral commission on where he lived, after he told the Australian Electoral Commission that he and his wife lived at an Everton Park address within the Lilley electorate.

But it was later revealed that house was dilapidated and unfurnished, while Mr Lobo lived in Windsor.

Australian Federal Police confirmed the matter remained under investigation – a whopping 18 months later.

INNER-CITY ELITES

We’ve become accustomed to following around the government – generally led by Housing

Minister Meaghan Scanlon – to myriad social housing announcements in far flung places.

But this week it was a much more luxe gig which caught our attention.

Donning his acting premier hard hat while Annastacia Palaszczuk was in China, State Development, Infrastructure and Planning Minister Steven Miles held a media conference at a new multimillion-dollar apartment complex on the New Farm riverbank just completed by rich-lister developer Kevin Seymour and family.

Steven Miles at the development at 80 Oxlade Dr at New Farm. Picture: Annette Dew

Mr Miles’s spin was that developments such as this — where some apartments have sold for about $7m — were key in the housing crisis battle as it got people in four- or five-bedroom bedroom suburban homes to consider an apartment for the first time. Fair enough.

Perhaps it was more of a sign of a Labor government finally considering an olive branch to the developer community as the Queensland housing crisis deepens.

SOCIAL MEDIA STRIFE?

She famously said “social media is media”, so we wonder what Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk thinks about her own follower numbers tanking.

A quick run of the data shows the Premier has lost more than 2000 Instagram followers this year, and more than 800 in just the past few months.

Bizarre, maybe, considering her ever-ballooning social media team is posting more than ever.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk recently held an invitation-only morning tea for her "Facebook friends".

You may remember the Premier’s popularity on social media absolutely exploded during Covid – maybe time for some more dog pictures?

Meanwhile Opposition Leader David Crisafulli has caught the TikTok bug as both parties battle to get young voters engaged in an election less than a year away, with his team bombarding the youth with videos including Mr Crisafulli spruiking about learner licences and wanting Taylor Swift to hit Brisbane.

He has just ticked over 1 million likes on the platform – more than Ms Palaszczuk – though he is still well behind on Instagram and Facebook.

PRESS CONFERENCE GATECRASHED

Speaking of pressers, one of the more bizarre things we’ve heard occurred earlier this week to the LNP’s Jarrod Bleijie.

The party’s deputy leader was in Hervey Bay having a crack at Health Minister Shannon Fentiman over the latest data, when two Queensland Health staff joined the journos to watch on.

Queensland Health staff recently joined reporters at a media conference called by the LNP’s Jarrod Bleijie. Picture: Dan Peled / NCA NewsWire

If that wasn’t odd enough, they were also spotted chatting to reporters afterwards – in an apparent bid to put forward the government’s side of the story.

If intimidation was a factor in this strange decision, Bleijie – who is never shy from going toe to toe with anyone – is probably the last person to pick.

We hear he even asked the staffers to ask him any questions they might have. They declined.