Feeding the Chooks: Moving and shaking in the Tower of Power, LNP post-election reshuffle
Is David Crisafulli readying to break his first election promise if, as expected, he wins the October 26 election?
G’day readers, and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your peek behind the scenes of what’s really happening on the Queensland election campaign.
Shuffle on the no reshuffle?
Is David Crisafulli readying to break his first election promise if, as expected, he wins the October 26 election?
Liberal National Party insiders tell Chooks that despite his repeated campaign assurances he won’t reshuffle his frontbench, it’s on.
The news probably will likely keep everyone on their toes when Crisafulli delivers his speech at the LNP’s official "campaign launch" on Sunday.
That’s right, a campaign launch six days out from polling day and after about one million Queenslanders have already cast their ballot.
Chooks hears that there is also a “total redesign” of government departments and ministerial portfolios in the works.
Deb Frecklington, the former leader who as the shadow in energy and water has done a fine job bucketing Labor minister Mick de Brenni, is tipped for a more senior cabinet role.
And there is still speculation over whether health shadow Ros Bates will actually take over the portfolio from her Labor sparring partner, Shannon Fentiman.
Bates, who Chooks understands is well-respected by Crisafulli, is being considered for another role.
Chooks has been told that Crisafulli also wants to increase the number of women in his ministry, with just six now among the 19 on the LNP frontbench.
After becoming leader, Crisafulli admitted there was a gender imbalance in the partyroom and drove the recruitment of female candidates.
“He wants to go down in history as the one that fixes that (women) problem,’’ a well-placed source tells Chooks.
And no, the most obvious choice for elevation – former Morrison government minister Amanda Stoker, who is a near-certainty to enter parliament in the LNP-held seat of Oodgeroo – won’t be rewarded with ministerial leather any time soon.
Among those being touted to join the ministry as a tyro-MP is Clare Stewart, who is running for Noosa, held by independent Sandy Bolton.
Former Brisbane City Council deputy mayor Amanda Cooper, running in the Labor-held seat of Aspley, is also thought to be “frontbench material”.
And who could pay the price?
You would think that Tony Perrett, the agricultural spokesman, might be in Crisafulli’s sights after fueling Labor’s attacks on abortion when he was caught out saying he wanted the laws changed.
Ann Leahy, local government spokeswoman, was also named as possibly facing the chop.
Chooks is told that veteran LNP MP Ray Stevens, Gold Coast mayor in the mid-90s, has been lobbying for years to be picked as Speaker.
Moves in Tower of Power
The rumour mill is in overdrive as to who will be brought in to help run the government if the LNP wins the state election.
One-term premier Campbell Newman made the mistake of appointing some friends, none more notable than former Liberal MP and party powerbroker Michael Caltabiano.
The controversy over his appointment as director-general of the Department of Transport and Main Roads didn’t end well, and he was soon shown the door.
Labor mates, as we have detailed over the years, filled the halls of the state’s bureaucracy and government boards, with former Labor MP and ALP state secretary Mike Kaiser, and now Director-General of Premier and Cabinet, certain to depart the Tower of Power, the government’s executive building on William Street, if the LNP wins.
David Edwards, a former DG in the Newman Government, was spotted having lunch with Kaiser at the Port Office Hotel on Thursday.
Edwards was rumoured to be on the LNP’s transition to government committee and a frontrunner to lead a department, possibly replacing Kaiser.
He denied it to Chooks earlier this year and we hear he has spent recent weeks enjoying the Italian sunshine on a family holiday, supporting his claims he isn’t in the thick of the LNP action.
Edwards has apparently made it clear that while he isn’t interested in returning to a DG role he is open to the idea of helping out where needed.
On Monday, Crisafulli told reporters he would ensure that directors-general in an elected LNP government would have no political links so as to restore faith in a “true independent process and a public service that can give advice free from the political interference”.
“Absolutely zero links, absolutely zero memberships. And the person has to be someone who the public service looks at and says, ‘that’s fresh change’,’’ he declared.
And to that, there is a persistent rumour that Damian Walker, a former DG of State Development in the Palaszczuk government, is being considered for a return.
Walker now heads the public service under the Labor government in South Australia.
Chooks hears that Crisafulli likes the idea of appointing Walker in a move, he thinks, would be seen as going beyond partisan politics in turning to a Labor favourite.
Interesting choice, given that Walker was DG of the department that delivered the politically-driven, $220million white elephant that was Wellcamp.
Former Public Service Commission head Andrew Chesterman is also on the market.
Interestingly, he quit as Redland City Council chief executive last month.
And then there is Tim Baker, chief executive of the Gold Coast City Council, who is also being touted as a contender.
Pulling out the big guns
Talk about muscling-up for the last week of the campaign as the going gets real tough.
Most people in Queensland politics know that Steven Miles and his rival David Crisafulli are gym junkies.
Both chose a work-out for the location of photoshoots for profiles: Crisafulli for The Australian, last year and Miles for The Courier-Mail’s QWeekend magazine, first published online on Friday.
A few months ago, it got a little strained when LNP attack dog and deputy leader Jarrod Bleijie raised Miles’ propensity to wearing polo-shirts that often left little to the imagination.
In an LNP State Convention speech, Bleijie went personal and accused Miles for choosing to “wear T-shirts five sizes too small for weird TikTok videos”.
It didn’t seem to deter the premier with a political portrait for the history books.
We can only be thankful that neither are declared mamils – middle-aged men in lycra.
Operation Save Mick
Mick de Brenni is in big trouble in Springwood, or at least his union thinks so.
The Energy Minister, who began the state election campaign getting grilled on a witness stand about a catastrophic explosion at one of Queensland’s biggest power stations, is considered at serious risk of losing his Logan-based electorate.
Chooks has been told his United Workers Union has thrown its resources into Springwood this week with about 100 union workers hitting the phones to save de Brenni, their most senior cabinet minister behind Steven Miles of course.
Labor spies tell Chooks they believe Labor Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon looks “OK” to hold her Gold Coast seat of Gaven, with concern mounting about seats in Brisbane’s greater south.
“We aren’t in great shape there,” one insider said.
UWU’s “Operation Save Mick” is reflected in Labor’s internal campaign tally, with Springwood topping the leaderboard this week for the most doorknocks and phone calls made to voters.
Coming in second place this week was UWU-backed Pumicestone campaign, followed by Aspley, Mansfield, Nickin, Redcliffe, Sandgate, Greenslopes and Waterford.
It is worth noting that all of these seats are within a one-hour drive of Brisbane’s CBD.
Running from scrutiny
If you thought it was hard getting a straight answer out of David Crisafulli, wait until you meet his Cairns candidate Yolonde Entsch.
Entch has repeatedly refused to answer questions about Morrison government grants her companies received when her husband was a federal MP. (you can read more about that here)
She has not answered or returned our many phone calls or texts, she left the LNP convention when approached last year, she refused to answer our questions when visiting a football field with Crisafulli last week.
It got even worse at a Cairns polling booth on Friday morning.
Entsch ducked, covered and ran (well, walked briskly away) when Chooks asked her whether she had declared her relationship with husband Warren Entsch, an MP in the Morrison government, when she applied for grants given by his office.
The completely reasonable questions were met with silence. In fact Entsch decided she would rather go and talk to the One Nation volunteer than answer our questions.
If you are running for a taxpayer funded job you should be ready for a bit of scrutiny.
Busy Bailey
Ever since Mark Bailey was booted out of Cabinet by his Left faction “ally” Steven Miles on his ascension to the Premiership, the former Transport and Main Roads Minister has had too much time on his hands.
Bailey was caught attempting to peel a Greens “build public housing” sticker off a noticeboard at the Annerley Junction Fest last weekend, before being spotted using his parliament-branded tent at pre-poll, an act strictly prohibited by parliamentary clerk Neil Laurie.
In a letter leaked to Chooks Laurie warned MPs on Monday that it had been brought to his attention that marquees and corflutes with the parliament’s official insignia might be being used at pre-poll booths.
“I would ask all members to ensure that the use of the logo in anyway associated with campaigning or electioneering cease asap,” Laurie wrote.
The veteran parliamentary boss has been busy this caretaker period, as Chooks has reported, after a slew of MPs and candidates have been caught out using their taxpayer-funded electorate offices and resources for electioneering.
Bailey – who is under pressure in his seat of Miller from the Greens – tells Chooks that as soon as he received Laurie’s advice, he switched the marquee for a plain red one.
And as for ripping off the Greens’ public housing sticker, Bailey says: “The Greens party had plastered a community notice board designed for community information with party political propaganda which was inappropriate”.
“I’ll put up more record of getting more housing built versus the Greens blocking of housing construction for scrutiny any day of the week,” he says.
Lobbyists who lunch
This week’s leaders debate was a feeding frenzy for Queensland’s ever-growing gaggle of lobbyists.
With a change of government likely, the Liberal National Party’s hired guns were out in force.
LNP-linked lobbyists who bought a seat for the debate included former Nationals party president and MP Larry Anthony, ex Nationals premier Rob Borbidge, former Newman staffer Jeff Popp, former LNP staffer Malcolm Cole, anglican priest Daniel Hobbs, former Howard administration Cabinet minister (and former QLD MP) Santo Santoro.
There were plenty of people from registered third parties in the room too including league legend Darren Lockyer, who is now on the board Jobs For Mining Communities, along with the third party group’s managing director Grant Wechsel.
The Labor lobbyists were fewer in number (a rare thing!). Chooks spotted Annastacia Palaszczuk’s former deputy chief of staff Kirby Anderson and amusingly, blacklisted Labor lobbyist Evan Moorhead and his crew were seated right next to the media table.
Moorhead, and his business partner David Nelson, were banned from lobbying in Queensland after The Australian revealed they was paid to run Palaszczuk’s successful 2020 election campaign while securing lucrative government deals and easy access for their clients.
The pair were put back on the ALP payroll last year, with their company Talbot Mills running the party’s focus group research
Chooks asked Miles in Cairns on Friday if he would lift the ban on Moorhead if Labor won the October 26 election.
“I’m not aware of whether he wants to return to lobbying, but that’s a good question..let me get back to you.”
Miles then denied that Moorhead was doing any work for the ALP.
A spokeswoman for Mr Miles said: “If elected in October, a Miles government will seek advice on any person wanting to register as a lobbyist who has played a role or could be perceived to have played a role in the 2024 election or previous election.”
Young Guns
There have been plenty of questions raised over 22-year-old LNP candidate for Pumicestone Ariana Doolan’s life experience during the campaign.
Flyers and social media posts from the Labor-aligned United Workers Union have attacked her for not being a “serious candidate” and living at home.
“Does a 22-year-old who has never lived out of home have the life experience to deliver for us,” one leaflet thunders.
If Left faction convenor and Steven Miles’s mentor Gary Bullock’s UWU is so concerned about this lack of experience, Chooks wonders if they will be printing flyers about two of Labor’s candidates.
At 18, Samantha Dendle has been selected to run in the LNP held seat of Callide, while 20-year-old James Knight is Labor’s candidate for Surfers Paradise.
Is it only OK to be young if you’re running for Labor?
Annastacia Palaszczuk Pty...
Annastacia Palaszczuk’s post-politics career is being managed by celebrity agent Max Markson, who’s got the former Premier a gig on Sky News’s election night panel and has negotiated a hefty book deal.
Markson and Palaszczuk may need a little help in the modern world of social media marketing though. A clunky ad for “Annastacia Palaszczuk Pty” popped up on Facebook this week: “Contact. Advisory services and industry expertise”. Several spies gleefully drew Chooks’ attention to the development.
The succinct spruik features a picture of Palaszczuk with her former Tourism Minister Michael Healy, who only last week was forced to defend private social media posts calling for a boycott of Israel and calling it an apartheid state.
Blanked on VAD
You would think having a Left faction prime minister in the lodge would be enough for Steven Miles to get through his long-fought reforms to allow doctors to give telehealth advice to patients about voluntary assisted dying.
All six states now have VAD laws but a federal ban on telehealth appointments remains in place, meaning those living in regional and remote areas have to travel to capital cities to find trained specialists.
In Queensland, taxpayers are funding doctors trips to the regions to conduct their VAD appointments.
Miles has lobbied Anthony Albanese, and Scott Morrison before him, to change the Philip Nitschke-era laws that threaten doctors with a $313,000 fine for “inciting or counselling” suicide via a carriage service.
At a press conference in Rockhampton this week, Miles and Health Minister Shannon Fentiman said they were still being blanked by their Left faction buddies Albanese and Mark Butler.
Fentiman said: “Unfortunately, it’s not a priority for the federal government at this time, but it needs to be, because we have Queenslanders that are struggling to access what is lawful health care because of the restrictions placed by the Commonwealth in their criminal code around telehealth.”
Fentiman was then asked if she had presser her Labor mates down in Canberra about why it was not a priority.
“Yes and I was told it’s not a priority, much like you’re getting the same response from David Crisafulli day after day, sometimes that’s the response that you get.”
Miner inconvenience for city Green
Given the Greens are dedicated to shutting down Queensland’s coal assets, it appears a little ironic a mining engineer is within the party’s ranks.
In the inner-city seat of McConnel, frontbench minister Grace Grace has been attempting to stave off strong opposition from Greens candidate Holstein Wong, who previously worked for BHP Billiton at its Peak Downs and Blackwater mines in the Bowen Basin.
In the 1:23 clip uploaded to BHP’s YouTube channel eight years ago, Wong boasts that the “most exciting project she worked on” as part of the business’s graduate program was boosting the coal mine’s productivity.
“(It) was an improvement project to get the plant running for 8,000 hours a year,” Wong said
“So, that’s less than 9 per cent downtime across the whole year for a plant operating 24/7.”
But Wong tells Chooks that is well behind her. She left BHP in 2019 after five years with the mining giant, and says she is very honest with her constituents about her past.
“I thought the way to tackle the climate crisis would be to work in industry,” Wong says.
“I was working onsite in the mines and then moved to work in corporate in Brisbane. I just realised that change wouldn’t come from that space.”
“I’m very open about the fact that I’ve worked as an engineer in the mining and resources sector. I guess the fact that it (the video) has resurfaced now, if anything, shows that maybe our opponents feel like they need to dig up whatever they can to muddy the waters.”
And if the constituents hadn’t already heard the news directly from her, an unauthorised flyer making its way around the electorate may have spilled the beans.
The A5-sized flyer, which includes a screenshot of Wong’s LinkedIn profile and near-decade-old snaps of her on-site, tells readers, “She’s in the pocket of big coal.”
“Holstein Wong has dedicated her career to making coal mines run longer… profiteering from the climate crisis.”
Lambo in candidate’s clothing
This cost-of-living campaign’s man-of-the-people, Nick Buick, rocked up at Clayfield pre-poll in the inner-north Brisbane suburb of Hendra in his yellow Lamborghini, number plate: “Bul Run”.
Buick is Campbell Newman’s man in the LNP-held electorate, chosen partly – if not entirely – to niggle Newman’s former Treasurer Tim Nicholls, who has held the seat fairly comfortably since 2006.
The LNP’s one-term Premier fled the party that elevated him into the top job from outside parliament at the 2012 election, joining the Libertarians, and endorsing real estate businessman Buick on a platform backing a new stadium at Portside.
Loyal readers of Chooks will recall Buick’s Instagram post in a velvet smoking jacket and cigar, wondering what “The Poors” were up to.
Cherished memories
Poor old Marty Hunt has got Chooks worrying about the pro-life LNP’s candidate for Nicklin’s memory.
At a press conference in Nambour on Friday with LNP leader David Crisafulli, the former LNP MP for the Sunshine Coast seat was asked whether Cherish Life was backing his campaign to re-enter the parliament.
Hunt looked confused.
“I don’t have any affiliation with Cherish Life - was it Cherish Life? - whatsoever.”
The pro-life lobby group had described Hunt on his defeat in 2020 as “one of our best pro-life politicians” and Hunt voted against Labor’s legislation decriminalising abortion in 2018.
And he was one of the committee members who questioned Cherish Life’s Teeshan Johnson at a parliamentary hearing into laws, asking whether the laws would create “an expectation on women to choose abortion”.
Spotted #1
LNP MP Christian Rowan was confronted with his voting history at the pre-poll booth in his outer-Brisbane electorate of Moggill on Friday.
He was flanked by two smiling women holding signs (in the LNP’s blue and yellow colour scheme) stating “This LNP member voted to make abortion a crime” with an arrow pointing at the Opposition frontbencher.
Chooks expects LNP MPs (except for Tim Nicholls and Steve Minnikin who exercised their conscience vote to back decriminalisation of abortion in 2018) can expect to be politely ambushed by similar protests around the state.
Spotted #2
Good news for anyone living in the Sunshine Coast seat of Buderim, the LNP’s Bulimba candidate has vowed to always stand up for you (from approximately 100.2km away).
In another proof-reading error of LNP’s copy-and-paste election material, Laura Wong is promising to have the backs of Buderim voters “every step of the way”.
Spotted #3
Retiring LNP Oodgeroo MP Mark Robinson – who joked in his valedictory speech last month that his seven children were “apparently how we get the numbers in the Christian Right” – was spotted in Health Minister Shannon Fentiman’s seat of Waterford this week, handing out how-to-vote cards alongside his protegee, Logan councillor Jacob Heremaia.
Early in the campaign union-funded polling showed Fentiman was facing a serious two-party preferred swing against her, but the (potential) future Labor Opposition leader has ramped up her door-knocking efforts and Heremaia has made a couple of campaign gaffes (including printing that he was running for the neighbouring electorate of Springwood).
Feed the Chooks
Got a tip?
elkss@theaustralian.com.au
lynchl@theaustralian.com.au
mckennam@theaustralian.com.au
More Coverage
Crisafulli: Not a conviction politician on abortion
LNP leader David Crisafulli calls himself a conviction politician. So why can’t he tell Queenslanders what he believes about abortion?
Labor to lose two Brisbane seats to Greens
Queensland Labor is at risk of losing two of its Brisbane seats to the Greens, leaked union-funding polling shows, and while Annastacia Palaszczuk’s TV debut has surprised some, others closer to the former premier say she fancies herself a talk-show host.