Warren Entsch has questions to answer over Alex Sekler Pfizer jab, grant for wife Yolonde

Warren Entsch speaks during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra yesterday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

For more than a quarter of a century Cairns-based MP Warren Entsch has represented his north Queensland electorate with the flair of an avuncular local member with the determination to get things done.

Mr Entsch put off retirement plans to contest the federal election last year, when it was thought his popular local profile just might make the difference for the embattled Morrison government. He dedicated his efforts during his last term in government to championing an end to plastic pollution in the ocean and safeguarding the Great Barrier Reef. But revelations by Queensland editor Michael McKenna and senior reporter Sarah Elks put things into a new and difficult light for Mr Entsch.

Leichardt MP Warren Entsch (left) with Bioletta and Alex Sekler in 2020. Picture: File

Investigations are now under way into dealings between Mr Entsch and Soviet-born billionaire property developer Alex Sekler, who helped to bankroll Mr Entsch’s election campaign last year. The now opposition backbencher also has become embroiled in controversy over a $213,725 grant from the Morrison government’s Indigenous Languages and Arts program to his non-Indigenous wife to teach pottery in the remote Queensland Aboriginal community of Doomadgee.

Mr Entsch says he has nothing to hide regarding his dealings with Mr Sekler and was not involved in the grant to a company wholly owned and directed by Yolonde Entsch, who is running as the Liberal National Party candidate for the state seat of Cairns. But Mr Entsch, a former crocodile farmer and union delegate, faces the prospect of a Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission investigation initiated by Queensland Health.

The allegation is that Mr Entsch helped Mr Sekler jump the queue to get a Pfizer Covid vaccination in the Torres Strait at a time when he was not eligible to get Pfizer in Cairns. Mr Sekler appealed for help and Mr Entsch called health authorities in the Torres Strait and ordered his taxpayer-funded electorate staffer to accompany the billionaire on his privately chartered plane.

Warren Entsch gets a kiss from his wife, Yolonde, as they vote during last year’s federal election. Picture: Brian Casey

Warren Entsch gives then-PM Scott Morrison a tour of Skytek Pty Ltd in Cairns during the 2022 election campaign. Picture: Jason Edwards

The accusation is Mr Sekler was able to put himself ahead of the more vulnerable, putting them at additional risk in the process. Claims by Mr Entsch that Mr Sekler also wanted to discuss making a large donation to the hospital suggest a billionaire with a transactional nature; nothing wrong with that. But Mr Entsch has given varying accounts of what happened.

More intriguing is Mr Sekler’s $304,000 donation to the LNP, of which $300,000 was spent on Mr Entsch’s successful campaign to retain the seat of Leichhardt. Mr Entsch insists there was no quid pro quo or anything untoward. But he cannot simply brush aside questions on issues that at face value would not meet the pub test, even in the tropical climes of his native north Queensland. If Mr Entsch cannot see this it may be time to conclude he has spent too long in the job and should dust off his plans to retire.