Conservative cowboys Dutton and Katter cosy up at rodeo as Qld voters fail to react to Labor attack
G’day readers and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your exclusive guide to what’s really going on in Queensland politics.
Nuclear zone
Queensland Labor have backed-off on plans to use Peter Dutton’s proposal for nuclear energy as a stalking horse of David Crisafulli ahead of the October election.
Renewables zealot Steven Miles tried to wedge his Liberal National Party rival earlier this year when Dutton blew-up the energy debate with the unveiling of his nuclear plans if he got into The Lodge.
Crisafulli - the small target aficionado who has yet to offer any real energy policy - came out quickly saying nuclear power wasn’t part of his plan and he wouldn’t support it if the LNP won government.
It was a gift to Miles, who accused him of being mealy–mouthed.
“He’s not saying he will block it, like we will,’’ he said in June, after Dutton’s announcement.
Labor then hit social media with a stream of memes and hit Crisafulli day after day for being pro-nuclear.
At the time, Labor strategists said it was the perfect wedge to run against the LNP right up to election day.
Not so, anymore.
Spies within the ALP tell Chooks that focus group research and “direct voter contact” – phone calls and door-knocking – show people aren’t that wedded to a nuclear-free zone.
“The research shows Queenslanders don’t feel that strongly about nuclear, they don’t care how it is generated, they just want their power to be cheaper and reliable,’’ the source said, who pointed to the disappearance of nuclear-fueled Labor attacks on the LNP “across the socials”.
“The party is stepping back on that front.”’
And while Crisafulli and Miles have ruled out lifting the state’s nuclear ban - the Katters have been cheering Dutton on.
Katters Australian Party leader Robbie Katter - one of three KAP state MPs and who could be a kingmaker in a hung parliament after the election - said the time was right for a nuclear plant in the north-west mining town of Mount Isa that he calls home.
“We believe there should be a mix of reliable and affordable power for Queenslanders, which includes coal and nuclear,” Katter said this week.
And his dad, Bob Katter, the federal member for Kennedy, was busy rubbing shoulders with Dutton at the Mount Isa rodeo on Friday and even held a joint press conference.
Chooks can’t remember the last time we saw Crisafulli and Dutton fronting a media pack together and the fight over nuclear means we probably won’t for a while.
Newman back for more?
Is Campbell Newman plotting a return to the Queensland Parliament?
It has been a decade since the former premier was turfed out of office after a single term in a dramatic fall from grace. Just three years earlier Newman swept to power in a landslide victory which saw the LNP win 78 electorates in the then 89-seat parliament.
Newman stuck with the LNP for a few years after his bruising defeat but sensationally quit the party back in 2021 to try and resurrect his political career; joining the Libertarian Party (formerly Liberal Democrats) for a failed run at a Senate spot at the 2022 federal election.
Now Chooks can reveal the Libertarian Party has registered in Queensland and, for the first time, will run candidates at the October 26 state election.
Party state president Richard Davies says the Libertarians plan to run in up to 10 seats - including Steven Miles’s electorate of Murrumba on Brisbane’s outer-northern fringe (which the premier holds on an 11.33 per cent margin).
“We’ll build on that we’re really planning to be more successful in four years time,” Davies said.
“We’ve talked to Campbell Newman, and Campbell keeps telling us that he’s happy to help in the conduct of the campaign, particularly in the Senate campaign, but that he’s not inclined to run himself, so that’s what he keeps telling us.
“We’ll see. You can ask him yourself if you’d like.”
We did, and Newman returned a provocative answer that is sure to aggravate his former treasurer and Clayfield MP Tim Nicholls.
“Well, it’s unlikely,” Newman tells Chooks of a state run.
“But I’m not going to rule it out today you because it’s still a bit of time to the election.
“The only seat I’d stand in would be Clayfield.”
Workplace surveillance
Back in 2018, overhauling workplace surveillance laws was all the rage.
Attorney General Yvette D’Ath asked the Queensland Law Reform Commission to review the state’s outdated laws and a report was meant to be handed to government by April 2021.
But their work was suspended and Labor’s 2020 election promise to introduce “tougher, stronger laws to tackle the increasing pitfalls of the surveillance era” was never met.
Chooks has been told that Shannon Fentiman, who briefly replaced D’Ath, didn’t like her colleague’s terms of reference (apparently it wasn’t personal) and junked them. The whole thing has been frozen - like it was caught on camera - ever since.
Speaking of which, workplace surveillance was the focus this week after revelations the powerful United Workers Union had been recording conversations in its Brisbane office.
John Swinson, who specialises in privacy law at the University of Queensland, said surveillance law in Queensland, which hasn’t been updated since 1971, was “messy” and out of date.
“If the government is serious about protecting people, protecting people’s privacy, then this is an area that needs review and updating,” he says.
The Queensland government says the review was put on hold after the federal government did its own probe into the Commonwealth Privacy Act and is waiting to see what laws Albanese will introduce.
Donation watch
As Chooks reported last week, donations are flowing into the coffers of Queensland’s political parties thick and fast.
Here are some highlights from the past week.
Desperate to stay relevant after their top lobbyists were blacklisted and clients began to flee, lobby outfit Anacta Strategies handed $2000 to help Bisma Asif’s retain Sandgate for Labor with the retirement of veteran ALP MP Stirling Hinchliffe.
Former Bligh government minister and Ipswich MP Rachel Nolan this week donated $1000 to the ALP’s Wendy Bourne who is having another crack at Ipswich West after a crushing byelection defeat in March.
Lee Ann Coaldrake - a retired anesthetist and wife of public service reformer Peter Coaldrake - gave $5000 to the Greens last week. Seems Coaldrake still has cash to spare after being fined $5000 last month for her role in an Extinction Rebellion protest at Queensland Parliament in 2022.
In an amusing twist, lobbyist Kirby Anderson, former deputy chief-of-staff to Annastacia Palaszczuk, spent $1980 to attend a fundraising lunch for LNP frontbencher Deb Frecklington on Thursday.
Bye Perrett
The will he, won’t he question surrounding federal Labor MP Graham Perrett’s future is apparently about to be answered.
The popular MP, who won the Brisbane southside seat of Moreton off the Liberals in 2007 and now holds it on a safe margin (9.1 per cent), is tipped to announce his retirement later this month.
Chooks has previously reported that affirmative action rules put a target on the backs of Perrett and his former Ruddslider Shayne Neumann ahead of the next election.
Only one of Labor’s five Queensland seats is held by a woman, Aged Care Minister Anika Wells, and only one of Labor’s three state Senators is a woman, Nita Green.
Anthony Albanese rescued Neumann earlier this year, publicly backing the dumped frontbencher after state frontbencher Jen Howard announced she was eyeing-of a run in his Ipswich based seat of Blair.
Howard then backed-off.
And while Albanese appeared to show Perrett the same sort of support at a press conference a few weeks back, spies tells us that he is pulling the pin.
As revealed previously, the big tip is that former ALP state secretary Julie-Ann Campbell will run in Moreton.
And that has many in Labor worried, given Perrett’s personal profile and demonstrable popularity in the seat.
Could it cost Labor the seat and if the federal election is tight, as some pundits’ pedict, government?
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