Big business outspends union movement to oust Labor in Queensland

Steven Miles and David Crisafulli debate during October’s election campaign. Picture: Adam Head

G’day readers and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your peek behind-the-scenes of Queensland politics.

Deep pockets

Queensland’s mining and building sectors tipped an enormous $3.8m into third-party campaigns to defeat Steven Miles’ Labor at the recent state election, outspending the union movement by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Master Builders Queensland detested Labor’s so-called CFMEU tax – the Best Practice Industry Conditions that applied to big state-funded construction projects – and dug deep, shovelling out $1.04m to advocate against the ALP government’s policy during the October campaign.

In one of his first acts as Deputy Premier in David Crisafulli’s Liberal National Party government in November, Jarrod Bleijie immediately suspended the union-backed BPICs; Master Builders applauded the move.

Coal mining billionaire Chris Wallin’s Energy Resources Queensland – set up to campaign against Labor in crucial regional electorates – spent a whopping $1.02m on slamming the ALP government’s shock move to block his Bowen Basin miners’ camp. Chooks understands Wallin’s QCoal has yet to meet with new Mines Minister Dale Last about the miners’ camp, which is not only in his portfolio but in his electorate of Burdekin.

QCoal’s Chris Wallin. Picture: Steve Pohlner

The Queensland Resources Council targeted former treasurer Cameron Dick’s mining super-profits royalties hike with a hefty $955,820 spend during the campaign, even though the LNP has vowed to keep the controversial cash-grab in place.

Jobs for Mining Communities and Australians for Prosperity (both propped up by Coal Australia) spent $304k and $526k respectively to sink the boot into Labor.

On the other side of the aisle, Queensland’s union movement ran third-party campaigns worth $3.05m to try to protect Miles and his Labor MPs from an inevitable shellacking.

The public-sector Together union and on-the-rise Labor powerbroker Alex Scott had the deepest pockets, spending $887,250 on campaigning efforts, including a ‘Coalition of Working Families’ pitch to voters for favoured MPs. Deep in the details of the publicly disclosed documents it reveals Together spent more than $1000 on two “brown weasel stoat mascot costumes” from a supplier called Mascot Cheap. The costumes, plus a blue tie ($35.95 from Kingsize Menswear), made for a very mature campaign against Crisafulli, who the union dubbed David C. Weasel, over so-called “weasel words”.

Scott’s spending eclipsed that of Miles’ “mentor” Gary Bullock and the United Workers Union, which spent a relatively modest $313,782 on its third-party campaign.

A trio of industrial organisations – Labor frontbencher Shannon Fentiman’s AMWU, the RTBU (which currently has bus drivers on strike in Brisbane) and the Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union – all spent more than $400,000 on third-party campaigns attempting to secure a fourth-term for Labor.

Of course, the third-party campaigns are separate from donations directly to political parties and candidates. But the financial disclosures go some way to challenge the LNP’s repeated claim that the third-party system is a “financial gerrymander” because the conservatives don’t have an organised supporter base like Labor’s union movement.

Starry Senate launch

Labor Senate ticket launch on Thursday night in New Farm. Picture: Facebook

Former in-house lobbyist for embattled casino giant Corinne Mulholland has finally been formally announced on Queensland Labor’s Senate ticket for the upcoming federal election. As reported in Chooks Mulholland was endorsed by the party in the middle of last year, but the ALP’s ticket was only revealed at a low-key event at an inner-Brisbane pub on Thursday night.

Firmly in whimper-not-bang territory, Labor HQ’s official social media accounts initially appeared to forget to name the rest of the ticket beyond sitting Cairns-based Senator Nita Green and Mulholland.

Buried at the bottom of the party’s website is the rest: Labor Environmental Action Network secretary Peter Casey, Danielle Shankey (a public servant who unsuccessfully ran for the state seat of Everton in 2020), Melinda Chisholm (a unionist for 40 years and a four-time cancer survivor), and Brianna Bailey (an electorate officer who ran for the LNP’s super-safe state seat of Surfers Paradise in 2020).

In Labor’s blurb about Mulholland, it describes her as a disaster management specialist, lawyer and working professional – and does not mention her time with the beleaguered Star.

Labor lost the Senate spot Mulholland is vying for in 2019, when Gerard Rennick (then with the LNP) beat former shoppies’ union secretary-Treasurer Chris Ketter, in the ALP’s worst Senate showing in Queensland since 1946.

One to watch

Recently resigned Nationals MP for Hinkler, Keith Pitt. Picture: Richard Gosling

Bree Watson, one of the nominees for LNP preselection for Hinkler.

Nationals MP Keith Pitt is off to the Vatican City – to serve as the Albanese government’s ambassador to the Holy See – and the LNP preselection to be Pitt’s replacement as the party’s candidate for the federal seat of Hinkler is on Sunday.

Chooks hears the contenders are: one-term LNP MP for the state seat of Bundaberg David Batt, the recent unsuccessful candidate for Bundaberg Bree Watson, former journalist and LNP government adviser Larine Statham-Blair (now a local councillor in Bundaberg), and Melissa Brooke, a public servant and Regional Development Australia regional deputy chair.

Pitt held Hinkler on a rock-solid margin of 20.4 per cent, so whoever is victorious at the weekend is almost certainly bound for Canberra after the federal election.

Spotted

Trapped – good naturedly – in a car with a television journalist, Premier David Crisafulli was caught on camera belting out the Cold Chisel classic Flame Trees in an impressive falsetto this week.

Ten’s Brendan Smith, that network’s erstwhile press gallery reporter in Queensland and a long-time fundraiser for domestic violence causes with his partnerBrendon Mann, cornered Crisafulli into being Smith’s first guest in what he’s dubbing “car-aoke for a cause” to promote the Epic Walk for DV in March to raise funds for the Women’s Legal Service Queensland.

Interestingly, Crisafulli conceded that domestic violence was not policed properly in the state and promised his newly elected government would do something about the pervasive scourge.

Smith tells Chooks he’ll have a new guest every week, and while the Queensland identities won’t always be politicians, he’s got a high-profile Labor MP working on their rendition of an ABBA banger for an upcoming appearance.

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