George Street Beat: Qld politics news and gossip
As things look increasingly dire for Queensland’s Labor government, one of their own has broken ranks. THIS IS GEORGE ST BEAT
QLD Politics
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Damning polling results and a bizarre admission from Miles on his “very likely” upcoming loss to David Crisafulli has brought back into question the strangely colourful billboard erected by Labor Member for Redland Kim Richards earlier this month.
Except you wouldn’t know she’s a Labor MP – not from the billboard anyway – with the giant self promotion printed on a Barbie-pink backdrop.
Sure, there is a sizeable picture of her in a crisp white suit jacket and some nice dot points of her noble goals, but one simply cannot ignore the missing L-word or the absent trademark red – right down to her nude lipstick.
Either Kim Richards is psychic and could predict the Courier-Mail YouGov polling data, or there is serious unrest among Labor members over Miles’ (now self acknowledged) inability to get his party over the line in October.
PREMIER’S LINE TESTED
Premier Steven Miles may have planned a week blitzing the regions with a series of crime announcements, but the revelation on Wednesday he and Police Minister Mark Ryan – along with the new Police Commissioner – were travelling to each spot in separate private jets took some of the shine off.
The Premier argued he would never apologise for spending time in the regions – and nor should he – seemingly missing it was the two planes flying in tandem which was the head scratcher.
But since he was so hell bent on spruiking that the travel was about seeing regional Queensland, we did a little math.
From Monday through Friday, he made nine landings in regional Queensland – three in Townsville, two in Cairns, and one each in Bundaberg, Hervey Bay, Mackay and Rockhampton.
Bundaberg got the Premier on the ground for 1 hour and 27 minutes, while he spent 1 hr and 38 minutes from landing to departure in Rockhampton.
Townsville – across three trips – got the Premier for a total of 5 hours and six minutes – while he spent just over 3 hours in Hervey Bay.
Mackay and Cairns were lucky enough to be blessed with overnight stays, with the Premier landing in Cairns after 6pm Monday before departing at 8.27am the next morning.
In Mackay he spent the afternoon after landing at 3.10pm, leaving again at the next morning 9.33am.
All in all, that adds up to 46 hours on the ground – but assuming he slept, lets call it more like 30 hours.
But all that travel bunny-hopping from place to place also chewed up the week – with the Premier spending more than 12 and a half hours just flying from place to place.
Questioned this week, Miles said the people of regional Queensland want to see him. Perhaps, they might like to see him for a little longer each time.
SPINNING THE JETS
The other bizarre thing in the whole private jet debacle was the Premier’s repeated insistence of referring to the planes as QGAir planes – which to the average punter would come across as state-owned planes.
The Premier’s office has confirmed the planes are not government-owned but rather government-chartered – a fact we knew from day one, given the planes’ operator details are easily available.
With the government planes still out of action its understandable other arrangements need to be made, but the Premier’s repeated terminology – like “it just would not be possible for me to have done that without access to those QG Air planes” – seemed a little coy.
For the record, the Cessna Citation CJ2+ mostly used by Ryan and the Police Commissioner this week is listed as being owned by Queensland beef barons the Teys Corporation.
The other, larger plane used by the Premier is operated by as Flight Options Charter, a private jet charter company.
CHOPPY WATERS
As part of his week of announcements, the Premier’s stop in Cairns contained one that came as a shock to absolutely no one – a new police helicopter for the far north.
What a surprise! Who could have seen this coming after just a week and a half of Labor’s Cairns-based MPs deciding to put their noggins together and pen an opinion-editorial saying they were going to march down to Parliament and lobby the Premier for a chopper.
MPs Craig Crawford, Michael Healy and Curtis Pitt said a new chopper for Cairns’ police force would help “stop criminals in their tracks”.
The same Mr Crawford who in 2021 said “ it would be a big waste of money to have a police helicopter in Cairns full time”.
But this wasn’t the only campaign for a police chopper, because at the same time as the MPs in Cairns had a light bulb moment, so did Nicklin MP Rob Skelton.
He too launched a petition calling for a police chopper on the Sunshine Coast.
Lo and behold on Friday the government announced a police chopper for the Sunshine Coast and Wide Bay.
It’s like they’re all singing from the same song sheet, written at the last election strategy meeting.
MONEY WHERE THE POLL IS
Labor’s chances of securing a historic fourth term look increasingly to be in the toilet according to the Courier-Mail’s latest YouGov poll.
And a quick squiz of electoral donations data shows this is translating in the cash stakes.
So far this year Labor has managed to raise $321,000 while the LNP has secured $1.6m.
Among Labor’s recent donors is Anacta Strategies – the high-profile lobbying firm whose top executives Evan Moorhead and David Nelson remain banned from doing business with the government until the end of this term.
Donation logs show the nearly $3000 donation is for Anacta to have a 10-seater table at Treasurer Cameron DIck’s post-budget event.
SEE YOU AT THE TOP
Former Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s enlistment of veteran celebrity agent Max Markson was unexpected, but the shock involvement of jobs queen Sarina Russo as matchmaker was certainly the cherry on top.
A quick scan of Ms Russo’s colourful social media feed reveals she has been spending time with the former Premier.
An April 7 Instagram post by Ms Russo, which can only be described as chaotic, shows her with Ms Palaszczuk in an unidentified alleyway, potentially in Sydney, with absolutely no context. We love to see it.
RURAL DOCS RE-BIRTH
The imminent reopening of a birthing suite in remote far north Queensland caused a small stir this week, and not only because it was the first time this was to be done in nearly three decades.
Rather it was the revelation former Rural Doctor Association of Queensland Dr John Hall had been recruited as the new medical services director at Torres and Cape HHS.
Long-time readers of the Courier-Mail might recognise the name, as Dr Hall – by all accounts a passionate and dogged champion for rural health services – was the man who effectively kicked off Queensland’s rural maternity reckoning in 2018.
Dr Hall, working in Oakey at the time, was instrumental in revealing newborn babies were dying at a higher rate in Queensland country towns with no maternity services.
The investigation sparked the Rural Maternity Taskforce, which recommended the reopening of Weipa’s birthing suite.
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