CFMEU coal clash at state conference; LNP Fadden battle
G’day readers, and welcome to the latest edition of Feeding the Chooks, your weekly peek behind the scenes of Queensland politics. The column this week is reported by Lydia Lynch, Sarah Elks and Michael McKenna.
LABOR’S COAL CLASH
As Queensland Labor’s true believers descended on Mackay for this year’s state ALP conference, the pollies and party officials were hoping for the peaceful, stage-managed show of unity that has become the boring norm in recent years.
But at the eleventh hour, the mining division of the CFMEU, the blue-collar heart and soul of the workers’ party has thrown in a spanner that will stir-up the inner-city, climate-conscious progressives who often seem to run the joint.
Chooks can reveal CFMEU mining district president Stephen Smyth is working up a previously unheralded motion, pressing the Palaszczuk state government to declare metallurgical (steel-making) coal a “critical mineral”.
Smyth’s CFMEU – which defected from the dominant Left faction in a blaze of glory a few years ago – will call on the Labor delegates to follow the European Union and formally back the importance of coking coal.
Chatting to Chooks ahead of the conference, Smyth shows he knows he’ll ruffle a few feathers.
“The Left will be beside themselves; LEAN (the Labor Environment Action Network) will be hysterical,” says Smyth, who is not backwards in coming forward.
“Because the motion says coal, they’ll be beside themselves … they’ve demonised coal mines and there’s so much hype and misinformation.
“But that’s what we’re about: our members, their families, and regional communities.
“If it’s not accepted at conference, we’re going to campaign on it.
“If you follow the science on this, if you want to decarbonise and build renewable projects, you’re going to require steel, and metallurgical coal. And you’ll probably need thermal coal to power them.”
Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick’s controversial hiked coal royalty regime has delivered a $6bn jump in state revenues, just since December.
Watch this space.
Many of the other juicy and contentious motions are being negotiated behind closed doors.
Fresh from a nationwide roadshow selling the federal budget, Treasurer Jim Chalmers will jet to the sugar capital this weekend to deliver the keynote address.
Chalmers, Queensland’s most senior Labor MP in Canberra, will take to the stage after Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk addresses the Labor loyalists.
ON YA BIKE
Terry Wood, a veteran backroom player in Queensland’s ALP, has put knots in the knickers of members right across the state.
Wood, the party’s returning officer, is reportedly hoarding the carve-up results for delegates at the upcoming federal ALP conference.
The national conference is held every three years and will be in Queensland in August, the first time in 50 years.
Chooks hears the results were due to be released on Wednesday night but Wood was itching to get to Mackay for state conference this weekend.
One Labor spy says Wood has packed the postal ballots into his backpack and hit the Bruce Highway on his motorbike.
But branchies won’t have to wait too long, with results now due on Friday.
VALE SCALES
Speaking of the CFMEU, the union’s militant construction union has seen off an old enemy: director-general of Transport and Main Roads Neil Scales.
Chooks hears Scales had applied for his contract as department boss to be renewed, but the Labor government decided against it. His last day is Friday.
Scales on LinkedIn said he was retiring from his full-time career in the Queensland public sector, and said he was “sad to leave” the department.
The CFMEU and Scales had been battling for years over Cross River Rail, a wage-theft claim, and the department’s procurement and tendering decisions.
In typical subtle style, the CFMEU issued a statement commemorating his departure, wishing Scales the “best of luck in the next phase of your life’s adventures, Neil”.
“Please don’t believe the persistent rumours circulating about Scales’ poisoned relationships and loss of trust within senior government circles. We are assured he will be greatly missed by all who had to deal with him.
“Don’t let the door bang you on the arse on your way out.”
REVOLVING DOOR?
Public sector circles are closely watching whether any other DGs are headed for the door, after last month’s ministerial reshuffle.
Will Chris Sarra want to stay on in the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, after being inexplicably shifted out of his area of expertise, the Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships?
Friday’s Government Gazette confirms one departmental boss who will remain in the tent. Department of Environment and Science director-general Jamie Merrick has been appointed for another three-year term, until 30 June 2016.
Chooks notes the government has apparently already abandoned its commitment to accept Peter Coaldrake’s recommendations to overhaul the bureaucracy “lock, stock and barrel”, including that public service chiefs should be retained on fixed five-year terms.
In June last year, Palaszczuk and Opposition leader David Crisafulli both emphatically agreed to adopt all of Coaldrake’s reforms.
HIGH COURT CHALLENGE
Politics in Queensland just isn’t the same without Jackie Trad.
Love or loathe the former Queensland deputy premier, the truth is that she lit up policy and parliament and championed some of the only real landmark legislation – legalised abortion, voluntary assisted dying, a Treaty – that this government can claim in its three terms in power.
But her political radar was often way-off; buying an investment home with her husband (and not declaring it on her pecuniary interest register until contacted by the media) in the Cross River Rail catchment is exhibit A.
Similarly, she is using taxpayer funds to keep secret a Crime and Corruption Commission report into one of her political appointments.
Chooks has been told the corruption watchdog report is critical but not damning of Trad. You can’t really blame the then-treasurer for wanting to pick her own under-treasurer, the experienced DG Frankie Carroll.
But the controversial legal action, launched with the backing of Annastacia Palaszczuk and former Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman is on hold, pending the outcome of an earlier and similar case from former Public Trustee Peter Carne.
Carne lost a Supreme Court bid in 2021 to suppress a CCC report into alleged wrongdoing, a decision that he successfully appealed. The CCC then won the right to go to the High Court, in an effort to overturn the ruling that would curb its powers to publicly release investigation findings.
The matter is set down to be heard by the High Court over two days next week, and is expected to be presided over by a bench of either five or the full seven judges.
It’ll be a battle of the bigwigs, and both the Speaker of the Queensland Parliament Curtis Pitt and the Commonwealth Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus have been granted leave to join the action.
The Commonwealth is arguing that the report has parliamentary privilege because it was prepared for the CCC’s oversight body, the Parliamentary Crime and Corruption Committee, and have intervened because they think the case could set a precedent that will apply to the federal parliament.
Carne argues publication of the report would breach his human rights, and that parliament has the discretion to withhold such reports from public release. His lawyers say they should exercise this discretion, given there’s no finding of criminal or corrupt conduct against him.
Carne’s lawyer is Jonathan Horton KC, while former state solicitor-general Peter Dunning KC will appear for the CCC, and Bret Walker SC is expected to represent Mr Pitt. Timothy Begbie KC will act for the Commonwealth AG in place of Dreyfus, who due to a prior commitment can’t appear.
FADDEN: FRIENDS OR FOES?
There is nothing more brutal than a preselection battle in a safe seat.
The knives are sharp and five political hopefuls are raring and ready to deliver their pitches to Liberal National Party members in Fadden, on the Gold Coast, on Saturday at 2pm.
Local businesswoman Fran Ward, Gold Coast City councillor Cameron Caldwell, decorated doctor Dinesh Palipana, investment adviser Owen Caterer and company director Craig Hobart are the nominees to replace controversial retiring frontbencher Stuart Robert.
Ward is the chair of Robert’s branch and has his backing to become his successor, but Chooks hears the likely frontrunners are Caldwell and Palipana – with Ward as an outside chance.
LNP MP for the state seat of Bonney Sam O’Connor has publicly supported Palipana.
The Chooks inbox has been heaving with breathless (and unsubstantiated) rumours of misconduct, cheating and dishonesty, in a sign some candidates and their supporters are willing to do whatever it takes to snap up the job-for-life.
As federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said last month, the person preselected for Fadden should be “somebody who can be a future cabinet minister or a leader of our party”.
CRISAFULLI’S ORIGIN NIGHT DATE
Queensland Liberal National Party leader David Crisafulli raised a few eyebrows with the timing of revelation that he will vote No in the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum.
Crisafulli made the announcement just hours before he was due to sit down with former ABC journalist Kerry O’Brien for an interview on the Gold Coast, on State of Origin night.
“My concern is if it is embedded in the Constitution, what is the risk that comes with that?” Crisafulli said.
“My MPs will be able to vote the way they wish and they can choose to campaign if they wish one side or another.”
Later that evening Crisafulli was chatting with O’Brien for Griffith University and Home of the Arts (HOTA) on the topic of “Reshaping the Centre-Right in Queensland”.
Chooks unkindly wondered whether anyone in the rugby league-obsessed state (QUEENSLANDER!) would turn up to the event, but apparently it was a packed house, and finished before kick-off.
LNP state director Ben Riley seized on Crisafulli’s announcement and promptly wrote to LNP members, who are furious that the state party voted in parliament to support state Labor’s Indigenous Path to Treaty legislation.
“Unlike a risky change to the Constitution, a legislated voice would allow unintended consequences to be managed into the future,” Riley said in his letter.
Queensland’s Path to Treaty Interim Truth and Treaty Body put out an interestingly timed release on Friday morning, pointedly noting that the Path to Treaty Act 2023 had received bipartisan support in parliament.
The ITTB also quoted Crisafulli from parliament, saying he hoped the legislation would be “the catalyst for true accountability of government” and would improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the state.
NEW PRESIDENT FOR YOUNG LNP
The RM Williams-wearing groupies of the Young LNP hosted their annual convention to much fanfare last weekend.
A new queen was coronated as president of the youth arm, Kate Samios, replacing the outgoing Darcy Creighton.
But the real fun went down at the Sofitel Hotel on Saturday night at the gala ball.
Fresh off a flight from London, George Brandis gave the keynote address. Other LNP VIPs in attendance were federal MPs Angie Bell and Llew O’Brien, party president Lawrence Springborg and senator-turned-lobbyist Santo Santoro.
Peter Dutton ducked in for about 20 minutes to pick up his lifetime YLNP membership.
A signed photo of LNP deputy leader Jarrod Bleijie dressed as Elvis was auctioned off for $850 while a bottle of wine signed by Dutton and Nationals leader David Littleproud fetched $600. The biggest selling item was a rum-and-coke session with Senator James McGrath, which went for $1300.
Brisbane City councillor Ryan Murphy and barrister Maggie Forrest delivered the roast, and – with tongues firmly in cheeks – declared their sponsors were Pfizer, the Reserve Bank, LNP senator Gerard Rennick, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The event was MCed by LNP leader David Crisafulli’s media adviser Greg Thomson to rave reviews. It was a redemption story for Thomson, a former Sky News and Fox Sports presenter who was forced into a career change after his last MC gig in Sydney nearly five years ago went pear-shaped.
Thomson was filmed swearing and yelling at attendees at a charity lunch for disability support group Inala at the Four Seasons in Sydney in July 2018.
MATES’ RATES MEAL
The LNP’s Rob Molhoek must have some time on his hands because he is already planning for the festive season.
With seven months until Christmas, the state MP for Southport is busy organising his private Christmas celebration, advertising for “mates” to join him for a three-course Christmas dinner in the Speaker’s Dining Room at Parliament House.
The heavily taxpayer-subsidised parliamentary dining rooms are available to hire for MPs and Molhoek is spruiking the event as a “Christmas Mates’ Rates Dinner”, accompanied by a selection of fine wines.
There are 19 tickets still available for $145 a pop. Chooks wonders if it’s a table for 20.
SPOTTED
The MP-branded ute of Queensland Speaker of parliament Curtis Pitt, who remains on leave, was spotted parked outside Villa Romano in Cairns last week.
Pitt was seen at the Cairns Italian restaurant the night before he arrived late to a regional parliament sitting in his home city, appearing to slur his words and be a bit under the weather.
The veteran Labor MP was adamant to Chooks that it was the effects of the flu, and not late-night drinks, to blame for him rolling up 45 minutes late to work.
A few days after his parliamentary absence, Pitt confirmed he’d be taking some time off to look after his mental health. Chooks wishes him a speedy recovery.
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