‘Ropeable’: Peter Dutton’s team furious Queensland LNP backed Indigenous treaty
G’day readers, and welcome to the latest edition of Feeding the Chooks, your weekly insight into the intrigue of Queensland politics, this week reported by Michael McKenna, Sarah Elks, and Lydia Lynch.
LNP PATH DIVERGES ON TREATY
Peter Dutton’s federal LNP team are furious their state counterparts backed the Palaszczuk government’s Path to Treaty legislation, privately warning the move could cost David Crisafulli the next state election.
The new laws were passed in Cairns last week and will allow the government to negotiate treaty deals with First Nations groups. Most treaty deals will likely include financial settlements worth hundreds of millions of dollars apiece.
But Chooks can reveal the LNP is already admitting it will not “advocate” for compensation.
While Crisafulli and most of his LNP MPs are yet to reveal their position on the Indigenous voice to parliament, the entire LNP opposition supported the passage of treaty legislation.
Speaking on the Bill, Crisafulli said: “It is an opportunity I believe Queensland should embrace wholeheartedly”.
But it seems some state MPs are telling party members and federal colleagues a different story.
As one federal LNP pollie told Chooks: “They are telling members that if they get into government they will repeal it and it won’t go anywhere. It is very misleading. You can’t be deceitful like that.”
Another federal LNP source said grassroots party members were so mad, they were threatening not to hand out how-to-vote cards for the state LNP MPs at the next election. Others have already quit the party.
“They won’t get to government at this rate, this could literally cost them the election,” one said.
Another one of the federal LNP pollies Chooks spoke to said senior party figures were “f..king ropeable”.
“I don’t know how you can claim to have no position on the voice, as Crisafulli has, but then have a position on treaty,” they said.
Another federal MP said they doubted any of Queensland state MPs “actually believe in it” and the decision to support Labor’s treaty bill “would have been a strategic call made by the state leadership team”.
So what does Crisafulli say? First, his office assured Chooks that the treaty legislation would not be rolled back if the LNP wins the next state election. Secondly they don’t want financial settlements to be paid as part of the deals and reckon a treaty is about “telling the truth about improving living conditions and holding the government to account”.
“This is the reason the LNP will not advocate for compensation. Instead we will concentrate on money and KPIs to deliver housing, water, sewerage, jobs, and home ownership in Indigenous communities. KPIs through which ministers will be held accountable.”
Expect the issue to blow-up at state convention in July with a number of motions of condemnation already being drafted.
D’ATH: A FRIEND OF STAR
Dumped health minister Yvette D’Ath has been given oversight of the clean-up of the Brisbane and Gold Coast casinos and its operators Star Entertainment, which hosted and covered the costs of a personal political fundraiser for her 2017 re-election.
Star was issued with a $100 million fine last December and given a warning by outgoing AG Shannon Fentiman – given a hospital pass this week to take on the ailing health ministry – that it had 12 months to get its house in order or face having its licence suspended.
It followed a damning inquiry report into Star’s Queensland operations that found it allowed money laundering to flourish with a “one-eyed focus on profit”.
Over the years, The Australian has explored and exposed the close ties between Star and senior members of the Palaszczuk Government, as well as Labor.
And just days after Star CEO Robbie Cooke told a breakfast function that the company has ended up “friendless” – after two inquiries revealed a litany of bad behaviour at its casinos in Queensland and NSW – D’Ath gets back as Attorney-General in the Sunshine State.
As AG, D’Ath is the gaming regulator and who can forget, certainly not Chooks, that she had a really cozy relationship with Star while she was in the AG job previously.
In 2019, The Australian revealed that Star hosted a $125-a-head fundraiser for Ms D’Ath in a private dining room at the Treasury Hotel in Brisbane’s CBD in the lead-up to the 2017 state election, with food and alcohol also paid for by the listed gaming company.
At the time, Star was lobbying the Palaszczuk government not to proceed with plans to allow a rival second casino on the Gold Coast (it succeeded) and had submitted its $2bn masterplan for its existing operations in the tourism city to Ms D’Ath, which she later approved.
In 2019, D’Ath went against her department’s recommendation to remove the limit on gaming tables in every casino like she did for Star at its Queens Wharf operations, which will open next year.
Questions have been put to the government about D’Ath’s responsibilities over Star.
SARRA SHIFTED
As part of the reshuffle, Premier Palaszczuk has also made the shock decision to shift director-general Chris Sarra from the Department of Seniors, Disability Services and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships to the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries.
Sarra was hand-picked by then-DATSIP Minister Jackie Trad as her DG back in 2018, and at the time was lauded by the government as the first Aboriginal principal of Cherbourg State School, a noted reformer of First Nations education policy, and the founder of the Stronger Smarter Institute.
He was instrumental, along with Trad, in kickstarting the Path to Treaty process. And now, just as the Treaty legislation passes and the real work begins, he gets taken out of the action and demoted. Curious to say the least.
Sarra is being replaced by Clare O’Connor, who moves across from the Department of Communities, Housing and Digital Economy with Leeanne Enoch.
O’Connor was DATSIP DG in the early days of the Palaszczuk government from 2015.
Other DG changes include Mark Cridland (moving from Resources to the new stand-alone Department of Housing), Bob Gee who returns to his role as head of the Youth Justice Department (from a stint in Agriculture), and Warwick Agnew (who will replace Cridland in resources).
A new face in the DG ranks may soon become a household name. Jasmina Joldic has been appointed as acting director-general for the Department of Justice and Attorney-General, serving shuffled minister Yvette D’Ath.
Former senior health bureaucrat Joldic, who describes herself on LinkedIn as a “thought leader”, was appointed to run government oversight of the construction of the controversial Wellcamp quarantine facility, outside Toowoomba.
State Auditor-General Brendan Worrall is due to release a probe shortly into the cost of Wellcamp, which cost taxpayers $500,000 a day on average.
Joldic, formerly executive director in the Queensland Health director-general’s office, made headlines during the pandemic when it was revealed she had requested an $8000 renovation to her Queensland government office despite a Covid-induced pause on works.
She argued that the room was apparently so noisy officials could not think while working on the pandemic response.
CUMMING OR GOING?
Labor councillor Peter Cumming has been spared from having to give his third farewell speech at Brisbane’s City Hall.
The former Labor leader this month had to return to the chamber, and give a second farewell, after the ALP had failed to find a willing replacement to serve out the remainder of Cumming’s term ahead of the local government elections in March, next year.
(Under BCC rules, if a councillor retires within a year of the next election, their party gets to nominate their replacement, avoiding a by-election.)
Cumming’s 29-year political career crashed when he was charged with drink driving after a Christmas party last year and was found by police asleep at the wheel of his car, with the engine running, just 200m from his home.
“I’d like to give my second final speech and I can’t rule out I won’t be back here the next couple of weeks,” he told the chamber on May 2.
Your august column has documented Labor’s struggles to find candidates for City Hall, with the LNP dominating and the Greens on the rise.
But Chooks has now been told that Labor has finally preselected United Workers Union official and former real estate agent Sara Whitmee for the $160,000-plus-a-year job as the councillor for the safe Labor ward of Wynnum Manly.
Now to find someone who will run for Mayor!
TAKING THE COAL OUT OF COALDRAKE
Climate activist Lee Coaldrake, whose husband Peter Coaldrake-led Queensland’s landmark integrity review, has backed the state Greens’ private members bill to ban new coal oil and gas projects.
Coaldrake, who is facing criminal charges over a climate protest at Queensland parliament last year, says governments seem “incapable of understanding their responsibilities to future generations”.
“Their inaction is inexcusable, and indeed they will be held to account by future generations whose lives they have willingly sold for a few more measly dollars, or a few cosy post political jobs,” she wrote in a public submission to the parliamentary committee investigating the Greens’ legislation.
Coaldrake is banned from Queensland Parliament after she and about a dozen other Extinction Rebellion protesters disrupted Question Time last year.
Speaker Curtis Pitt was particularly annoyed that the group allegedly used a wheelchair to smuggle in cameras to livestream the protest.
Coaldrake’s matter is due before court again on May 31.
PITT STOP
Speaking of Speaker Curtis Pitt, as Chooks flagged last week, the Labor MP for Mulgrave has decided to take some time off, after missing most of the regional parliament sitting in his home town of Cairns.
Pitt issued a statement on Saturday confirming he would take “a period of time off for my mental health to get well, and to do my job to the best of my abilities”.
“A number of issues have converged at this point in my life. I’m not doing as well emotionally as I’ve made out to anyone,” Pitt said.
“A lengthy divorce after more than two decades of marriage, an underlying medical condition in ulcerative colitis, suffering from depression, and requiring ongoing medication for my back – for which I am scheduled to have surgery soon.”
“My elderly parents both have serious health issues and my work over five terms as an MP, a regional minister, and as Speaker have taken a toll.”
Pitt insisted to Chooks last week that he had arrived late to parliament, and appeared to be slurring his words, due to the flu, and not late-night drinks the previous evening.
The Speaker had to be woken by police on the Tuesday morning, after he did not turn up for the opening of parliament and frantic parliamentary staff could not wake him. As Chooks reported on Friday, there was growing internal pressure on Pitt to take an extended period of time off.
He then confirmed on Saturday that he would go on leave.
ROBERT REPLACEMENT
Nominations close Friday to replace federal LNP MP Stuart Robert as the party’s candidate for Fadden, on the Gold Coast, in an upcoming by-election.
Chooks hears the likely nominees are businesswoman and branch chair Fran Ward, doctor Dinesh Palipana, and local councillor Cameron Caldwell.
Robert officially resigned on Thursday, delivering his resignation letter to Speaker Milton Dick.
A date for the by-election is yet to be set.
MP HAS THE WRITE STUFF
Graham Perrett has swapped semi-saucy fiction for serious nonfiction with the publication of his latest book.
The federal Labor MP has represented the ALP in the super-marginal electorate of Moreton, in Brisbane’s south, since 2007, and in that time has published four books, including a trilogy of novels.
His latest tome is The Long Story: A personal journey through interracial relations in Australia, written with his childhood mate Wayne Long. The pair grew up in St George together, playing footy, and Perrett has crafted the book around Long’s Aboriginal and Chinese heritage.
It also, ambitiously, weaves Long’s personal story into an examination of race relations in Australia since colonisation.
“He lived it, he spoke it, and I wrote it,” Perrett tells Chooks.
So when does Perrett, a former high school teacher, solicitor, union organiser and Beattie government policy adviser, find time to write?
“I go for a walk every morning, listening to music, and then I write,” Perrett says.
“The walking and music, you swirl (the ideas) around when you’re walking, and it’s ready to be distilled when it comes to sitting in front of the computer.”
“(I don’t write) in Canberra, it’s the only place where I don’t write. It’s just too full on. But I do pick up ideas from MPs, senators, journalists and the public.”
And Perrett has a scoop for dedicated readers of Chooks. The MP’s just finished the manuscript for his next book, a return to fiction.
SPOTTED ON THE MINE SITE
Trigger warning to Chooks’ environmentalist readers, or really anyone who has a memory of the bruising political debate over Adani’s central Queensland coal mine.
Look what was spotted on the site of the Adani – now Bravus Mining & Resources – Galilee Basin coal mine this week: an endangered black-throated finch.
The little bird almost stopped the Indian conglomerate’s coal project in its tracks, and caused political ructions in Queensland and further afield for years.
SPOTTED IN FNQ
Queensland LNP senator Gerard Rennick – who relentlessly campaigned against his own government’s COVID vaccine mandates – hosted an interesting panel discussion at the party’s Cairns Latitudes North conference last weekend.
According to the Latitudes North agenda, for one hour and 15 scintillating minutes from 9am on Saturday morning, Rennick facilitated the “Healthier North Queensland” panel.
The panellists were Georgia Twomey (Alive Pharmacy Group managing director), Professor Trent Twomey (national president of the Pharmacy Guild) and the LNP’s state candidate for Cairns, Yolonde Entsch.
After a spot of morning tea, it was time for a session called “Winning North Queensland’’, facilitated by LNP state director Ben Riley. The first listed panellist?
Bryson Head, the new LNP MP for the seat of Callide, whose electorate office is in Biloela, southwest of Gladstone, and about 600km south of the (disputed) start of north Queensland, Proserpine.
The other panellists had stronger northern credentials: Senator Susan McDonald, who is based in Townsville, and federal MP Andrew Willcox, whose electorate of Dawson takes in the coastal stretch between Mackay and Townsville.
Head’s conference biography does point out that, as the founding member of the Green Shirts movement, he worked alongside the LNP in Townsville in the 2019 federal election.
GO ON, FEED THE CHOOKS
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