Queensland Labor young guns pushing to oust older MPs
Queensland Premier David Crisafulli has used his visit to Japan to tell business leaders there is plenty of coal for sale, as ALP young guns target Labor veterans.
G’day readers, and welcome to the latest edition of Feeding the Chooks, where we dive deep into what’s really going on behind the scenes of Queensland politics.
Young Guns target ‘Dad’s Army’ ALP MPs
There is growing frustration among the youthful ranks of Labor’s membership about the seeming reluctance of the party’s older MPs to shuffle off into retirement and make way for a generational refresh.
Sources tell Chooks that rising Labor aspirants are peeved that they’re being told they’re too young to run, when some of the older MPs seem to have run out of energy.
Opposition frontbencher Meaghan Scanlon and first-term Sandgate MP Bisma Asif are being held up as prime examples of what happens when young blood is injected into the parliament; both are seen as not only active MPs but also tireless in building their local ALP branches and attracting new members.
And their frustration is also shared by some of the veteran party hardheads in the membership, who have labelled the older MPs “Dad’s Army” after the British sitcom about a military Home Guard unit made up of mostly elderly recruits.
Three of the MPs – Mark Furner (now 67), Grace Grace (67) and Peter Russo (70) – will be over 70 at the next election in October 2028 with Di Farmer (now 64) and Joan Pease (63) cracking retirement age.
We are also told that Wendy Bourne will be 70 at the next poll, although we can’t verify her age, and she didn’t get back to Chooks.
One ALP source also made the point that they all hold seats in Brisbane and its surrounds, where the LNP are determined to make gains after winning government last year on a regional sweep.
The only member of the “Dad’s Army” crowd hailed as being energetic? Bulimba MP Di Farmer, who is often seen out and about with her stepdaughter Lucy Collier (Labor Brisbane City Councillor) and close factional ally Renee Coffey (federal ALP MP for Griffith).
Chooks hit the phones to touch base with some of the named MPs, to see whether they were ready to move on from politics.
Furner, the MP for Ferny Grove, tells Chooks he is “too fit and dangerous to retire” and urged young people in the ranks to get some experience behind them before looking to parliament.
At the same time, Grace, Labor’s MP for the city-based seat of McConnel, says the opposition “will do everything we can” to hold the government to account and take back power at the 2028 election.
Farmer also says she’s not intending to step away any time soon.
Queensland Labor’s acting state secretary Ben Driscoll dismissed the suggestion of internal rumblings, telling Chooks each of the MPs had the backing of the party.
“The Labor team is strong, united and focused on holding the Crisafulli LNP government to account,” he said.
Crisafulli’s coal push
David Crisafulli ended this week’s trade mission to India and Japan with a clear message: Queensland has plenty of coal for sale.
The Queensland Premier has been hobnobbing with business and government elites in both countries, lobbying for the state to be picked as the host of the next Quad meeting of leaders among a range of proposals.
But while leading a delegation that included a myriad of industries and ideas, the one big push seemed to centre on the state’s coal reserves and its export to both countries.
Remember, India and Japan voiced their outrage when the Palaszczuk Labor government hiked coal royalties without warning in 2022.
It was labelled as insulting by then-Japanese ambassador Shingo Yamagami, who urged the government to reconsider.
That was fresh in the minds of Crisafulli and the assembled audience at the Clean Coal Symposium in Tokyo this week, where the Premier started his address simply: “Queensland is open for business, and we are open for coal mining”.
And while he may have signed up to Labor’s net-zero emissions target when opposition leader, Crisafulli was determined to show he’s pro-coal as premier.
“In a short period of time, we’ve already renewed 11 mining leases in the coal tenement, and we’ve also approved a new one,’’ he said.
“And in a time when others are looking to run away from coal, we’re running towards it as part of what we are trying to achieve in our state.”
And he promised trade between Queensland and Japan’s miners would be built on “long-term certainty” with approvals being given in a timely fashion.
“If the answer is yes, you’ll get it quick,’’ he told the crowd.
“If the answer is no, likewise, it’ll be a quick answer with reasons, and if we can work around those, we will.
“And above all, your industry will never, ever, ever again be subjected to changes in royalty levels that rock the friendship and make things so difficult to do business.”
It must be said though – and the Japanese are far too polite to make the point publicly – that his government has refused to scrap the coal royalty regime that has stretched the friendship.
The fun and games of redistribution
The major parties have submitted their redistribution wish lists to the Queensland Electoral Commission, and Chooks has read them top to bottom and picked out our favourite bits.
The Liberal National Party’s submission recommended the scrapping of the regional seat of Hill (currently represented by Katter’s Australian Party’s Shane Knuth) and the southern Brisbane seat of Toohey (held by Labor’s Peter Russo) in favour of new seats in Ipswich and Caboolture.
The Greens have agreed with the LNP on the location of the two new seats, but have suggested the Townsville seat of Thuringowa, held by the LNP’s Natalie Marr, and the southern Brisbane seat of Stretton, held by Labor MP James Martin, be the ones to face the chop.
Labor is also pushing for a new seat in Caboolture, but hasn’t submitted any proposal as to which seat should make way for it.
Some people have queried why the LNP are pushing to wipe out a far north Queensland seat while claiming to be the party for the regions, in favour of establishing two new electorates within Labor’s fortress of Brisbane.
The LNP has also moved to have all Indigenous and historic names dropped and replaced by ones reflecting a suburb or landmark. One example is changing Oodgeroo to Cleveland and Maiwar to Indooroopilly.
They also suggested ditching the name of the inner-city seat of Cooper (named after pioneering doctor Lilian Violet Cooper) in favour of calling it after the future home of the city’s Olympic stadium, Victoria Park. Coincidentally, the Labor MP who holds the seat, Jonty Bush, is anti-stadium.
On the Gold Coast, the LNP is suggesting a northern shuffle of all seats to even out the number of voters in each of the region’s seats, which underwent a pandemic-induced population boom.
The party holds all but one of the seven seats in the area, after the LNP missed out on taking Gaven from Labor’s Meaghan Scanlon by fewer than 400 votes at last year’s election.
If the LNP had their way in redrawing the state’s electoral boundaries, Gaven would take the suburb of Arundel from Housing Minister Sam O’Connor’s neighbouring Bonney.
The cheeky move would put the suburb's former golf course in Scanlon’s electorate.
Back when she was housing and planning minister, Scanlon sensationally overrode a council decision last year to “call in” the site for social and affordable housing, angering the community.
Labor’s Queensland state secretary Ben Driscoll did not miss a chance to have a swipe at the Crisafulli government’s hand-picked representative on the three-person redistribution panel, Department of State Development director-general John Sosso, again raising concerns about his Sosso’s impartiality and independence through the process.
Curiously, Ferny Grove MP Mark Furner made his own personal submissions. Furner tells Chooks his electorate office made the decision after being encouraged by the Electoral Commission of Queensland, but it appears no one else got the message.
The Greens also noted the state would need at least 20 more seats to take the average voter numbers back to the same voter spread achieved at the 2017 state redistribution, when four new seats were added to increase the size of the parliament to 93 electorates.
LNP payback
The Liberal National Party’s rich-listers have been paid back with interest for their mid-campaign bailout.
As Chooks revealed last year, the LNP solicited multimillion-dollar loans to bolster David Crisafulli’s election war chest ahead of the crucial October poll.
Former party president Gary Spence, previously banned from donating because he was deemed a property developer, loaned $1m to the LNP, on the same day former LNP treasurer Stuart Fraser loaned $985,000 to the party.
Then retiring Ipswich West MP Darren Zanow loaned $2m, while former federal Nationals president and Queensland senator Susan McDonald’s father, Donald McDonald, loaned $1m in the week before the campaign started.
McDonald is the patriarch of a multi-generational grazing empire, which owned more than three million hectares of land in 2013.
Lawyer Adam Stoker, husband of former senator and tyro LNP state MP for Oodgeroo Amanda Stoker, handed over $120,000 in loans in seven instalments from his company Strataver Counsel Pty Ltd.
Declarations to the Electoral Commission of Queensland show Zanow earned $94,766 in interest when the LNP repaid the loan, while McDonald and Spence each pocketed about $50,000 in interest and Fraser earned about $31,000.
Save the date
A date has been set for the long-awaited vote on the Queensland Police Union’s controversial pay deal with the Crisafulli government.
The first major test of the public sector wage negotiations will begin next Friday, when the official ballot of the state’s police force opens.
If you remember, QPU president Shane Prior inked an in-principle agreement in July based on the state wage offer of a 3 per cent pay rise in 2025, followed by 2.5 per cent in each of the following two years, after telling members he would fight for 8 per cent annual rises.
There was an internal revolt when frontline officers were told the news, particularly after Prior seemingly buried the $163m additional package of bonuses and incentives after securing backpay entitlements. He was forced to do damage control across the state in the fallout.
But since then, the state’s firefighters and the powerful nurses and midwives union have fallen into line, accepting the same base offer with extras.
Will that turn the tide for Prior, who has already faced no-confidence votes? We will find out when the ballot closes on September 25.
Farm to table
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