QLD taxpayers foot bill for Miles & Co’s Canberra trip
Interstate Labor mates
Taxpayers footed the bill for Opposition frontbenchers Steven Miles, Shannon Fentiman, and Bart Mellish to fly to Canberra to watch their federal Labor mates deliver their first speeches.
Only Cameron Dick – whose brother Milton Dick was sworn in as parliamentary Speaker for a second term running – paid his own way.
Miles, Fentiman, and Mellish popped in to see their federal government counterparts while in the building (Miles met PM Anthony Albanese twice, apparently) to give the sheen of doing actual work on the taxpayer’s dime.
The taxpayer-funded interstate travel came just days after Labor tore strips off Premier David Crisafulli for daring to - gasp! - fly around Queensland on a government-chartered jet.
Fentiman accused Crisafulli of being “secretive” and “evasive” for not saying how much his 46.3 hours flying around the state in private plans had cost Queenslanders.
“He promised cost of living relief and delivered nothing, at the same time he is jetsetting across Queensland while not being upfront about how much it costs taxpayers,” Fentiman said, shortly before jetting out of Queensland and into Canberra thanks to taxpayers.
Miles was there to watch as his friend Ali “Dutton-slayer” France rose to give her first speech in the House of Reps after her shock defeat of former opposition leader Peter Dutton in the suburban seat of Dickson.
Former Star Casino lobbyist turned senator, Corrine Muholland, gave her first address with eight-month-old Auggie on her hip; but her mate Mellish missed the speech due to a flight cancellation.
Fentiman was there to watch her bestie, former QLD ALP state secretary Julie-Ann Campbell and one-time staffer Rowan Holzberger’s speeches. And to meet with Tanya Plibersek and Ged Kearney, if the bean-counters are reading.
Campbell told parliament about overcoming being an “outsider” due to her Chinese-Canadian heritage to become the first woman and person of colour to be state secretary.
She also took great delight at getting the phrases “cheeky Pepsi Max” (her grandmother’s favourite drink) and “important portunid crabs” (in reference to her father’s thesis) into Hansard.
Meanwhile, Forde MP Holzberger remembered forming his political values while scrubbing out a deep fryer at 2am at a servo in the regional NSW town of Tenterfield, where he was working at the time.
“I had an epiphany: someone has every right to make excuses and blame others, but what good does that do them? The moment you blame others is the moment you put the solution onto others and the moment you disempower yourself,” he explained.
Inala MP Margie Nightingale was also in the nation’s capital to meet the chief government whip, presumably to get advice she couldn’t receive over the phone.
Chooks hears Labor lobbying firm Anacta laid on drinks to celebrate Ali France’s debut address to parliament, but the beverages ran out a little too soon for some attendees’ liking.
Roll the dice
The man appointed by the Crisafulli government in the race to build Brisbane’s Olympic venues by 2032 has form in overseeing mega construction sites, but just not always on time, having overseen the much-delayed delivery of the $3.6bn Queen’s Wharf casino.
For almost ten years, Simon Crooks was the project director of the Destination Brisbane Consortium, the vehicle for trouble-prone Star Entertainment and its Hong Kong partners to build the integrated resort development in the heart of the city.
The riverfront casino-hotel precinct partially opened last year but is still yet to be completed – after it was originally promised to open in 2022.
Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie hand-picked Crooks for the all-important job as chief executive officer of the Games Independent Infrastructure and Coordination Authority after three years of gold-medal-winning delays under the Labor government and a complete revision of the stadium plans in March.
Chooks found it interesting that Bleijie announced Crooks on the same day as the Deputy Premier ratcheted up his attacks on the CFMEU and their previous influence across the state under the ALP.
After taking office in late October, one of the first acts of the Crisafulli government was to freeze the Best Practice Industry Conditions, applicable to all government projects over $100m, which Bleijie dubbed the “CFMEU tax”.
When BPIC was first proposed in 2019 by the Palaszczuk government, it was widely believed by the construction industry that it was modelled on the CFMEU’s workplace agreement that was struck with the consortium a year before to build the Queen’s Wharf casino project, with almost identical conditions.
At the time, it was purported to be the highest paying agreement in the country, and reportedly paid the site’s lollipop stop-go flippers $180,000-a-year, a figure that was disputed by the union.
“Queen’s Wharf was ground zero for BPIC,” one spy tells Chooks.
A Labor frontbencher wondered to Chooks if Bleijie realised the connection in his rush to roll out the venues, and what deal will be on offer to attract workers to build the Olympics venues in the tight time frame and barely believable budget of $7.1bn.
The industry is already warning of a dire shortage of construction workers both to construct the Games infrastructure, and manage normal demand.
So how will Crooks entice enough construction workers, now Bleijie has made it clear BPIC and its perks are off the table?
Homecoming Queen’s spin as First Lady
The roof is falling in at the historic Ipswich Trades Hall building, the spiritual home of the city’s labour movement. A star-studded fundraiser at Brisbane’s South Bank Rydges Hotel last Friday night raised over $100,000, fuelled by a performance by singer-songwriter Thelma Plum.
Plum – who played her songs Better in Blak and Homecoming Queen – jokingly labelled herself the First Lady of Trades Hall, a nod to her beau, Rail Tram and Bus Union organiser and Trades Hall president Elliot D’Arcy.
Former Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, her surgeon partner Reza Adib, LNP-aligned Ipswich mayor Teresa Harding (who unlike her predecessors is not a member of the Labor Party), former ALP president Dick Williams, and state MPs Jennifer Howard and Lance McCallum, assistant state secretary Zac Beers and ETU state secretary Peter Ong were all there.
A notable absence? Ipswich-based federal MP Shayne Neumann, who allegedly and infamously owes Trades Hall $4033.34 in unpaid rent after storing election materials in the building in 2022 and 2023.
As Chooks revealed last year, despite a number of sternly worded demands from D’Arcy for Neumann to pay up, the Blair MP has refused, and issued a counterclaim for $5050.50, alleging his belongings – including a “priceless” Kevin Rudd banner – had been shifted without his permission and damaged.
D’Arcy tells Chooks the fundraiser was a “great success” and the more than $100,000 raised would help fix the roof damaged by ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred earlier this year.
“We extended an olive branch to Shayne by inviting him on Friday, however he was unable to attend,” D’Arcy says.
The debt is still outstanding and the standoff remains baffling, in a decidedly Ipswich Labor kind of way.
Blair Switch Project: delegates edition
Speaking of Ipswich Labor and its internecine skirmishes, voting opens on Saturday for Labor members in Shayne Neumann’s seat of Blair to pick their nine branch delegates.
The electorate is the only one in the state to have a ballot, ahead of the ALP’s state conference in November. Labor’s factions were able to negotiate a deal in every other federal seat – bar Blair.
Branch delegates get to vote on the party’s policy platform, and currently seven of Blair’s nine delegates are held by Neumann’s Right faction and Chooks hears he’s bullish on his chances of maintaining factional domination.
Recent defectors from the Right to the Left are Ipswich state MP Jennifer Howard and Ipswich councillor Pye Augustine, both of whom have thrown up their hands for delegate spots.
Awkwardly, Howard is facing off against her Labor comrade and Ipswich West MP Wendy Bourne who is part of Neumann’s Right ticket, alongside four Neumann staffers.
Of course, the infighting in Ipswich only deepened last year, when Howard indicated she wanted to challenge Neumann for federal preselection in Blair, before Anthony Albanese intervened.
Neumann ended up beating the LNP’s Carl Mutzelburg in Blair at the May poll 56 per cent to 44 per cent after preferences were distributed, recording a swing of 0.48 per cent towards him.
Gee up and out?
Youth Safety Minister Laura Gerber’s had a revolving door of staff out of her ministerial office, and is now – on Chooks’ count – onto her third chief of staff.
Gerber was ordered into managerial training earlier this year in an attempt to arrest the cavalcade of departures.
Now, Chooks is reliably informed even Gerber’s director-general Bob Gee – head of the Department of Youth Justice and Victim Support – is also eyeing the exit, and putting the feelers out to see what other senior government gigs might be up for grabs.
Unconstitutional. Award-winning.
The Young LNP’s South Brisbane branch was awarded ‘branch of the year’ at the factionally powerful youth wing’s annual convention this month. Why do we care? Well, the South Brisbane branch – led by outgoing YLNP president Helen Craze – was left unconstitutional and unable to send delegates to vote on convention motions and executive positions, after it broke party rules and failed to hold an annual general meeting.
Chooks hears the award was a ‘tongue in cheek’ nod to the South Brisbane branch’s tumultuous recent history, and branch chair Christian Camuglia offered no comment as he accepted the gong.
Ahead of last year’s South Brisbane AGM, former Howard government minister Gary Hardgrave and conservative powerbroker David Goodwin were suspended from the LNP pending an internal investigation into allegations of bullying and intimidation.
Both Hardgrave and Goodwin had complained to LNP HQ about members being transferred into the branch ahead of the meeting, and Goodwin alleged HQ was “actively managing factional branch stacking”. Everyone denied doing anything wrong.
The failure to hold a branch AGM this year arguably meant the youth wing’s conservative faction was denied extra delegates at this month’s convention, which saw the moderate ticket comfortably sweep the YLNP executive elections.
Fishing for replies
Queensland’s Department of Primary Industries cast the net this week for a spinner to fill a six-month communications contract in its fisheries section.
Manager Sam Morrison flicked a pun-laden request through the State Library of Queensland’s ‘wired’ emailing list for state government communicators, swimming into the inboxes of hundreds of bureaucrats.
All fine. Until dozens of those dedicated public servants took Morrison’s bait, hook, and sinker.
Chooks’ spies tell us that for days, their government email accounts have been full to the bream with punny responses, from senior managers in the Department of Education, Powerlink, the state Ombudsman, the Queensland Ambulance Service, Economic Development Queensland, the Office of the Inspector-General of Emergency Management, and the Department of Child Safety.
Was this an elaborate phishing scam, one wondered? Wasn’t everyone battered after a big week? Perhaps those getting annoyed by the constant emails should just tuna out and stop carping on?
Finally, a big fish in the Department of Transport and Main Roads asked everyone to “please cease, as this is received by hundreds of staff”.
“It proves to be quite disruptive when trying to get deliverables over the line,” she schooled her colleagues.
Time to scale back.
Spotted
Many of the state Labor MPs who didn’t get a plum trip to Canberra instead headed along to Wednesday night’s hottest ticket in town, the annual showcase by Hutchinson Builders and developer Consolidated Properties.
Chooks spotted no fewer than six ALP MPs at the Fortitude Music Hall, including Opposition justice spokeswoman Meaghan Scanlon, local member and Olympics spokeswoman Grace Grace, public works spokeswoman Charis Mullen, small business spokeswoman Joan Pease, manager of opposition business Mick de Brenni and backbencher Bisma Asif.
They were all forced to listen to Deputy Premier Jarrod Bliejie, whose repeated criticisms of the CFMEU in his speech were met with hearty approval from the crowd of more than 600 property industry professionals.
Labor ended up outnumbering the LNP at the event, for the first time in years. Bleijie was supported only by the leader of the house, Christian Rowan, and new MP Russell Field.
Chooks hears that several government MPs made last-minute apologies, including Housing Minister Sam O’Connor, chair of the state development and planning committee Jim McDonald, and Redlands newbie Rebecca Young.
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G’day readers and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, The Australian’s award-winning (yes, really) Queensland politics column.