‘Cease and desist’: Andrew Laming threatens Amanda Stoker with defamation over ‘abortion’ quip
G’day readers, and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your jam-packed behind-the-scenes peek into the fascinating world of Queensland politics.
CEASE AND DESIST
Former federal MP and litigation enthusiast Andrew Laming has threatened former political rival Amanda Stoker with defamation, alleging she falsely accused him of supporting late-term abortion, doing nothing in his long political career, and not supporting Tony Abbott.
Chooks has obtained the legal letter Laming sent Stoker on September 25, just days after he dropped out of the Liberal National Party preselection contest against former Senator and Morrison government minister Stoker for the state seat of Oodgeroo.
The missive, from McCarthy Durie Lawyers, orders Stoker to “cease and desist,” and takes issue with an alleged conversation Stoker had with a local preselector in the Brisbane bayside electorate.
Laming’s lawyer alleges Stoker, shortly before lunchtime on September 15 at an address in Ormiston, told the LNP member that Laming “supports late-term abortion of pregnancies; hasn’t done anything in two decades in parliament and did not make any difference; and didn’t support Tony Abbott”.
“You have attempted to reach out to other LNP members and our client is concerned that you may attempt to further publicise the statements,” solicitor Madeleine Harling wrote.
The letter says Laming “considers your conduct was designed to damage our client’s reputation among members of the LNP, in order to improve your prospects for preselection for a state seat and damage our client’s prospects”.
“Being unsuccessful at a preselection is potentially career-ending for our client, given our client’s age and that candidate selection occurs rarely,” the solicitor says.
Laming’s lawyers gave Stoker a deadline of October 24 to respond.
When Laming sent the same concerns to LNP state director Ben Riley, Riley wrote to Stoker and said he had “investigated this matter and spoken with relevant parties”.
“I confirm that I am satisfied with the responses I have received through that process and do not consider that the matters raised by Dr Laming warrant any further investigation or action,” Riley said in his email to Stoker late last month.
In a statement to Chooks, Stoker says “the letter provided by Mr Laming contains materially false allegations and I reject them”.
Laming declined to comment when contacted by Chooks.
An ophthalmologist by profession, Laming is 57, and did not pass LNP vetting at the 2022 federal election for his electorate of Bowman. He withdrew from the Oodgeroo race after the applicant review committee referred his vetting to the state executive last month.
LNP sources say Opposition leader David Crisafulli made his opposition to Laming’s nomination known at the executive meeting, and Laming was given the option to withdraw, which he took.
Laming won a defamation suit against the Nine Network over its reporting of denied allegations that Laming took an inappropriate photograph of a constituent and harassed other women.
In 2021, Laming issued legal letters to a host of politicians and journalists after they tweeted about the Nine allegations, and secured apologies.
LNP preselectors will vote on whether Stoker, the senator turned Sky News host, or ordained Anglican priest and former Barnaby Joyce staffer Daniel Hobbs will be the party’s candidate at a meeting on Saturday.
It’s tipped to be a close contest. Watch this space.
STIRLING EFFORT
When Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk returned from her Italian vacanza, she issued an ultimatum to her MPs: you must decide before the end of October whether you’ll fight next year’s state election.
Chooks hears Palaszczuk’s Right factional colleague and friend Stirling Hinchliffe, the current Minister for Tourism and Sport and Minister Assisting the Premier on the Olympics, is expected to be the first to announce his departure, possibly as soon as next week’s parliamentary sitting.
Sandgate MP Hinchliffe, 52, has had two stints in parliament, from 2006 to 2012 as the MP for Stafford (he lost his seat in the Campbell Newman-led bloodbath of that year), before being re-elected in 2015, and has served as a Cabinet minister under Labor premiers Anna Bligh and Palaszczuk.
The affable father-of-three, a self-confessed parliamentary nerd, Russian history enthusiast and basketball tragic, endured a torrid time as transport minister in Palaszczuk’s second term, battling a rolling train scheduling scandal dubbed “rail fail”. Hinchliffe eventually quit the portfolio in February 2017.
Under Queensland Labor’s affirmative action rules, Hinchliffe needs to be replaced by a woman candidate, and former Young Labor president and current policy adviser for federal Aged Care Minister Anika Wells, Bisma Asif, is widely touted as his successor.
As Chooks revealed in February, Asif bought a house in the Sandgate electorate, and has been popping up at public events in the seat since, fuelling talk that she’s Hinchliffe’s heir apparent.
Asif, who was born in South Asia, also speaks four languages, including Punjabi, one of the most-spoken languages in the electorate of Sandgate which has a thriving South Asian community.
While there’s been pressure on the Right faction’s Agriculture Minister,Mark Furner, to exit from his seat of Ferny Grove, Chooks understand he’s clinging on.
Labor’s dominant Left faction is confident its AA requirements are taken care of by the already-announced exit of Ipswich West “Call Me Sir” MP (and faction-hopper) Jim Madden.
JANE’S BACK?
Is former federal Liberal MP Jane Prentice going back to where it all began?
The chatter among Liberal National Party insiders is that the 70-year-old former MP is considering a tilt at preselection for the vacated west Brisbane council ward of Walter Taylor.
As reported by Chooks last week, LNP councillor James Mackay quit the ward citing the “intense impacts of long Covid,” although some in the party reckon he realised he ain’t popular enough to fend-off a Greens challenge at the March election.
Prentice held the ward between 2000 and 2010 before winning the then blue-ribbon federal seat of Ryan, which she held until being rolled at preselection by her former staffer, Julian Simmonds, in 2019.
Simmonds lost the seats to the Greens at the last election.
Controversially, Prentice was appointed as a full-time member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in 2020 by then-Morrison Government Attorney-General Christian Porter.
It followed a review of the tribunal a year earlier by former High Court justice Ian Callinan that recommended all appointments to the tribunal should be lawyers qualified enough to be admitted to a state Supreme Court of the High Court.
Prentice, who was involved in tourism and had no legal qualifications before entering politics (but was married to lawyer Ian Prentice), has been reviewing child custody decisions at the AAT, where her term ends next February.
She couldn’t be reached.
FRUIT PLATTER-GATE
The platter plot thickens.
Loyal Chooks readers will remember last week we wrote about a fruit platter prepared for Annastacia Palaszczuk’s visit to the Chinchilla police station.
The Premier had flagged she would drop into the cop shop, but cancelled her trip out west in order to stay in Brisbane and announce extra financial support for victims of crime.
A Queensland Police spokeswoman reached out to Chooks to inform us the fruit platter was never meant for Palaszczuk.
“A fruit platter was mistakenly arranged by a local police officer on the belief the (Police) Commissioner (Katarina Carroll) was scheduled to attend on Thursday; however, is not due to attend until Thursday, October 12,” the spokeswoman said.
“The commissioner was in Canberra attending the national service for National Police Remembrance Day.”
“There was no expectation by police that the Premier was attending the event in Chinchilla.”
“The platter was made available to members of the public at the conclusion of the vigil.”
SPOTTED IN THE ANNUAL REPORTS
Want to know how much Queensland’s fat cats are earning?
Chooks has scoured the latest departmental annual reports, tabled in parliament, and public service head Rachel Hunter made $778,000 as director-general of the Department of Premier and Cabinet in the last financial year.
Labor MP turned bureaucratMike Kaiser reaped $546,000 in his role dual-hatting as co-ordinator-general and head of the Department of State Development.
Cross River Rail bossGraeme Newton was paid $889,000, an increase of $244,000 on the previous year.
Newton’s contract was renewed by the board last year and his salary bump was “informed by independent market review”.
As chairman of the Brisbane 2032 organising committee, Andrew Liveris pocketed $216,058.
Queensland’s Chief Health Officer John Gerrard earned $639,00, Crime and Corruption Commission head Bruce Barbour made $619,000 and Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll was on $650,000.
As for the ex-pollies and Labor mates who sit on government boards, ALP state president John Battams was paid $113,919 to be a director of the Queensland Investment Corporation, while former federal treasurer and present ALP national president Wayne Swan made $34,000 on the board of state-owned energy company Stanwell.
Jacqueline King, head of peak union body the Queensland Council of Unions, is also on the Stanwell board and was paid $41,000 (she recently left Stanwell to become a director of another government-owned energy company, CS Energy).
Former LNP Brisbane Lord-MayorGraham Quirk earned $48,955 on the board of Racing Queensland.
FEED THE CHOOKS
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