George Street Confidential: Campbell Newman attends campaign launch
It was a rare appearance by controversial former premier Campbell Newman at an LNP event. But you won’t find any evidence of it online.
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Some LNP types are madly swinging their mallets around following last weekend’s campaign launch of McConnel candidate Pinky Singh.
Staged at the Merthyr Croquet Club, the event boasted a guest list including none other than former premier Campbell Newman and his wife Lisa.
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Newman has been considered persona non grata by many since the party’s historic 2015 election loss.
His ongoing frank assessments of current LNP leader Deb Frecklington haven’t exactly mended fences either.
Pinky is obvious far more forgiving, although there was no sign of Newman in the photos on Facebook, which did feature another former LNP leader in Tim Nicholls as well as federal MP Trevor Evans.
JPL’s impressive EPS
We now know what Member for Surfers Paradise John-Paul Langbroek does when his screen time limit kicks in and he’s no longer on Instagram.
Langbroek, the former dentist, is proving a canny investor.
He bought a bundle of shares in American-based start-up Sezzle when it debuted on the Australian Securities Exchange mid last year with an issue price of $1.22.
The buy-now, pay-later-style set-up was trading at $10.30 in August although this softened to $6.52 this week.
Still, not bad in these COVID times.
It might be worth tapping JPL for a tip next time he’s pursuing his other great love at the Gold Coast Turf Club.
Deb doing it too
Someone who is still a bit a share market novice is JPL’s leader, Deb Frecklington.
She’s recently added a Raiz account to her declaration of interests.
We’ve since discovered the Raiz app allows people to automatically invest their spare change from everyday purchases into a share portfolio.
Some would reckon this means Frecklingon isn’t fit to run a $65 billion business like the state government, although others might argue this exactly the anti-spendthrift approach that Queensland needs right now.
First past the post
Speaking of punts, a few weeks back George Street Confidential delivered the news of a Sunshine Coast horse called Palaszczuk.
Owned by homewares guru Gerry Harvey, the filly failed to win in her first couple of starts at the Sunshine Coast and Doomben, and we pondered whether this was an ill-omen for her namesake, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
However on the old Ipswich track against a less quality field on Thursday, Palaszczuk came home strong from barrier five to claim her inaugural win.
That’s $35,000 in prizemoney from three starts after being bought by Harvey for $40,000 at the Magic Millions.
Talk about form at the right time.
Mining a political move
On the topic of the election, some miners are apparently a bit squeamish about the campaign planned by the Queensland Resources Council.
According to an insider, QRC supremo Ian Macfarlane, the former Abbott government minister, wants the campaign to warn about the pitfalls for the industry from a potential Labor/Green alliance in Queensland Parliament.
It’s a little too political for the QRC members who still manage to get meeting with Labor ministers.
Trad probe mark III
Finally, we might not have heard the last of Alan MacSporran this year.
It’s understood the Crime and Corruption Commission is poking around at Frankie Carroll’s appointment as under treasurer.
It would be the third probe involving former deputy premier Jackie Trad this term.