Former federal MP Terri Butler in line for $378k Queensland job
G’day readers. Here’s this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your must-read peek behind the scenes of Queensland politics.
PLUM JOB FOR MATES
Is Labor’s fallen federal star Terri Butler about to be appointed by her Queensland government comrades to a lucrative job with the Queensland industrial umpire?
Butler was in line for a senior role in Anthony Albanese’s ministry before she was ousted from her Brisbane seat of Griffith by Greens upstart Max Chandler-Mather at the May 2022 election.
Chooks can reveal Butler is now a frontrunner to be appointed to the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission by Labor IR minister Grace Grace.
Butler submitted an “expression of interest” for a $378,000-a-year industrial commissioner gig a couple of months ago and Chooks’ well-placed spies say probity checks have begun.
The process, which includes a police background check, is also said to be underway for the Queensland head of the shoppies’ union, Chris Gazenbeek.
If appointed, Butler and Gazenbeek, would join former Queensland Council of Unions general secretary Ros McLennan and ex-Australian Workers’ Union legal adviser Jacki Power (wife of Logan MP Linus Power) on the commission.
Before her federal parliamentary career, Butler was a partner at Labor-friendly law firm Hall Payne, specialising in employment and industrial relations and providing advice to unions, and set up Maurice Blackburn’s industrial and employment law practice in Queensland.
Liberal and Labor governments both try to stack commission appointments. The Libs want people with employer backgrounds and Labor pushes for union backgrounds.
Albanese appointed five people with union backgrounds to the Fair Work Commission in March, (including Grace’s former chief of staff Sharon Durham)declaring Labor wanted to fix the Coalition’s “shameless stack” of the tribunal.
Labor minister Murray Watt told senate estimates this year that 25 of 27 appointments made to the federal commission by the former coalition government had an employer background.
CYCLONE RENNICK
Is this the quiet before the storm?
It’s now been a few months since Queensland Liberal senator Gerard Rennick got ousted in a preselection by LNP party treasurer Stuart Fraser.
If you recall, state council delivered challenger and party treasurer Fraser 131 votes to Rennick’s 128 in the run-off round between the two for the third spot on the LNP ticket at the next federal election.
Rennick later appealed the result, alleging he and his team saw at least a handful of ineligible voters filling in secret ballots at the closed-door meeting.
An internal probe ruled there was no need for a re-run of the preselection even after finding there were at least two people who cast votes (one to each side) without any right to do so (Rennick argues there were more).
Then, of course, there was the issue of Liberal leader Peter Dutton (a Rennick supporter) being told by HQ he couldn’t have a proxy vote cast on his behalf (he couldn’t make the council meeting) while Nationals leader David Littleproud and Brisbane mayor Adrian Schrinner (Fraser backers) were allowed proxies.
Cue spooky music; conspiracy or cock-up? It’s the LNP, so more than likely a cock-up.
Either way, Rennick was considering a legal appeal and engaged a silk.
The normally outspoken senator isn’t saying anything at the moment, keeping his close mates in the dark and not returning calls from Chooks.
But one fellow parliamentarian, who doesn’t want to be named, reckons Rennick should file saying “it’s an open and shut case”.
“And it’s in the party and members’ interest that the matter be dealt with,’’ the federal pollie says.
“The membership is cranky and can’t believe this has been allowed to happen.”
Watch this space.
STAFFORD STOUSH
Jimmy Sullivan, the first-term ALP MP who holds the relatively safe Brisbane seat of Stafford, is copping it from both sides.
Among the dynastic MPs (Annastacia Palaszczuk, Curtis Pitt) in state Labor; his dad Terry held the seat between 2001 to 2006 (and the electorates of Nundah and Chermside before that).
Sullivan is facing a challenge from popular local LNP councillor Fiona Hammond, who gave up the relative safety of her ward for a crazy-brave run at Sullivan, who holds his seat with a double digit margin.
What is driving this confidence we wonder?
Chooks now understands that Sullivan is facing a preselection challenge from Susan Lynch, a one-time staffer of former Stafford incumbent Anthony Lynham, who has lodged an expression of interest with ALP HQ to contest the inner-north electorate.
Sullivan is the only sitting Labor MP being challenged.
In central Queensland, the party has been forced to reopen nominations for the ultra-safe seat of Rockhampton, after sitting member Barry O’Rourke pulled a swifty, and didn’t let on publicly that he was retiring until after the expressions of interest for candidates closed.
Coincidentally, his close factional ally and former campaign staffer Craig Marshall managed to get the inside-running, putting up his hand before the deadline.
In Ipswich West, where Call Me Sir MPJim Madden is retiring, the factional battle to find his successor continues, with both the Right’s Wendy Bourne and the Left’sNeisha Traill formally putting up their hands for the electorate.
Labor has now asked for nominations for non-held QLD seats and have told members it considers 13 winnable: Burleigh, Chatsworth, Clayfield, Coomera, Currumbin, Everton, Glass House, Mermaid Beach, Moggill, Ninderry, Oodgeroo, Theodore and Whitsunday.
And even though all other Labor MPs have made the draw, there’s still serious speculation that some sitting politicians will quit before they jump out of the gate.
Whispers persist that Racing and Education Minister Grace Grace could be a late scratching, along with Resources Minister Scott Stewart and Mackay MP Julieanne Gilbert.
All three have insisted to Chooks they intend to run again.
SALTY OVER DESAL
Deputy Premier Steven Miles swooped in and did his factional fangirl Ali King a solid this week.
King, who worked as a policy advisor for Miles before she was elected, has been the target of growing LNP attacks over a proposed desalination plant.
Both Miles and King left the leafy foothills of Mount Coot-Tha a few years ago, when the Greens invasion took hold, heading to the deep north to contest easier seats.
Unfortunately for King’s re-election prospects in her Bribie Island-based seat of Pumicestone, the government is snooping around her backyard to whack in the new desal plant.
Chooks revealed last month that cabinet had approved plans to build a new plant north of Brisbane to boost the region’s drinking supply amid rapid population growth and forecast shortages.
The plant needs to be near the coast – for obvious reasons – and is set be built near Caboolture or the southern part of the Sunshine Coast. Desperate to regain Pumicestone, the LNP has been out letterbox dropping and whipping Bribie Island residents into a frenzy over Water Minister Glenn Butcher refusal to rule out Bribie Island as potential site.
So while Butcher was away on sick leave this week, Miles stepped in to protect his former staffer from backlash.
“Today I can advise the House categorically that the Palaszczuk government will not build a desalination plant on Bribie Island,” he told state parliament.
As Chooks reported earlier this year, King has been digging deep into her own pocket ahead of next year’s election. Her sausage sizzles must be coming up a bit short because she has funnelled $20,000 into her own campaign.
BIG AUSTRALIAN FOR PRESIDENT
What a difference a truckload of money makes to the once-skittish BHP over political activism in Queensland.
A few years back the “Big Australian” suspended its membership of the Queensland Resources Council after the rep body issued statements ahead of the last state election urging voters to put the Greens last on ballot papers.
Apparently London shareholders were worried about the look of taking on the greenies’ community.
But after Cameron Dick overturned his 2020 pledge of no new or higher taxes under a re-elected government and introduced a suite of hiked coal royalty tiers – yes Treasurer, that’s a broken promise no matter how many times you say it isn’t – BHP is all-in on campaigning against Labor.
Dick upped the ante in August, threatening to strip BHP’s mining leases if the company failed to keep investing in the state.
This week, the QRC announced that BHP Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) Asset President Adam Lancey has been appointed as its new president of the board.
QRC has already spent a tonne of dosh on attacking the government over the coal royalties – the highest in the world – and are only going to ramp-up its campaign ahead of the October 26 election.
Chooks has been told the change of president and looming exit of former Howard Government minister Ian Macfarlane as CEO won’t slow QRC’s efforts to rally voters, particularly in the regions, over the royalties it says is stifling mining investment.
“It is only to get more intense, it’s not going away, this is a major issue in a resource state,’’ a source said.
Macfarlane’s replacement is likely to be announced next week after a candidate was approved by the board on Thursday.
POLL-ITICAL RESEARCH
The Liberal National Party is weaponising the secret research conducted by Annastacia Palaszczuk to squeeze more money out of its own donors.
Chooks on Tuesday revealed that Palaszczuk’s department had ordered $393,000 worth of taxpayer funded opinion polling to help the third-term premier shape election policy and pitch to voters.
Of course, one of the spoils of incumbency is the ability to raid the public purse to fund secret political research to test drive policy and messaging.
Opposition parties do not have that luxury and have to drum up political donations to pay for their opinion polling.
In an email to party members this week trying to solicit some cash, LNP state director Ben Riley said “all the other political parties” were at risk of being “blown out of the water” by the government, given its new campaign spending caps.
If Labor uses public money to fund research, it will have more party reserves to spend on advertising, consultants, and other campaign costs.
“Under Labor’s financial gerrymander the LNP would require donations from at least 99 supporters to fund similar polling,” Riley wrote, in the missive obtained by Chooks.
“With less than 12 months to go, we must build up our war chest now to ensure we have the funds needed to show Labor the door in 2024.”
SUN IS SHINING ON JONNO
The Australian Greens have dug deep into the federal party’s coffers and shifted a cool $100,000 to their state branch to supercharge Jonathan Sriranganathan’s campaign for Lord Mayor of Brisbane at next March’s council elections.
Sriranganathan, the pioneering former Greens councillor for the Gabba ward, and a tribe of candidates from the progressive minor party are taking on Lord-Mayor Adrian Schrinner’s LNP in the nation’s largest local government.
Schrinner has the mayoralty and 20 of 26 wards, Labor’s fortunes have dwindled to just five, and the Greens have one, Trina Massey in the Sriranganathan’s old Gabba ward.
The house-boat-dwelling muso and poet reckons the Greens can win an extra six or seven wards, and political sources say he had previously been grumbling about the lack of support he’s been given by the party.
Sriranganathan has a busy weekend ahead, hosting four events in the “radical futures lounge” at the Meanjin Reggae Festival in South Brisbane on Saturday, starting with a session called “Genocide in Palestine: What’s going on and what can we do about it?” before seguing into “Legalise It: Community discussion about legalising cannabis possession and cultivation”.
The Australian Greens also financially propped up the state party to contest the federal election in May last year, at which three new Brisbane-based Greens federal MPs were elected, sending $318,440 north in 2022.
LNP CASH COW
Chooks couldn’t help but wonder this week whether the LNP has a party cow grazing somewhere at its Albion headquarters.
Deputy state director Michael Negerevich declared to the Electoral Commission of Queensland that the party had received $1492.60 worth of cattle feed from livestock nutrition specialists Olsson Industries Pty Ltd on November 4.
So is the LNP fattening a cow for market, or planning an extra-special steak dinner?
Chooks was disappointed to confirm that the cattle feed was a raffle prize donated to a fundraiser in LNP MP Ann Leahy’s Warrego electorate in western Queensland.
But Chooks was delighted to discover that the Queensland Young Nats were, in fact, the proud owners of a herd of cattle before party merger back in 2008.
“I remember when we did the merger of the finances we acquired a small herd of cattle,” one Chooks spy reminisced.
“For the inner-city Lib spiv I was at the time, I was quite surprised.”
There’s conjecture about what happened to the party herd. Were they stolen by cattle rustlers, as party lore suggests? Or did they end up in a burger somewhere?
SPOTTED #1
Greg Combet was spotted on his way up to Deputy Premier Steven Miles’ parliamentary office on Thursday afternoon.
The former climate change minister in the Gillard and Rudd governments – now chair of Anthony Albanese’s Net Zero Economy Agency – was being escorted by Miles’ department head Mike Kaiser.
SPOTTED #2
If politics doesn’t work out for the LNP MP for the Gold Coast seat of Bonney, Sam O’Connor could always try his luck on the catwalk.
O’Connor joined the coast’s Indian community for a fashion parade to celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.
Perhaps he should leave the dancing to the professionals though.
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