Does Annastacia Palaszczuk want to be Australia’s Oprah?
While Annastacia Palaszczuk’s TV debut has surprised some, others closer to the former premier say she fancies herself a talk-show host. Plus, which ALP candidate has been caught breaking the state’s parliamentary rules?
G’day readers, and welcome to Feeding the Chooks from the campaign trail. Only 22 more days to go until election day, but who’s counting?
Annastacia Palaszczuk = Australia’s next Oprah?
Annastacia Palaszczuk’s election-night appearance as a panellist on Sky News Australia, alongside her one-time adversary Campbell Newman, has the political class in Queensland aflutter.
The pairing of the two former Queensland premiers – who rarely pulled their punches against each other in the political ring – has those in the red corner particularly nervous.
Sky this week released a slick promo of Palaszczuk and Newman, shot on the floor of the parliament, with the three-election winning former Labor premier promising a night “without the political spin”.
“As Queenslanders give their verdict, I will give mine,’’ she says about the October 26 election night coverage.
But while Palaszczuk’s television debut as a commentator has surprised some, there are others closer to the former premier who say she has always harboured ambitions of a post-political career in the media.
And, according to one former staffer, she even fancies herself as a talk-show host, an Australian incarnation of Oprah Winfrey.
“When she was premier, she would talk about life after politics and often said she felt she could be the Oprah Winfrey of Australia,’’ the staffer said.
Palaszczuk on Friday did not dispute the account of her purported daytime dreaming while premier of life after politics but insisted that now she was out, her ambitions were not for television.
“I do not want a career in the media!’’ she told Chooks in a text.
The comments won’t be enough to calm the nerves in Labor.
The release of the Sky promo has been taken by many within the senior ranks of the party as an ominous preview that she intends to get square with her successor Steven Miles and the party’s powerbrokers – ALP state president John Battams and union boss Gary “Blocker” Bullock – who showed her the door last December.
Chooks has been told that despite being the career politician, Palaszczuk has been angered by Miles’s seeming lack of loyalty in trying to distance himself from her government for political expediency.
Those close to her have said she also fears that if Labor loses – as all the published and party polling suggest is near-certain – Miles and his cabinet colleagues are going to blame her for not leaving the political stage sooner.
Her personal popularity started to fall in 2022, and some in the cabinet – including Miles – wanted her to quit and give her successor enough time to turn things around.
“Some in the government are already blaming Annastacia privately and come election night, they might go public,’’ a source close to Palaszczuk said.
One senior ALP source said election night is when the former premier will let fly and, as promised in the promo, with her (damning) verdict on her successor and the party after quitting the leadership.
“We hear she’s angry and on a long run up,’’ the source said.
Clerk ignored, and ignored again
Labor’s candidate in the rusted-on red seat of Sandgate, Bisma Asif, has been caught breaking parliamentary rules by using retiring MP Stirling Hinchliffe’s electorate office to campaign.
As The Australian revealed in the newspaper on Friday, parliamentary clerk Neil Laurie has repeatedly warned sitting MPs not to use their electorate offices for electioneering – advice ignored by LNP integrity in government spokeswoman Fiona Simpson in behaviour condoned by LNP leader David Crisafulli.
Laurie wrote to MPs as recently as Monday: “Can the electorate office itself and/or office equipment be used for campaigning/electioneering purposes? As a general rule, members should not use these resources for such purposes”.
Simpson, however, is recruiting volunteers to help “show Labor the door in 2024!” and is using her electorate office as home base for an information session next weekend, at an event organised by her taxpayer-funded staffers.
The integrity spokeswoman (!) tried to wriggle around the rules, by insisting that despite the advertisement, the “event was to be held in the vacant space next door to her electorate office”.
Awkwardly for Simpson, Chooks has confirmed the parliament has also leased the vacant space next door as of this week, in order to expand the electorate office.
Crisafulli, despite his repeated insistence he will sack his ministers if they fail in their duties, says he will not call for Simpson to step down, describing the situation as “categorically untrue” but refusing to elaborate.
On the issue of candidates, Laurie, veteran overlord of the Queensland parliament was strict and clear when he told MPs not to let candidates use their digs: “Under no circumstances are electorate offices to be made available to election candidates (as distinct from a sitting Member) or other persons associated with candidate campaigns”.
Despite Laurie’s repeated and increasingly grumpy exhortations, Queensland Labor apparently felt so comfortable with Sandgate candidate Asif turning Hinchliffe’s electorate office into a voter call-centre, they posted photographic evidence on their Facebook page.
Former Minister Hinchliffe was first elected to parliament in 2006 and knows more about the democratic rules and regulations of that place than nearly everybody, so the breach is baffling.
But Queensland Labor state secretary Kate Flanders tells Chooks: “Labor volunteers use their own phones and laptops to phone members of the public to talk about the positive achievements of the Miles Labor government, policies like 50 cent fares, which is part of community outreach. We don’t believe any guidelines from the Clerk have been breached.”
Chooks reminds both parties that these are taxpayer-funded electoral resources, and we’ve got eyes and spies everywhere.
Leaderboard update
There’s nothing like a disastrous poll to get Shannon Fentiman up and at ‘em.
After Chooks last week revealed the Health Minister was in serious trouble in her Logan-based seat of Waterford, the wannabe premier and her team of comrades have been busy hitting the hustings to salvage her post-election leadership ambitions.
The expensive interviewer-led phone poll – by Labor’s preferred pollsters Talbot Mills – showed a 13 per cent swing against Fentiman in Waterford, with her 2PP vote versus the LNP, from 66 per cent in 2020 to just 53 per cent.
And this week we can bring you the updated version of Labor’s internal campaign leaderboard – which tracks the total number of “doorknocks” and phone calls made to voters in each electorate in the past seven days.
After missing out on a top 10 spot last week, Fentiman’s Waterford campaign now ranks No. 6 on the tally.
Labor’s internal database reveals the campaign that has had the most voter interaction in the past week was the north Brisbane seat of Aspley, held by Transport Minister Bart Mellish on a 5.2 per cent margin.
Coming in at No. 2 was Kim Richard’s campaign to retain Redlands, followed by Corrine McMillan in Mansfield.
As we reported in our newspages this week, the public servant’s Together Union is directing its resources into Aspley, Redlands and Mansfield.
This week’s No 4. hardest working campaign was Cooper, held by Jonty Bush on a 10.49 per cent margin but under threat from the Greens and No. 3 was Labor’s most marginal seat of Bundaberg.
Tom Smith, a close factional ally of Steven Miles, won Bundaberg in 2020 by just nine votes and holds the seat on an incredibly narrow 0.01 per cent margin.
It is no wonder the United Workers Union is funnelling its resources into Bundaberg and Cooper.
After being publicly shamed for “sitting around waiting to lose”, a number of regional MPs have hit the hustings and finally made it on to the leaderboard.
Aside from Smith in Bundaberg, Les Walker’s campaign to retain the Townsville-based seat of Mundingburra made the list as did Hervey Bay’s Adrian Tantari.
And Chooks can also reveal that Labor’s Moggill candidate Eric Richman is still the hardest person Labor has in the race. working candidate or MP running for Labor.
Our spies tell us Richman, a veteran and ED doctor, is topping the list of Labor MPs and candidates who have personally made the most number of phone calls or visits to voters’ homes in the past week. And apparently he is ahead by a “fair bit”.
Here is the full list of campaigns ranked from 1-10: Aspley, Redlands, Mansfield, Cooper, Bundaberg, Waterford, Redcliffe, Mundingburra, Hervey Bay and Pumicestone.
And here is the list of individual candidates and MPs ranked in order: Richman, Wendy Bourne (Ipswich West candidate), Corrine McMillan (Mansfield MP), Jonty Bush (Cooper MP), Chris Johnson (Coomera candidate), Scott Stewart (Townsville MP), Belle Brookfield (Clayfield candidate).
Greens expansion
And while we are on the topic of leaks, Chooks got their hands on some union-funded track polling this week predicting “notional winners” on October 26, and that Labor would be left with just 31 of its current 51 electorates.
Steven Miles is now bracing for the loss of two inner-city Brisbane seats to the Greens, including Old Guard faction leader and senior Minister Grace Grace’s McConnel electorate and backbencher Joe Kelly’s seat of Greenslopes.
The leaked polling reveals the three-cornered race in those seats is extremely close. For instance, in McConnel the polling has Labor third on primary vote on 27.2 per cent, behind the LNP on 27.4 per cent and the Greens on 37.9 per cent. If Labor slips into second spot ahead of the LNP, Grace will be in a much more comfortable position.
The poll was done by DemosAU, which is run by former Labor staffers Evan Schwarten and George Hasanakos. Chooks hears the pollster was “panicking” this week after hearing someone had passed the results on.
It also suggests Labor seats could fall to the LNP including the far north Queensland seats of Cook (Cynthia Lui, 6.3 per cent) and Cairns (Michael Healy, 5.6 per cent) as well as Pine Rivers (Nikki Boyd, 6.7 per cent) on Brisbane’s northern fringe.
The DemosAU poll suggests the swing against Labor is about 10 per cent.
Taxi!
An ALP branch member recently fell foul of a power arguably even more terrifying than parliamentary clerk Neil Laurie: the Electoral Commission of Queensland.
Tony Gilson, who runs the SMBI Transport taxi service on the southern Moreton Bay Islands, publicly offered a 10 per cent discount for travellers who “are happy to identify a vote for Kim Richards Member for Redlands”.
“I would intend to run this from today until the state election in October. I’m doing this because I believe passionately that we need Kim Richards & Steven Miles to be our reps,” Gilson said.
Richards – who praised Gilson in her March 2018 maiden speech in parliament, describing him as the “Lamb Island Lone Ranger, single-handedly managing the booth” – holds Redlands on a narrow 3.90 per cent margin, and the LNP is heavily targeting the seat, so every vote will count.
But Gilson got a rude shock when the electoral watchdog emailed him and warned he was “allegedly buying votes”.
He tells Chooks he was “a little bit chastened,” deleted his offer straight away, and insists Richards knew nothing about it, “and all is good in the world”.
Turning blue
It’s an undeniable sign of wobbles in the ALP ranks when even dyed-in-the-wool types prepare for the likelihood of a Crisafulli victory on October 26.
Labor lobbyist Kirby Anderson is busy burnishing his blue credentials, hiring former LNP Brisbane Lord-Mayor Graham Quirk as an executive consultant for his firm PolicyWonks.
Anderson – Annastacia Palaszczuk’s deputy chief of staff until March 2018 – tells Chooks he is looking forward to working with and learning from Quirk, who he describes as the “first political leader to advocate for an Olympic and Paralympic Games bid”.
The former in-house spruiker for the Queensland Resources Council, Anderson has been courting LNP shadow ministers for months, as well as keeping up appearances with his old government pals on behalf of his clients, which include Australia’s largest arms dealer NOIA, mining and energy companies, and the Brisbane Bullets basketball team.
Volunteer search
Pro-life group Cherish Life, a registered third party for Queensland campaign, is determined to make abortion a key election issue.
The group, which can spend up to $1m statewide during the election, has put the call out for volunteers to help out pro-life candidates.
“We are looking for passionate volunteers to assist with distributing flyers in key areas across Queensland,” the lobby group wrote in an email.
“By helping spread our message, you will be directly contributing to the success of pro-life candidates and ensuring that the voices of those who cannot speak for themselves are heard.”
David Crisafulli will be hoping none of his 93-Liberal National candidates take up any help from Cherish Life.
Labor has been ramping up its attacks on the LNP’s “secret plan” to decriminalise abortion, despite Crisafulli categorically ruling out any changes to legislation for at least four years.
Though it does not help Crisafulli’s fight against Labor’s scare campaign when his frontbenchers are still out in the community promising to be vocal about their anti-abortion stance.
At an event Gympie earlier this week, the LNP’s agriculture spokesman Tony Perrett said: “I oppose it. You just have to look at my record in the parliament and the speeches I have made”.
“Very, very clear, I believe life is created at conception.”
Mango madness
Can you get any more Queensland?
Agriculture Minister Mark Furner and the LNP’s Jim McDonald faced-off in a mango peeling contest this week to celebrate the start of the season.
Held at the Brisbane Markets, where the first tray of mangoes was auctioned for $32,000 (for charity) the two rivals went head to head to see who could peel a mango the fastest.
Furner apparently triumphed, but the results are in dispute.
McDonald says the compere declared a tie with Furner used his peeler like a bottle opener and took out only about “a desert spoon full” of the fruit’s flesh.
“I pushed mine down, like you are supposed to, and got the full cheeks out of both! Even ate them,” he told Chooks.
“I wish I’d been quick enough to say More Labor Waste with the job not properly done.”
But Furner insists he was the rightful victor.
“There was a clear win with two fast movements,” he says, adding that there were “no clear rules despite LNP wanting to make them up”.
On the run
Labor made a big deal about David Crisafulli’s split living arrangements this week.
The LNP leader, who has kept his wife and two daughters away from the campaign, was this week forced to defend “living out of a suitcase” and dividing his time Brisbane and his Gold Coast electorate of Broadwater.
Property records show Crisafulli’s wife Tegan Crisafulli bought the family’s inner Brisbane home, a three-bedroom Queenslander in fashionable Bulimba, for $1.025m in August last year while Crisafulli remained registered to vote at his rented address on the Gold Coast, where he lives downstairs from a staffer.
The family cut and run from north Queensland in 2017, moving to the conservative heartland of the Gold Coast after Crisafulli lost his marginal Townsville-based seat of Mundingburra after a single term at the 2015 election.
Labor has also made quite the deal about the fact he rolled his LNP colleague Verity Barton – then the youngest woman elected to parliament – to claim the blue-ribbon seat.
But he is not the only pollie to ditch a hard-to-win electorate. When Steven Miles’s electorate of Mount Coot-Tha was removed in a 2017 redistribution, the Premier’s union overlord Gary Bullock helped parachute him into the safe seat of Murrumba on Brisbane’s northern outskirts. Miles chose not to contest Maiwar, where the bulk of Mount Coot-Tha wound up, lest he lose to the Greens (the Greens’ Michael Berkman ended up winning Maiwar at the 2017 election).
And the ever-ambitious deputy premier Cameron Dick ditched his inner-south seat of Greenslopes after it was lost in the wipe-out 2012 electorate. He now holds Labor’s (and Queensland’s) safest seat of Woodridge on a cushy 26.25 per cent margin.
Spotted #1
And speaking of family. Queensland’s daggiest dad, Steven Miles, was joined by his not-at-all daggy wife Kim McDowell on his three-day round of regional Queensland.
McDowell, who met Miles when they working together at the QPSU (now Together union), was pressing the flesh with comrades at the Mackay candidate launch at South Suburban Bowls Club and even braved a shopping centre walk through with her husband at Canelands.
McDowell laughed on as the media pack circled the couple while Miles had his shoes polished by the centre’s bootmaker: “Riveting,” she said.
Miles was also upbeat, quipping: “I am just glad I wore the socks without the holes in them.”
Spotted #2
Treasurer Cameron Dick has been dishing out sweeteners to journalists on Labor’s campaign bus this week. After whipping out a tray of lamingtons on the plane from Townsville to Mackay on Tuesday, he was back on the sugar hits in Caloundra on Friday producing some tasty slice from a local bakery. Rest assured, his treats have not led to easier questioning in press conferences.
Spotted #3
Veteran television journalist turned Labor spinner Lane Calcutt took a break from the campaign trail to babysit Mick de Brenni during his stint in the witness box of the Federal Court this week, for the Energy Minister’s cross-examination over the catastrophic 2021 explosion at the Callide coal-fired power station, part-owned by the state government.
Calcutt watched from the public gallery as de Brenni pleaded ignorance about the plant’s safety manager quitting in disgust in 2019, citing maintenance backlogs and a lack of funding for her staff.
When the Miles campaign flew out of Mackay to Rockhampton on Wednesday, Calcutt was instead jetted back to Brisbane to mind de Brenni, assisted by media adviser Elise Williams. Calcutt has been in the thick of more election campaigns than any other staffers on Miles’s team, albeit from the other side of the fence as a journo for Channel 9.
From the archives
In this week’s election flashback, we explore the latter half of that old campaign maxim: never work with children or animals.
Feed the Chooks
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