George Street Beat: Qld politics news and gossip
She’s been keeping a low profile since her integrity scandal, but Jackie Trad has stepped out to celebrate — despite the Premier’s plea to keep it low-key.
QLD Politics
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EMBATTLED Treasurer Jackie Trad hosted a party last night at a trendy Boundary St bar in West End to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the passing of abortion law reform.
“Party with Jackie Trad,” the promotional guff began, with entry to the event costing a princely sum of $1.
George Street Beat: Qld politics news and gossip
Opinion: Beleaguered Jackie Trad goes missing in action
Some colleagues were none too impressed, given they were warned by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk against spruiking the politically contentious topic.
However Trad, who was spotted in the parliamentary bar singing ditties to passing MPs last week, likes to write her own rules.
Claim-farming outrage
INSURERS are none too impressed about 11th-hour changes to legislation to stamp out claim-farming, the toxic practice of litigation law firms paying third parties for information about crash victims.
On top of unions and community legal services, the Queensland Government has now added charities, schools or sporting associations to the list of groups that can legally receive kickbacks.
The changes came after some last-minute urging from Maurice Blackburn’s Rod Hodgson, who has employed the lobbying services of former Labor strategist-in-chief Evan Moorhead.
Moorhead still sits on the party’s election strategy committee, and is a close confidant of Treasurer Jackie Trad, but the Integrity Commissioner has given him the green light to glad-hand on the claim-farming reforms.
Gone — but not for long?
VETERAN watchdog Bob Brittan has pulled the pin at the Legal Services Commission after his run-in with Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath.
Brittan completes his long tenure at the commission next week.
He clashed with the Government over its decision to appoint key legal bodies, whose members the LSC investigates, to the panel that was picking the new commissioner.
Brittan went public about being “pissed off” with the process, and withdrew his nomination for the commissioner role.
One gets the feeling that Queenslanders haven’t heard the last of him.
Lonely place in the sun
ANY announcement remotely related to renewables usually has state ministers and their hordes of hangers-on climbing over each other for an invite.
Not so this week, when Adani boss Lucas Dow officially flicked the switch on the company’s $100 million Rugby Run solar farm near Moranbah.
There wasn’t a state minister in sight, let alone a press statement welcoming the farm.
Obviously Labor’s wounds are still weeping after losing the fight to stop the Carmichael coalmine.
Life imitates art
IN A CASE akin to the 2002 comedy Crackerjack, a Moreton Bay bowls club has been saved after a long fight to fend off developers from its prime site.
The saga even had its own Mick Molloy-style character, with burly local state MP Shane King taking up the cudgels on behalf of bowlers.
News filtered into Kallangur Memorial Bowls Club bar in recent weeks that retiring mayor Alan Sutherland and his council had granted them a further five-year lease.
It has been happy hour ever since.
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