David Crisafulli’s ‘divisive’ new director-general oversaw Wellcamp
Walking back to government
The top-level bureaucrat who oversaw the highly politicised Wellcamp quarantine facility for Steven Miles has been recruited as the permanent head of new Premier David Crisafulli’s department.
Chooks hears that Damien Walker, a divisive figure in Liberal National Party circles, is expected to start as Crisafulli’s director-general in the coming weeks.
Walker, a former state development and infrastructure DG to Miles and Kate Jones in the Palaszczuk government, will return to Queensland after heading the public service for Peter Malinauskas’s Labor government in South Australia since April 2022.
It is a curious choice for Crisafulli, given Walker – a seasoned public servant – was leading Miles’s state development department when the Labor government signed off on the controversial Wellcamp centre in September 2021, during the Covid pandemic and after nine months of negotiations.
Crisafulli was highly critical of the deal that handed the wealthy Toowoomba-based Wagner family hundreds of millions of dollars to build the centre that was hardly used before quarantine requirements were dumped.
“It’s a facility that was barely used and we will never own,” Crisafulli thundered in April last year.
“It’s waste the likes we’ve never seen before. Queenslanders deserve a government which treats their money with respect.”
On the same day, now Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie slammed the facility as “Wastecamp” and said it was one of the “worst decisions that the Palaszczuk Labor government have ever made”.
It was eventually revealed the government spent $223.5m on the facility, which was used for just six months and housed 730 people.
The Wagners, who own the adjacent airport, won the contract for Wellcamp without going through an open tender process and now own the site after the state government’s lease expired last April.
Sullivan given vote
Jimmy Sullivan might have been deemed unfit to attend parliament or Labor caucus meetings but that hasn’t stopped Right leader Cameron Dick from allowing him to vote via a proxy in backroom faction negotiations.
Labor leader Steven Miles effectively suspended Sullivan last week after police were called to his home to respond to a “reported domestic violence incident” on the night after the Queensland election. No charges were laid.
Miles ordered Sullivan to take leave “until his legal and medical matters have been resolved”.
While some of Sullivan’s Labor comrades are already whispering about the likelihood of a by-election within the year, Chooks can reveal the Right still let the Stafford MP cast a vote during its closed-door negotiations over the make-up of the new Labor frontbench.
Dick insists it was not his call to make, telling Chooks: “Every member of the parliamentary party is entitled to proxies.”
In a statement, Queensland Police said they “responded to a reported domestic violence incident at Kedron at around 9:15pm on Sunday, October 27’’, but Dick said he was “not aware of those matters’’.
“But every member of the caucus is entitled to lodge a proxy if they wish … I can’t stop people lodging proxies; they are entitled under the rules of the parliamentary party to lodge a proxy,” Dick said.
Asked why he hadn’t suspended Sullivan from the Right faction, pending the outcome of “legal issues”, Dick said: “It is not a decision for me to take, it is not a decision that I take, it is not my decision alone.”
Chooks contacted Sullivan for comment who said to “speak to Cameron (Dick) – that’s what a proxy is’’.
Fentiman on the rise
Speaking of factional negotiations, the Left have reclaimed the coveted treasury portfolio with Shannon Fentiman promoted into the senior economic role.
Fentiman replaces Cameron Dick as Labor’s treasury spokeswoman in opposition, marking the first time the Left has controlled the economic messaging of the party since Jackie Trad resigned from cabinet in 2020.
It will be a good resume boost for Fentiman, who still harbours ambitions of one day being premier.
Steven Miles announced his shadow cabinet on Friday, forbidding former energy minister Mick de Brenni from holding a portfolio and instead relegating him to manager of Opposition business and shadow cabinet secretary.
Dick takes on the shadow portfolios of state development, infrastructure, planning and regional development. Grace Grace – the leader of the Old Guard – has trade, industrial relations, the Olympics and Paralympics, and racing.
A couple of honourable mentions: former transport minister Bart Mellish – who the Electoral Commission of Queensland declared the winner of the nailbiter seat of Aspley on Friday – retains his portfolio in opposition, while Mark Bailey takes health and Glenn Butcher is the police spokesman.
Bailey was dumped from cabinet in December when Miles became Premier.
Odds on it’ll be Evans
Ousted LNP MP for the federal seat of Brisbane, Trevor Evans, was observed representing Opposition Leader Peter Dutton at a Kristallnacht commemoration event at the Brisbane Synagogue on Thursday night.
Chooks couldn’t help but wonder – when will Evans confirm the worst-kept secret in Queensland politics, that he’s preparing to put up his hand for another run at Brisbane at the next federal election?
Evans didn’t return calls from Chooks on Friday, but has said previously he hadn’t ruled out running again. He was beaten by the Greens’ Stephen Batesat the 2022 election after suffering a 10.13 per cent primary vote swing against him. Bates placed third on primary vote (27.24 per cent), but leapfrogged Evans (37.71 per cent) with the help of Labor preferences.
The LNP opened nominations this week for federal non-held seats, including Brisbane.
Changing of the guard
As Labor lobbyists reinvent themselves in the wake of the Miles government’s defeat, new conservative pollie-whisperers are staking their territory.
As Chooks foreshadowed a fortnight ago, former Crisafulli and opposition senior staffer Pete Coulson’s resignation as Tasmanian Liberal Party state director was timely, and hinted at a shift north.
Coulson’s new gig is heading up lobby shop Counsel House’s Queensland branch. The firm boasts he has “deep ties with the new Queensland LNP government” and is one of Australia’s leading political strategists.
Late in the 2017 Queensland election campaign, it emerged that Coulson – then a staffer for opposition leader Tim Nicholls – had been in contact with One Nation’s James Ashby about a possible preference deal.
At the time, Nicholls said Coulson was “acting without authority and has been strongly counselled”.
Coulson garnered a far more glowing public endorsement from Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff on his exit last month, who said Coulson’s “guidance, hard work and strategic approach have been instrumental in guiding our party in recent years”.
Spotted #1
It turns out you don’t have to be in the Chairman’s Lounge to rub shoulders with global superstars of politics and entertainment.
A Chooks correspondent tells us that on last Sunday’s flight from Brisbane to Canberra, English comedian, actor, writer and raconteur Stephen Fry was at the pointy end of the plane.
Fellow travellers – including pollies on their way to the nation’s capital for this week’s parliamentary sitting – were “star struck’’, we’re told.
On tour in Australia, Fry was overheard saying he “always books the seat beside him to keep it empty when flying”.
But his best-laid plans were thwarted when through the cabin door came former Tory British Cabinet minister turned podcaster Rory Stewart, who happily left his own seat to plonk himself beside Fry, where our correspondent watched the pair gleefully “witter for the entire flight”.
Spotted #2
Young LNP identitiesBenjamin Kozij (secretary), Luke Allen (treasurer), Darcy Creighton (Young Liberal president and former Young LNP president), and Oscar Green (former state executive member) were all spotted at United States presidential election events in the final week of the campaign: Kozij and Allen at a Donald Trump rally in Virginia, and Creighton and Green and the crew at a Kamala Harris shindig in Washington DC.
The latter sighting got some members of the LNP (senior wing) a little hot under the collar. But Chooks has confirmed the gaggle of political tragics are on a self-funded bipartisan study tour, alongside other obsessives including interstate ALP staffers, run by former NSW Young Liberal vice-president Josh Koonin. They were observers, not campaigners, at the rallies.
The group have been in New York and Washington, meeting the National Rifle Association, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Americans for Tax Reform, and ex-staffers from the Trump and Bush administrations, as well as Australian ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd.
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