David Crisafulli and the LNP are on a victory lap, but federal MPs are uneasy
Internal unease about the LNP’s handling of the thorny issue of abortion during the Queensland election campaign will be kept off the formal agenda at this weekend’s state council meeting. But make no mistake, it’ll be talked about.
G’day readers, and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your unmissable guide to what’s really going on in Queensland politics.
State council
David Crisafulli faces a reality check from his own party as federal and state players from Queensland’s LNP descend on Rockhampton this weekend to thrash out future policy direction at their first state council meeting since last month’s election triumph.
While the new premier and LNP state director Ben Riley will be publicly applauded for the historic victory, undercurrents of unease are rippling through the party’s membership base.
Yes, Crisafulli won a whopping 18 new seats in the 93-electorate parliament and returned the LNP to power for the first time in a decade – but the strong sense from senior ranks of the party down is that the rigidity of the campaign and Crisafulli’s handling of the thorny issue of abortion meant the win was smaller than it should have been.
Chooks’ well-placed sources say the party should have also picked up the Labor seats of Aspley, Bundaberg, Springwood, Ferny Grove, Pine Rivers, Gaven and Mansfield – and would have done if the abortion debacle had’ve been handled better.
While there is not expected to be any formal motions or speeches on the navigating of this issue at the weekend, there’s no stopping the private conversations on the sidelines.
Crisafulli and Riley kept an ultra-firm level of control over candidates and messaging (when asked about abortion, say “it’s not part of our plan”. Rinse. Repeat) and it meant the election race tightened significantly as the campaign wore on.
There is now a growing concern among the party’s federal MPs and senators that headquarters will seek to keep candidates on a similarly tight leash during the upcoming federal election.
As one LNP federal MP tells Chooks: “That ain’t going to happen”.
“We have a history of success and that comes off the back of gut instincts and knowing our communities”.
Another said: “Good luck trying to control us”.
“We have a recipe that works, we have been very successful, so I don’t see that changing”.
A lot of criticism has been privately levelled over Crisafulli’s “presidential-style” state campaign, with candidates hamstrung from waging local battles and blocked from speaking to the media to sell their vision for their electorates, without first getting permission from HQ.
One senior LNP source says that style of campaign “overlooked the reality of the state”.
“It is so diverse,” they say.
“Running billboards of a pretty unknown leader in regional towns instead of local candidates was a real mistake.”
“Beyond that, the gagging of local candidates was just dumb.”
Still, it’s impossible to argue with the results: Labor held onto just three of its regional seats, and the LNP won just about everywhere else outside the southeast corner, including in Mackay and Rockhampton where they haven’t won the best part of a century.
In central Queensland, the LNP won all three seats: Labor’s Rockhampton (won by staunchly pro-life candidate Donna Kirkland) and Keppel (won by former teacher Nigel Hutton) and the Katter’s Australian Party’s Mirani (won by grazier Glen Kelly).
Grilled like a Rocky steak
Speaking of the powwow in Rockhampton, Nationals MP for the federal seat of Flynn Colin Boyce is preparing to ask some tough questions of his new state government colleagues.
Boyce, who was a state LNP MP before he defected to the federal arena in 2022, tells Chooks that he expects there to be a fair amount of “backslapping” to celebrate the October 26 election win this weekend.
But he wants to grill David Crisafulli and his cabinet colleagues Treasurer and Energy Minister David Janetzki, Finance Minister Ros Bates, and State Development Minister Jarrod Bleijie about how much taxpayer-money is being used to buy private renewables projects.
He points to the unbuilt $1.3bn Lotus Creek Wind Farm project in central Queensland that was “acquired” from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners by government-owned CS Energy in August.
To say Boyce is not a fan of renewables is an understatement akin to remarking that polar bears are not overly comfortable in the Sahara Desert, but he reckons there are genuine questions that must be answered by the new LNP administration about how they will ensure value for taxpayer dollars.
The LNP’s state executive sits in Rockhampton on Friday, before state council over the weekend and a Crisafulli-led cabinet meeting on Monday.
Walking on Sunshine State
Chooks’ revelations last week that Damien Walker was making a return to Queensland as David Crisafulli’s new director-general sparked quite the stir among the state’s political class.
Walker – who served as DG to Labor’s Steven Miles and Kate Jones – was headhunted to come back to the Sunshine State, after leading the public service for Peter Malinauskas’s South Australian Labor government since April 2022.
In a switcheroo, Queensland’s former energy department boss Paul Martyn is now off to SA to run Malinauskas’s energy and mining department.
Chooks foreshadowed that Walker’s appointment wouldn’t please everybody, and our phones blew up with Walker fans lauding the “extremely capable” operator who was a “stellar” choice to lead the state’s bureaucracy (retired Labor minister Stirling Hinchliffe was one such fan applauding the “strong appointment” on social media).
But his detractors also came in hot, bemoaning the “appalling pick” and “s--t choice”.
Like we said – divisive.
Walker starts two days before Christmas, and Crisafulli says he’ll bring “enormous experience and dynamism” to the job.
With interest
Just before the October 26 election, some serious cash poured into the LNP’s coffers in the form of loans from wealthy backers including former party president Gary Spence ($1m), then-MP Darren Zanow ($2m), Senate candidate Stuart Fraser ($1m in two instalments), Senator Susan McDonald’s grazier father Donald McDonald ($1m), and Amanda Stoker’s husband Adam Stoker ($120,000 in seven instalments).
At the time we broke the story, party HQ said the loans would be repaid – with interest – once the LNP received public funding from the Electoral Commission of Queensland for the running of the election.
The ECQ tells us that political parties can apply to be reimbursed for up to $6.66 for every formal first preference vote received by candidates who received at least four per cent of the primary vote.
All the LNP’s 93 candidates fall into that category, so the party – which received 1,289,535 formal primary votes – would presumably be eligible for about $8.59m in public funding, just shy of the $8.92m it was entitled to spend under the state’s expenditure caps ($95,964.09 for each of the state’s seats).
Chooks reckons that means Spence et al can expect to get their loans repaid. Claims for reimbursement are due by March 17.
New kids on the block
Queensland’s 24 new MPs had their formal induction to parliamentary life this week.
The two-dozen bright eyed pollies had the first three of six days of intensive preparation for their new lives as elected representatives. Parliamentary clerk Neil Laurie read them the riot act on how not to abuse their electorate office and car allowances or bully their electorate officers.
Chooks hears a few cautionary tales – including The Australian’s reporting on the alleged misbehaviour of ‘Call Me Sir’ ex-Labor MP Jim Madden – were used to show the newbies what not to do.
As well as members of the parliamentary press gallery – including a Chook – who supplied advice about the media, the McKinnon Institute was also brought in on Thursday to give the new MPs some extra training on personal resilience and the ethics of decision making.
Next week, there’ll be two more days on parliamentary procedures, rules and ethics, and in February, members of the judiciary and independent statutory bodies will speak to the fresh crop.
One observer tells Chooks they were “really impressed” with the new lot, who appeared to be friendly to their colleagues regardless of political rivalries.
Let’s see how long that lasts.
Spotted #1
As Chooks has reported, the new Crisafulli government is busy hiring and firing. Longtime Labor spinner Robert Hoge’s contract as Queensland Health assistant deputy director-general was terminated, and Hoge praised his colleagues as the “best comms team in government, which hands-down executed the most effective pandemic response in the country”.
Ally Foley – who worked in senior communications and branding roles with coal mining giant Adani (now trading as Bravus) for nearly five years until September 2023 – has been employed as Mines Minister Dale Last’s new chief of staff, while the LNP’s failed candidate for Bulimba, Laura Wong, is Finance, Trade, Employment and Trading Minister Ros Bates’s new education and training adviser.
Interestingly, Foley worked with Jobs for Mining Communities on its ‘mining does a great job for us all’ advertising blitz, ahead of the election campaign in which the lobby group and registered third-party advocated for Labor and Steven Miles’s defeat.
Mitch Redford – most recently the head of corporate affairs at MLC Life Insurance who had worked as a senior adviser in then Premier Campbell Newman’s office – will return to state government as David Crisafulli’s director of communications.
Immediate past president of the Young LNP Kate Samios will serve as chief of staff to Tourism and Environment Minister Andrew Powell, the Young LNP’s state patron.
Spotted #2
Which Queensland government department sent gushing letters to state MPs on Thursday, congratulating them “following the recent local government elections”? Chooks has decided not to name the department, or the author – a regional director. Everyone makes typoos.
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