Can Miles’ ‘Daggy Dad’ act win over QLD voters in October?
New Queensland Premier Steven Miles’ secret re-election plan has leaked, and your favourite politics column, Feeding the Chooks, is back with all the juicy details.
G’day readers and welcome to our first Feeding the Chooks column of 2024, a year of elections around the world, none more important to democracy than in the never-dull sunshine state of Queensland.
Leaky Labor’s secret poll plan
A bit has changed since our last column.
For one, Annastacia Palaszczuk is gone – quitting before Christmas after three election wins and three months of knifing – including by a couple of former MPs, desperate for relevance, or maybe reward (yes, Kate Jones, we are talking about you).
Palaszczuk didn’t even stick around for the vote for her successor, the self-described “loyal” deputy Steven Miles, and headed for the Canadian ski slopes of Whistler, the long-favoured playground of Queensland ALP ministers.
Miles, who earned his 2011 University of Queensland doctorate with a thesis on “trade union renewal”, secured the keys to the castle through a backroom deal struck by union leaders that control the factions and the always-compliant MPs followed the orders of their masters.
A three-way leadership ballot, in the truest of Westminster traditions, between Miles, his “close friend” Treasurer Cameron Dick (with whom he has been on ‘no talkies’ for about a year) and Health minister Shannon Fentiman – was abandoned.
So Miles, who reckons he can turn around the polls and persuade Queenslanders to once again vote for Labor, spared himself the need to persuade his own colleagues he should be Premier, and he was elected in an uncontested vote.
But the fun (and hypocrisy) didn’t stop there.
Labor insiders have helpfully told Chooks of the plan to defeat Liberal National Party leader, David Crisafulli, at the October 31 election and part of it comes from the playbook of an unlikely inspiration: former LNP prime minister Scott Morrison.
Miles was often Labor’s spearchucker at Morrison, famously calling him a “c..t’ at a Labor Day rally (he later said it was an accident), but now it seems he wants to emulate the ex-PM’s “daggy dad” persona.
“It’s about getting back to basics, looking after families as they struggle with cost-of-living pressures and to be that every day father,’’ one Labor insider tells Chooks.
Cue the Premier’s #lunchboxchats videos on social media. The latest features Miles on a Sunday afternoon peeling carrots and “casually” chatting with his 11,100 Instagram and 10,100 TikTok followers about the state’s housing shortage.
Will Crisafulli start leveraging his family credentials for social media likes?
On a policy front, Miles’ first big play was to begin the “reverse ferret” out of the unpopular $2.7bn (which on current Queensland government form would be $6bn) rebuild of the Gabba for the 2032 Olympics – just months after he took the same plan to cabinet.
The genius was in appointing former Brisbane Liberal mayor Graham Quirk to review the Olympics infrastructure and give Miles the political cover he needs to junk the rebuild.
According to the re-election plan, any financial savings from a trimmed-down Games build – and the billions of dollars that continue to flow from Labor’s hiked coal royalty rates – will be used to tackle the homelessness crisis and to shower on voters in the form of cost-of-living relief in the crucial pre-election months.
Just after Quirk delivers his report – which Miles hopes will recommend the Gabba demolition be abandoned – a series of public hearings will begin for the parliamentary inquiry Miles has launched into supermarket pricing.
“There will be public hearings along the coast; in Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Bundaberg and from there we head into the budget and start rolling out the cost-of-living relief,’’ the insider says.
Gabba gone?
So where does that leave us with the Gabba: the centrepiece Olympic stadium and a monument to Annastacia Palaszczuk’s glittering premiership?
The Labor government was so married to the plan that in December, it held an procurement forum spruiking the rebuild to industry.
And who was the Gabba rebuild’s biggest cheerleader at the event?
None other than Mike Kaiser, Miles’ new director-general of Premier and Cabinet and close political confidant, who boasted that the plan had taken “a while” to come together, “but we’ve been applying the carpenters’ maxim – measure twice, cut once”.
Kaiser posted on LinkedIn, the social media platform he’s rarely off: “The expert advice is a rebuild is the best value and lowest risk option – we know what rennos can be like!!”
“And criticism that it’s a lot of money to spend on a few more seats is like saying trading in a clapped out ute for a new sedan is wasting money on 2 new seats.”
Kaiser went on to gush that it wasn’t just a new stadium, it would “anchor the complete urban renewal of Woolloongabba”.
“Has anyone regretted the investment in Southbank since Expo 88,” he asked.
Is Kaiser regretting this public statement, Chooks wonders?
LNP vows to sack Kaiser chief
Speaking of Kaiser, the Labor heavyweight has had his new five-year contract officially gazetted and will earn more dough than Miles himself.
The department says his total salary won’t be made public until its annual report is released, but his predecessor Rachel Hunter took home $778,000 last year.
Kaiser’s reign as public service chief may be short-lived though with Opposition Leader David Crisafulli vowing to sack him if the LNP wins the October election.
Crisafulli unapologetically backed away from his commitment to fixed five-year terms for public service chiefs this week telling Chooks he was giving Kaiser a “hard no”.
“Do I support the ongoing employment of a former electoral rorter, a state secretary of the Labor Party, a member of parliament who was chased out of this building, no chance,” he said.
The recommendation for fixed five year terms, accepted by the government and Opposition in 2022, is a landmine provision that binds an incoming government to key bureaucrats appointed by the previous administration.
Crisafulli said all other directors-general would be left to ride out their contracts if he becomes premier.
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Labor mates
Steven Miles took a leaf out of Peter Beattie’s playbook on Friday – admit when you are wrong and do it early.
The new Premier came to the obvious conclusion that rehiring public service boss Rachel Hunter less than a month after she was given a $400,000 golden handshake was not a good look.
Particularly as it came on the back of Miles’ decision to makeKaiser the head of his department, and just after the appointment of his former chief-of-staff Danielle Cohen to a top public service gig which was never advertised.
Hunter, who followed Annastacia Palaszczuk out the door in December, was this week chosen to lead a review into the state’s response to homelessness. She agreed to do the job for free after Miles was questioned about how much she would be paid.
After defending her appointment, Miles on Friday conceded he probably should have realised that rehiring Hunter “wasn’t going to be a good look”.
“That’s a mistake that I have made,” he said.
“We’re doing a lot and sometimes we’ll make mistakes and when I do, I will acknowledge it.”
Miles’ admission shows the new Premier wants to do things differently from his predecessor. Palaszczuk would tie herself in knots to avoid taking personal responsibility for a mistake.
Other movements at the top
If shattering the leadership aspirations of his frenemy Shannon Fentiman was not enough for Steven Miles, he has also poached her top lieutenant.
Miles snapped up Fentiman’s chief-of-staff Luke Richmond to lead strategy ahead of the October election, appointing him as his deputy chief of staff.
Jon Persley, who previously held the role, is getting out of town after his dreams of succeeding Annastacia Palaszczuk as Inala’s MP were dashed by Labor’s gender quota rules.
Persley tells Chooks he’ll be splitting his time between Brisbane and Sydney, and has set up his own consultancy, JP Strategic Advisory. He’ll do lobbying, communications, campaigns and market research, but pointedly notes on LinkedIn that he won’t be “undertaking any lobbying work in Queensland” because he’s just out of government.
Former Nine journalist Shane Doherty, who was Palaszczuk’s top media adviser and had a “bristly” relationship with underlings in other ministerial offices, got the punt from the Miles administration.
Doherty had been demoted as head of media last year to make way for veteran adviser and Palaszczuk-whisperer Chris Taylor, who has since moved back to Tasmania.
That leaves Amy Hunter in charge of managing Miles’ relationship with the press. Hunter has enjoyed a meteoric rise in Labor politics, going straight from university lecture halls to Mark “Mangocube” Bailey’s ministerial office before moving up the ranks to Miles’ team when he became health minister in 2017.
Miles has taken media-adviser-turned-chief-of-staff Kat Wright to the Premier’s office, replacing Palaszczuk's COS Jim Murphy (known for jogging to work most days).
Murphy’s professional profile says he’s now a “senior strategic consultant” with Jim A Murphy Advisory.
Teals target the Sunshine
Let’s not forget about federal politics. There is a lot of talk about Labor needing to win seats in the Sunshine State to save Albo’s bacon.
Labor pollies have been grumbling about the PM spending too much time overseas last year and not enough time on the ground in Queensland, where the government holds a woeful five of 30 seats.
The PM seems to have gotten the hint, jetting into storm-ravaged Gold Coast and Cairns earlier this month and returning this week to visit Townsville after ex-Tropical Cyclone Kirrily.
It will be an uphill battle for federal Labor to claw back ground in Peter Dutton’s home state.
Then there is the Teal factor. As Chooks revealed last year, Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate 200 fund is on the hunt for “community-backed candidates” to support at the next federal election, due by 2025.
After sniffing around on the Gold Coast, Climate 200 hosted another recruitment drive on Thursday night, this time on the Sunshine Coast where it is hoping to find a candidate to back in Coalition frontbencher Ted O’Brien’s seat of Fairfax.
About 100 people went to the shindig at the Marcoola Surf Club to hear from Climate 200 independent Kylea Tink, who snatched North Sydney from Liberal moderate Trent Zimmerman at the last election.
Climate 200 commissioned UComms to poll 1285 voters in Fairfax last October and the results suggested the LNP’s primary vote has dropped from 44.9 per cent to 37.9 per cent.
Billionaire businessman Clive Palmer won Fairfax in 2013 so victory for a minor party or independent is not out of the question.
But is the Teal talk all hype? We know Climate 200 is steering clear of three Green-held seats and we are yet to see any actual candidates on either the Gold or Sunshine coasts.
Yes or no?
Queensland is just nine months out from the next state election but voters still don’t know where the Liberal National Party stands on a myriad of key issues.
Does the party support renewable energy targets? Does it think religious schools should be able to sack gay or divorced teachers? What is the tax plan David Crisafulli has promised to release before the election?
We can now add affirmative consent to the list of things on which the LNP doesn’t have a position, after the party’s spokeswoman for sexual violence prevention Amanda Camm conceded she hadn’t made up her mind yet.
Sexual consent laws are being overhauled in Queensland, requiring proactive and continuing consent, with legislation expected to go to a vote early this year.
Essentially it means that before having sex, consent – such as a “yes,” a nod, or the reciprocal removal of clothes – is legally required.
The thinking behind the law change is to shift the onus from victims to a person accused of sexual assault to prove they got consent but legal groups in Queensland have raised concerns the legislation could criminalise married couples having spontaneous sex and be misused in messy divorce cases.
Other states including NSW and Victoria have already passed affirmative consent laws and they have been on the agenda in Queensland since Former Court of Appeal president Margaret McMurdo recommended affirmative consent be adopted in July 2022.
Chooks asked Camm whether she would vote to support the laws, but she says she doesn’t know.
“What I’m doing is I’m actually reviewing all of the information that was provided to the committee, as well as engaging with stakeholders outside of that committee process before I make a decision.”
Dutton’s Darcy rises
Peter Dutton’s ex-staffer Darcy Creighton will be elected unopposed as federal president of the Young Liberals at their federal convention in Brisbane this weekend.
Creighton will be the first Queenslander in the job since current LNP state director Ben Riley back in 2014. (Chooks notes that since its establishment in 1967, there’s only been four women as pres; the first was Marise Payne in 1989.)
The win cements Creighton’s spot on the federal Liberal Party’s executive, alongside Dutton and other party powerbrokers.
When Creighton was president of QLD’s Young LNP, the state branch grew in power and influence under the tutelage of moderate Senator James McGrath, and spooked the party’s conservative wing.
As one mature LNP member told Chooks at the time: “They’re up to something. I don’t know what it is, but they’re cunning and they’re up to something”.
Creighton’s latest promotion will do nothing to quell conservative suspicions of a youth-wing/moderate takeover of the party.
Laming returns
Former federal LNP MP and wannabe LNP state MP Andrew Laming’s political career refuses to die: he’s now launched a campaign to become mayor of the Redlands.
Laming sensationally withdrew his Liberal National Party nomination for the state seat of Oodgeroo after hitting a hurdle in internal party vetting in September.
He had been the federal MP for Bowman, on Brisbane’s bayside, from 2004 to 2022, before being disendorsed by the LNP as a candidate. Laming later won a defamation suit against the Nine Network over its reporting of denied allegations that Laming took an inappropriate photograph of a female constituent and harassed other women.
Last year, the Federal Court fined him $20,000 for misleading Facebook posts ahead of the 2019 federal election.
Quite the backstory.
The ophthalmologist may not be an LNP candidate, but that’s not stopping Labor MP Don Brown from using Laming to attack the Opposition.
Brown – who recently had to pay $50,000 in a defamation settlement to an LNP rival, and fobbed off youth crime as a “media beat up” – challenged LNP leader David Crisafulli and Integrity spokeswoman Fiona Simpson to reveal why Laming was twice rejected.
Laming – who tells Chooks his mayoral tilt is “going great” – reckons Brown’s “noise is proportional to how threatened he feels”.
“I’m too busy winning to respond,” Laming says.
Only on the GC
Down on the glittering Gold Coast, there’s a local government race that’s dividing voters: accused murderer and suspended councillor Ryan Bayldon-Lumsden is running again.
Bayldon-Lumsden was charged with the murder of his stepfather on August 23, and suspended by the state government in September – on his full $160,000/year pay packet. The constituents of Division 7 in Australia’s second-largest local government have been unrepresented for five months.
Despite that, the young councillor announced in a press conference at his criminal lawyer’s office that he was recontesting – even though if he wins, he’s likely to be suspended again.
His court case could drag on for more than a year.
As Bonney MP Sam O’Connor asks, no matter what sympathy voters have for Bayldon-Lumsden – who allegedly had his life controlled by his abusive stepfather – is this the smartest vote?
“I know a lot of people in our area want to re-elect Ryan,” O’Connor says on Facebook.
“The reality is it’s just too much of a risk. It will likely be some time, potentially years, until he has his day in court. Until then, Ryan just can’t do the job with an unresolved murder charge.”
Voters go to the polls on March 16 for the statewide council elections.
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