David Crisafulli government gives taxpayer-funded jobs to LNP mates
G’day readers and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your guide to what’s really going on in Queensland politics.
Mates State lives on
The Liberal National Party is certainly looking after their mates.
After spending nearly a decade rightly accusing the Palaszczuk-Miles government of “brazen political cronyism” for giving top jobs to party and union pals, it seems the Crisafulli government is picking up just where Labor left off.
Not so long ago, LNP frontbenchers were thundering that “appointing Labor mates to taxpayer-funded gigs doesn’t pass the pub test”.
The Crisafulli administration must now be necking pints at different pubs, because Chooks has been left agog by some recent appointments handed out by the new Queensland government.
This week, another former LNP MP Andrew Cripps had to quit his spot on the party’s Senate ticket for the upcoming federal election in order to accept a high-profile taxpayer-funded job from Premier David Crisafulli: the state recovery co-ordinator charged with helping the state’s north overcome the flooding disaster.
Traditionally, these jobs are given to retired military types; Major General Jake Ellwood was the state recovery co-ordinator in 2022 after the southeast Queensland floods, and is now the chief executive of the Queensland Reconstruction Authority.
Cripps (an LNP MP between 2006 and 2017 and a minister in the one-term Campbell Newman government) was endorsed unopposed by the LNP to the Nationals’ number five spot on the Senate ticket in July 2023, and only disappeared as a candidate on the party’s website days before Crisafulli publicly announced his new gig on Wednesday.
Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie – formerly one of the loudest critics of jobs for “Labor mates” – made his old colleague, former LNP MP for Burleigh Michael Hart, the chair of the Queensland Work Health and Safety Board late last month.
Hart, who only retired at the October state election, now leads the peak advisory body to the government on work health and safety matters for a fixed three-year term.
After Labor luvvies were slashed from government boards before Christmas (as foreshadowed by Chooks), their spots were filled by LNP types.
Former LNP Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney – a Queensland conservative MP for nearly two decades – was put on the board of government-owned CS Energy, filling a gap left by the axing of Queensland Council of Unions boss Jacqueline King, a Labor appointment.
And to think! Not that long ago, the LNP was trumpeting a policy of making “appointments to government-owned energy companies solely on merit”. How quaint.
An LNP preselection candidate, party donor, and recent head of the Queensland Law Society, Chloe Kopilovic was made chair of WorkCover Queensland, the government-owned workers’ compensation insurer. Kopilovic’s stated passion is wills and estates and she is the director of Sunshine Coast law firm FC Lawyers’ wills and estates team.
This week, senior barrister April Freeman KC – who is also the wife of Treasurer David Janetzki’s chief of staff Matt Tapsall – was announced as chair of the government’s expert legal panel to advise on its Adult Crime, Adult Time laws.
Youth Justice Minister Laura Gerber defended Freeman’s appointment and said it was “desperate” and “deplorable” of the Labor Opposition to criticise an “esteemed and highly qualified woman because of who her partner is”.
Leavers leaves (without $800k and a ute)
Ian Leavers didn’t just want a near-$800,000 payout for his 15 years as president of the Queensland Police Union, he was also hoping to ride into the sunset in the tricked-out 4WD he had been using in the role.
This week it emerged that Leavers – appointed last August by then Labor premier Steven Miles as Queensland’s first cross-border commissioner – has threatened legal action with the powerful union he once led over a dispute about his entitlements.
Chooks hears the claim was for close to $800,000 and apparently covered overtime, time in lieu for weekend work, sick leave and superannuation.
The union paid him some money – believed to be in the range of tens of thousands of dollars – and are still waiting for Leavers to meet their request for documentation to substantiate the rest of the claim.
But the union, now headed by Shane Prior, has permanently parked Leavers’ plans to take the $70,000 Isuzu 4Wd ute that he had been using for about a year at the union, and on which he had spent around $30,000 in extras.
Chooks hears that before departing, Leavers had convinced his comrades at the union to agree to his offer to pay market value for the car.
But after he left, there was a change of heart and the request was rejected.
According to a source, officials had been reminded of the public scandal in 2007 surrounding the decision to sell four heavily discounted union cars over a number of years to the wife of then president Gary Wilkinson.
Queensland’s corruption watchdog recommended charges be laid against Wilkinson, who announced his retirement at the time citing a longstanding back injury.
But the Director of Public Prosecutions found there was no reasonable prospect of securing a conviction based upon the evidence and didn’t proceed.
Chooks has been told that Leavers was later involved in crafting the current rule that bans the sale of union cars to union employees or their family.
Talk about a short memory.
In a statement, Prior tells Chooks that Leavers made a “very large severance claim for entitlements totalling close to $800,000” after resigning from the union to accept the commissioner job.
“Based on the information we have, our industrial specialists assessed the claim and paid what we consider was owing to Ian. We sought detail from Ian around various aspects of his claims. We welcome that information and hope it’s forthcoming. The QPU executive voted unanimously that we cannot pay Ian more than his contract requires and it’s what our members would expect,” Prior says.
“In January 2008, the full executive board of the QPU established a policy endorsed by the Crime and Misconduct Commission regarding the sale and disposal of vehicles. All union-purchased vehicles are to be traded in when they reach the nominated kilometres. As the 4WD ute assigned to Mr Leavers before he resigned … was around 12 months old and well below the kilometre threshold it was reallocated to the incoming president. This is a financially responsible action based on good business protocols.”
For the record, Leavers’ lawyer Jason Murakami, of Behlau Murakami Grant, says he can’t comment on the particulars of the dispute.
“What was permitted and agreed but not paid by our client’s previous employer is in the process of being particularised by my office,” Murakami tells Chooks.
“Accordingly, it would not be in any of the parties’ interests to comment on individual issues of dispute on a piecemeal basis at this juncture.”
Banking on the budget
Is David Janetzki trying to get the bank back together?
The Queensland Treasurer today announced that he’d appointed Paul Williams, the chief financial officer of People First Bank – formerly Heritage Bank – to the powerful role of Under-Treasurer, effectively installing Williams as his top public service adviser.
Williams and Janetzki worked closely together at Heritage Bank for the nine years Janetzki served as the institution’s general counsel immediately before entering politics – a personal connection left out of the glowing government media release issued on Friday morning.
Chooks has been told the government did not advertise for the position of Under-Treasurer (a role that boasts an annual remuneration of more than $500,000), and it’s not clear whether any other candidates were considered for the top job.
Janetzki’s office did not answer questions about what role the Treasurer played in Williams’ recruitment, but Janetzki describes the hiring as a “coup for Queensland that an accomplished Cambridge-educated 25-year finance, banking and property executive would now offer to serve his state”.
“He was appointed after an independent recruitment process for the QTC (the government’s central financing authority Queensland Treasury Corporation) CEO role identified him as an outstanding candidate,” Janetzki tells Chooks.
Another former Heritage Bank colleague of Janetzki, Bill Armagnacq (company secretary to Janetzki’s assistant company secretary in 2011-12) in December was made a director of Energy Queensland, for which Janetzki is shareholding minister.
Former Labor Treasurer Jackie Trad’s alleged role in the 2019 appointment of her Under-Treasurer Frankie Carroll was probed by the Crime and Corruption Commission after a complaint by the then-LNP Opposition, resulting in no action by the watchdog, apart from a report that has been kept secret ever since.
The Crisafulli government will change the law to allow the CCC to publicly disclose the findings of investigations, even if corrupt conduct is not uncovered.
Nelson’s nuggets
Corporate clients might be abandoning Queensland’s Labor lobbying firm, Anacta Strategies, but they are still firmly in the fold of their party mates.
David Nelson, along with Anacta’s co-founder, Evan Moorhead, was banned as a lobbyist after the Chooks team revealed the pair ran Annastacia Palaszczuk’s 2020 successful re-election campaign at the same time they were stumping for Anacta’s clients to get approvals and government contracts.
The ban expired at the end of the last parliamentary term, just when their unrivalled access to the Labor government’s ministerial offices slammed shut with the ALP’s ousting at the October 31 election.
Which takes us back to the opposition, which held a two-day “workshop” this week at parliament to plan for the year ahead.
Steven Miles opened with a rallying speech for the vanquished, and backbencher Jimmy Sullivan made what one fellow MP described as a “shaky” return to the caucus.
The floor was then turned over to Nelson, touted as a political consultant, who has made much of his involvement in the Labour campaign in the United Kingdom that secured the prime ministership for Keir Starmer.
London’s Financial Times described his role as “helping Starmer’s team break down data on voter attitudes to specific policies”.
Chooks has been told that Nelson’s presentation covered Labour’s strategies in opposition and how it was converted into an electoral win.
One MP wasn’t that impressed.
“Most of us have no experience in opposition, it’s all new and we have to readjust on how we do things,’’ the MP said.
“David talked about opposition in the UK and how they won government but there wasn’t anything revelatory, it was a bit boring, really.”
Late launch
The in-house lobbyist for embattled casino giant Star Entertainment, Corinne Mulholland, will finally be announced publicly as a Labor Senate candidate next week, months after she was endorsed for the winnable second-spot by the party’s national executive.
Right faction member Mulholland, who unsuccessfully ran for the federal seat of Petrie in 2019, secured the position after former Palaszczuk government Tourism Minister Kate Jones decided not to nominate for the gig.
The party has waited so long to announce its six-person Senate ticket (sitting Cairns-based Senator Nita Green has the top spot), Labor insiders were beginning to throw around wild speculation that Mulholland would be replaced at the last minute. Not so, say Chooks’ informants, who have confirmed the new mum will be announced on Thursday night at an event at New Farm’s QA Hotel headlined by Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, Green, and propped up by QLD ALP Senators Anthony Chisholm and Murray Watt who are in the enviable position of not being up for re-election this time round.
Peter Dutton’s Senate candidates have been in the field since July 2023, when the LNP infamously dumpedGerard Rennick from the third spot in favour of party treasurer Stuart Fraser.
Not spotted
There was a notable absentee at the LNP candidate for McPherson Leon Rebello’s campaign launch at the Currumbin RSL at the weekend: Karen Andrews.
As Chooks reported last week, the retiring McPherson MP has been pointedly not campaigning for Rebello, appears to have never publicly endorsed him, and has not been photographed with her successor. Andrews publicly expressed her disappointment last year that she’d been unable to convince a woman to stick up her hand to run for the blue ribbon conservative Gold Coast seat.
While Rebello’s hype team spruiked that the candidate would be joined at his Sunday launch by the LNP’s Team Gold Coast, including former Nationals Premier (now registered lobbyist) Rob Borbidge, federal MPs Angie Bell and Cameron Caldwell, and state MPs Ray Stevens, Hermann Vorster, John-Paul Langbroek, Ros Bates and Laura Gerber.
Chooks hears Andrews was invited but due to “travelling commitments between (federal parliamentary) sitting weeks” wasn’t able to make it. The LNP optimistically described the Gold Coast as having a “strong and united team to deliver for the local community”. Almost united, perhaps.
Spotted
Labor is throwing everything at ALP candidate Renee Coffey’s campaign to win back inner-city Brisbane seat Griffith from outspoken Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather, a persistent thorn in the side of PM Anthony Albanese.
Ramping up the niggle factor, Labor has installed a Coffey billboard right across the road from Chandler-Mather’s Stones Corner electorate office.
Coffey’s asking her Facebook followers for $3000 in donations to help erect another billboard on nearby Wynnum Road, just in case her “Plan A” doesn’t work. She shared an exchange with Plan A, an apparent social media scammer called Stewart Robert, who described himself as “just a daddy that helps single mothers and ladies with bills and rents” and asked her what she would spend $7000 in cash on.
“A giant billboard with my face on it,” Coffey shot back.
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