Peter Dutton at loggerheads with Liberal National Party headquarters
Peter Dutton and some of his federal parliamentary colleagues are at loggerheads with Queensland’s Liberal National Party headquarters ahead of the next federal election.
G’day readers and welcome to a special holiday edition of Feeding the Chooks, your behind-the-scenes insight into the wild, weird and wonderful world of Queensland politics.
MPs unhappy with LNP HQ
Peter Dutton and some of his federal parliamentary colleagues are at loggerheads with Liberal National Party headquarters over preparation for the next federal election, which could be called later in the year.
The federal Liberal leader was one of ten Queensland MPs who signed a letter to LNP state director Ben Riley last August calling for their preselections to be held immediately.
“We note the AEC’s (Australian Electoral Commission) determination that no redistributions of federal electoral divisions will occur in Queensland for the next election,’’ the letter, leaked to Chooks, opens.
“As such, the undersigned members request that preselection now be opened for their respective divisions.
“It is prudent to conclude this process for as many incumbent federal divisions as possible ahead of an exceptionally busy 2024 for the party organisation.
“As you are aware, there is a high risk that we will face local, state and federal elections in Queensland next year’’.
You would have thought that the letter from the ten MPs – who insiders tells Chooks are unlikely to face any challengers – would be enough to kick HQ into action.
But Riley has ignored their pleas and instead says the party has been focused on keeping Brisbane’s Liberal mayor Adrian Schrinner and his council team (lost one ward to the Greens and one to Labor) in control of city hall at this month’s local government elections.
The excuse has rubbed the federal parliamentarians the wrong way, particularly given that HQ seemed to be in a particular hurry when it held the preselection for the LNP’s Queensland senate ticket last July.
“We note that the Senate preselection for the next federal election has already taken place,’’ the letter to Riley said.
That preselection led to party treasurer Stuart Fraser ousting right winger and sitting senator Gerard Rennick from the third spot on the ticket in a controversial vote of the LNP state council.
Chooks has reported extensively on the preselection, which Fraser won by just three votes, with Rennick unsuccessfully appealing the eligibility of more than a handful of voters in the closed door meeting.
Remember, LNP HQ told Dutton (a Rennick backer) he wasn’t allowed to send a delegate (he couldn’t attend) to deliver his vote in the preselection but gave polar opposite approval to Nationals leader David Littleproud and Mayor Schrinner (both supporters of Fraser and also unable to attend) to have their proxy votes cast in the ballot.
At the time, Riley said it was an honest stuff up and that there was no merit in conspiracy theories that HQ was helping out Fraser.
But that hasn’t satisfied Rennick, who Chooks understands is still considering legal action, or the MPs.
“HQ seemed intent in having an early senate preselection, which helped out their mate in knocking off Gerard,’’ one MP told Chooks.
“Now, with the preselections for the state election running late, it looks like we won’t get the federal ones done until after the October 26 state election.
“It’s a schmoozle.’’
Another peeved off federal MP told Chooks HQ was “disorganised” and “behind the Eight ball”.
And let’s not forget that party HQ is already in the bad books with the rank-and-file after the vetting debacle involving city hall candidate Brock Alexander.
Riley tells Chooks that HQ had to prioritise in preparing for the city hall elections and then turn to preselect in non-LNP held seats, both in the state sphere and federally.
This week, another HQ favourite – recently departed LNP honorary legal counsel Maggie Forrest – was endorsed in an uncontested preselection for the once-blue ribbon federal seat of Ryan, lost to the Greens at the last federal election.
Next off the rank will be the federal seat of McPherson, held by former Morrison Government minister Karen Andrews who will retire from politics at the election. There are four men vying for LNP preselection in the seat, which the Climate 200-backed teals plan to target.
“The other preselections will have to wait at the moment, we have to prioritise with preselections of non-LNP held seats so we can put tanks on the lawns of the Greens and Labor MPs,’’ Riley said.
Interestingly, the MP’s letter also hinted at more retirements in explaining why there were just ten signatories wanting their preselections.
“Some incumbent members may need further time to consider their future,’’ it read.
“To ensure that these divisions are not conspicuous in their absence, only half of our sitting MPs have signed this request.”
So who were the 11 others that didn’t sign? That would be Nationals leader David Littleproud, Warren Entsch, Luke Howarth, Michelle Landry, Ted O’Brien, Angie Bell, Scott Buchholz, Terry Young, Cameron Caldwell, Ross Vasta and Andrews.
Watch this space.
Lobbyists behind Queensland housing campaign
Banned Labor lobbyist Evan Moorhead is the invisible hand behind the housing campaign of Queensland’s peak social services body and the “Road to Damascus” conversion of Steven Miles’ to put the issue at the centre of his re-election bid.
Moorhead was banned from personally lobbying in Queensland in 2022 after Chooks revealed he secretly ran Annastacia Palaszczuk’s 2020 election campaign from her office while heading the biggest lobbying firm in the state.
His clients were among the recipients of government grants and approvals in what public sector expert Peter Coaldrake, in a subsequent government-ordered review said most people would find “incredulous”.
Registered lobbyists working for Moorhead’s firm still enjoy easy access to ministers for its long list of top-paying clients and he also owns a polling company on the payroll of the ALP.
Now, Chooks can reveal, that Moorhead has been advising the Queensland Council of Social Services in its campaign to secure a commitment from the Miles government for more social housing and as the body began publicly belting the Liberal National Party opposition over the issue.
Moorhead has even temporarily embedded one of his top staffers, journalist and author Christine Jackman, in the QCOSS office.
QCOSS chief Aimee McVeigh has recently burst into print in The Courier-Mail with a series of opinion pieces, most notably, after Labor lost the seat of Ipswich West this month in one of two by-elections.
“Our minds must now turn to the potential ramifications of a change in government,’’ she wrote in reference to the October 26 general election.
“While the LNP has criticised the Miles government’s housing plan as too ambitious, questions linger – is this a critique of the government’s capacity to deliver or does the LNP intend to keep some Queenslanders living in tents along the banks of our rivers, and mothers with babies living in their cars?”
Chooks doubts that McVeigh’s taunt will elicit the same type of response she got from Miles after QCOSS released its annual living affordability report in late January.
About a week after using the findings of the report to publicly call on Miles’ to release the government’s “well overdue” plan to address the housing crisis, the premier unveiled a $3.1bn strategy in a Media Club lunch speech.
Moorhead and McVeigh were in attendance at the lunch when Miles announced that under his policy, 53,500 new homes would be built for social housing by 2046 – an average of six a day.
Since Labor came to office in 2015, the government has built fewer than 5000 … so the LNP criticism, given the worsening labour problems – has some merit.
When contacted by Chooks, Moorhead said the firm did not engage in lobbying for QCOSS and “works on a pro bono or limited cost basis with a number of clients who share our commitment to advancing social justice and equality”.
“An example of this is the work we have done with QCOSS, providing campaign and strategic advice for about three years,” she said.
It is understood Anacta is being paid in this case.
In a statement, McVeigh said she was proud QCOSS’ recent campaign has “put the housing crisis at the top of the political agenda and preceded the Homes For Queenslanders package, announced by the state government earlier this year.
“We don’t apologise for pushing Opposition Leader David Crisafulli to reveal details of how he would tackle the housing crisis should the LNP win government in October, and nor do we apologise for continuing to call on the Premier and his team to do more to ease the pressures on renters in this state.”
McVeigh was this week appointed by the Miles government to the Metro North Hospital and Health Board.
Stoker brings in the bucks
Conservative golden girl Amanda Stoker has been reeling in the big bucks to fund her political resurrection.
Stoker rose to prominence as a federal senator and assistant minister in the Morrison government, positioning herself as a warrior for Christian values, but was left without a seat in parliament after the party relegated her to the third spot on the Senate ticket at the 2022 election.
After a pseudo-break from politics when she hosted her own show on Sky News, Stoker has returned to the bright lights of politics, contesting the state seat of Oodgeroo for the LNP.
An ambitious player, Stoker has been keeping her head down and (unusually) steering clear of newspaper pages and nightly news since her preselection, but behind the scenes she has been busy raking in the dough.
Broncos boss and Ord Minnett chief executive Karl Morris tipped $2000 into Stoker’s Oodgeroo campaign this month, waste company JJ Richards and Sonsfunnelled $3000 in, while Pesca Aviation and Transition Level Investments (both owned by former Shark Tank judge and tech investor Steve Baxter) donated $4000 and $6000 respectively.
And Stoker’s low-profile approach may not last much longer. Chooks notes a new web domain – stoker.com.au – has been registered by one Amanda Jane Stoker.
Backbench briefings
Electoral records show that on the last parliamentary sitting day of this month, Alex Scott’s Together Union donated $2000 to Labor MP Kim Richards in ten $200 instalments.
Why? Chooks can reveal the second-term backbencher – who holds the marginal Brisbane bayside seat of Redlands with a buffer of just 3.9 per cent – has sold access to herself to Scott and Electrical Trades Union state secretary Peter Ong for a scheduled “parliamentary briefing” in every sitting week between now and the October 26 election.
Richards tells Chooks that she was hosting the fundraisers to keep the union bosses informed about “what’s happening in parliament”.
“I’ve only held one so far,” says Richards, a member of parliament’s ethics committee and chair of the clean economy jobs, resources and transport committee.
“I talked about the bills before the house and also about what is happening in Redlands.”
Together also donated $4900 to Richards’ campaign two days earlier, on March 19, and the meat workers’ union gave $2000 earlier in March.
Richards says she’s not sure if other Labor MPs are hosting similar events for other union bosses.
Brandis is back
Does the Liberal National Party have amnesia? Back in 2017, retiring Queensland LNP Senator George Brandis couldn’t bring himself to leave the country without lobbing a few choice words at his apparent political allies, confirming he had opposed the 2008 merger of the two Queensland conservative parties from the get-go.
“I thought in the long run, a power vacuum would open up, particularly in regard to regional Queensland, which would be occupied by other right-wing parties,” Brandis griped to The Courier-Mail on his way to become Australia’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.
“The LNP has fought four state elections and lost three.”
Since the cutting critique from the former Attorney-General, the merged party has fought – and lost – another election in 2020.
But now the LNP is leading in the polls ahead of October 26, and guess who’s back in the fold? None other than the Honorable George Brandis KC.
Last Friday, almost a week after giant swings to the LNP in two critical state by-elections, Brandis was backed by the party’s state executive to become its honorary legal officer.
Presumably he no longer thinks the LNP opposition is “very, very mediocre,” as he did in November 2016, when caught on hot mic complaining about the party under then-leader (and current Opposition frontbencher) Tim Nicholls.
“I welcome George to state executive, given his extensive service to our party and nation over many years, as a Senator, Australian Attorney-General and High Commissioner to the UK,” LNP president Lawrence Springborg told members.
Brandis takes over the honorary legal adviser gig from Maggie Forrest, who stood down to contest preselection for the Brisbane-based seat of Ryan. Once a Liberal heartland, Ryan is now held by first-term Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown on a tight 2.65 per cent margin. Forrest was unanimously endorsed as the LNP’s candidate at a branch meeting on Wednesday night.
Treasurer Stuart Fraser (replaced by Robert Pitt) and LNP VP Amanda Cooper (replaced by metro north region chair Doug Hawkes) have also departed the LNP executive, to concentrate on their campaigns for the federal senate and state seat of Aspley, respectively.
Running in Redcliffe
Labor has not exactly been bombarded by people wanting to replace Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath as the state ALP candidate for the marginal electorate of Redcliffe, held by just 6.1 per cent.
A month after D’Ath announced her retirement from politics, party HQ has closed its expressions of interest process, and received the princely sum of one nomination from an unnamed woman.
It’s not Star’s in-house lobbyist and former ALP candidate for the federal electorate of Petrie, Corinne Mulholland, nor is it retired local councillor Koliana Winchester.
Chooks can reveal the party is vetting Kass Hall, a local ALP branch member who works for the non-Labor-aligned Independent Education Union and was a secondary school teacher and a lawyer before moving from Melbourne to Brisbane just before Covid hit in 2020.
Hall is also a vocal advocate for voluntary assisted dying, after being diagnosed with cancer at 12, and repeatedly fighting off cancer into adulthood.
A Labor source says Hall is “well, fit and ready to fight for Redcliffe”.
Labor better hope the Redcliffe hopeful is given the green light during internal vetting, or it’ll be back to the drawing board, just months out from the October election date.
One Labor MP in D’Ath’s Right faction tells Chooks: “Yvette should have sorted this shit out before she pulled the pin. Just assuming someone is going to take it on is not a good transition strategy, it just makes the seat that much harder to hold. She assumed Corinne would run and obviously she said ‘no thank you’.”
Labor’s pick will face the LNP’s serial candidate Kerri-Anne Dooley, a nurse educator, who has unsuccessfully run five times for Redcliffe (four times for the LNP and once for Family First).
In the neighbouring seat of Sandgate, where former Tourism and Sport Minister Stirling Hinchliffe is retiring, Bisma Asif – the former Young Labor president and staffer for federal Aged Care Minister Anika Wells – has been endorsed as Labor’s candidate.
May it please the court
Labor will have chance to lock-in some final judicial appointments before October’s state election.
Chooks hears Peter Applegarth – the former Queensland Law Reform Commission head who drafted the state’s voluntary assisted dying laws – has tendered his resignation, which will take effect just before election caretaker mode starts later this year.
Court of Appeal judge Philip Morrison – who will reach mandatory retirement age of 70 in June this year – is widely tipped in legal circles to be replaced by Supreme Court Justice Sue Brown.
If Brown gets the call up, that would leave two Supreme Court spots to fill before October’s election.
And Chooks hears there could be a few more vacancies in the District Court coming up too. Legal Aid public defender Katarina Prskalo was appointed to the District Court on Thursday, but there will be another position available with long serving judge Katherine McGinness set to hang up her robes in August this year
Former Queensland Bar Association president Rebecca Treston (who handed out how-to-vote cards for Labor’s Dickson candidate Ali France at the 2019 election, and tweeted a picture of herself giving one to Dickson LNP MP Peter Dutton) has been touted as a possible contender for a District Court judgeship, alongside Yvette D’Ath’s former policy adviser Laura Reece. Reece, called to the bar in 2006, has also served on Margaret McMurdo’s Women’s Safety Taskforce and was counsel assisting Walter Sofronoff’s DNA inquiry.
Happy birthday, ‘Professor’ Clive F. Palmer
Chooks sadly didn’t receive an invite to billionaire former federal MP Clive Palmer’s 70th birthday soiree aboard his luxury yacht on the Brisbane River, but a family-sponsored birthday advertisement on Tuesday caught our eye.
The full-page photo-collage ad in The Courier-Mail newspaper features the Palmer United Party founder with Australia Zoo’s Terri, Bindi and Robert Irwin, Palmer giving the thumbs up in front of federal parliament, a teenage Palmer appearing to dance with a nun, and Palmer holding a soccer ball during his controversial stint as owner of the Gold Coast United football club.
And there, in the centre of the page above-the-fold is Palmer, with his fist raised in triumph, pictured outside the Queensland Nickel refinery in Townsville.
Palmer bought the plant from BHP Billiton in 2009 for $1. It was north Queensland’s largest private employer until early 2016, when the nickel price fell and many, many internal financial issues forced Palmer to sack 237 workers and call in voluntary administrators. Shortly afterwards, most of the remaining 550 workers were made redundant, and federal taxpayers footed the bill for $70m in redundancy entitlements. (Palmer now says he has paid off all creditors, and claimed in December 2022 to have sold the business for more than $1bn, but nothing has publicly eventuated.)
The refinery has been shuttered now for eight years.
Something to celebrate …?
Behind the scenes
There are plenty of things you could call the Katters but “dull” is not one of them. In the latest episode of our special Queensland parliament documentary series, Chooks ventured down to the bowels of parliament to visit the windowless office of the three Katter’s Australian Party pollies – Robbie Katter, Nick Dametto and Shane Knuth – and found the trio determinedly still wielding the swords and wearing the gowns and crowns from their cash-is-king stunt.
Elected to Queensland Parliament in 2004 as a Nationals MP, Knuth defected to the KAP in 2011 a few years after the LNP merger. He was joined by Katter in 2012 and Dametto in 2017.
Spotted
Labor councillor for Wynnum-Manly Sara Whitmee conceded to the LNP’s Alex Givney this week, after suffering an enormous 23 per cent primary vote swing against her in the Brisbane City Council elections. “Today I have made the call to congratulate Alex on her successful campaign and I wish her all the best in this role representing our community,” Whitmee said on Facebook on Tuesday.
The Liberal National Party wasted no time in crowing that Givney’s victory was the first time the division had been wrested from Labor in 72 years.
Whitmee was quoted in the free local newspaper, the Bayside Weekly News, blaming the massive swing on a protest vote against the Miles state government and “not an indictment against her”. But the Labor candidate – who held the job for less than a year after the resignation of long-time ALP councillor Peter Cumming after a drink-driving scandal – tells Chooks she was misquoted, and directed all other inquiries to party headquarters.
As Chooks revealed last year, local state MP Joan Pease was spitting chips that Whitmee had been parachuted in at the direction of Left powerbroker Gary Bullock and the party’s admin committee, over her preferred candidate, Brenda Ryan.
“Thanks for your service Sara,” Pease commented this week, under the concession post.
The shock result in Wynnum-Manly means Labor ended up with just five of the BCC’s 26 wards, after ALP candidate Emily Kim made up for Whitmee’s loss by taking Calamvale from the LNP. The Greens have two divisions (The Gabba and Paddington), and the LNP has the rest, and the mayoralty, of Australia’s largest local government area.
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