Annastacia Palaszczuk pops up on campaign trail, as Labor fears loss
Why is Queensland Labor so nervous about losing the first by-election since Steven Miles became Premier, and guess who has arrived on the campaign trail?
G’day readers and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your exclusive guide to what’s really going on in Queensland politics.
Pala-who?
Annastacia Palaszczuk is back, baby.
After exiting stage left in December in a retirement announcement not quite of her own making (we’re looking at youGary Bullock, John Battams, Kate Jones, Robert Schwarten et al), the erstwhile Queensland Premier has made herself scarce.
There was the trip to Whistler, and a few weeks laid up in a moon boot at the Gold Coast pad of her surgeon partner Reza Adib, after an Achilles-injuring slip.
Palaszczuk has been a notable absence from Labor’s by-election campaigns in her old seat of Inala, and Ipswich West, from where ‘Call Me Sir’ MPJim Madden is attempting to leap back into local government.
But one week out from the March 16 polls, Palaszczuk popped up in Inala on Saturday, alongside Labor candidateMargie Nightingale and her bestie/federal Speaker Milton Dick.
Labor is in no danger of losing Inala – its safest seat on an extremely healthy margin – but over in Ipswich West, where Palaszczuk’s former long-time staffer Wendy Bourne is hoping to hold on for the ALP, things are not quite so comfortable.
In fact, Labor insiders confess they are “very, very nervous” about keeping the electorate.
If Bourne was hoping voters in the Ipswich West by-election had forgotten about her time working for Palaszczuk, the LNP are more than happy to remind them.
LNP HQ is planning a last-minute letterbox blitz ahead of next weekend’s by-election with flyers pointing out Bourne’s work history.
Bourne worked as Palaszczuk’s caucus liaison before the-then premier’s December departure, but her official profile on the ALP website makes no mention of that.
Instead it crows about her community work with local P & Fs and homeless outreach group Rosies and makes vague mention of “20 years of experience in government”.
Palaszczuk’s personal popularity had tanked by the time she called it quits on her political career so it’s no surprise Bourne wants to airbrush her “experience in government”.
On first blush, Ipswich West looks like an easy win for Labor. Madden won the seat in 2020 with a 14.35 per cent margin.
But if Bourne fails to secure more than 50 per cent of the primary vote, it could spell disaster for Labor especially with the Greens not standing a candidate and delivering preferences.
Party strategists are sweating that preference flows from One Nation will push the LNP’s Darren Zanow over the line.
“It’s not looking good,” one ALP insider said.
Though Labor strategists were warning they were feeling “very, very nervous” about the party’s prospects in Ipswich West, an LNP source cautioned it would be tough to win in such a rusted-on Labor seat.
“The Labor vote is very sticky, it’s almost like muscle memory,” the source says.
“The swing in Ipswich West and Inala would be less than a general statewide swing.”
Green sweep
The Greens are looking like they could nudge Labor aside and become the official opposition at city hall next weekend.
Local government elections, as well as two state by-elections – including that of Inala, once held by the missing-in-action campaigner Annastacia Palaszczuk – are being contested across Queensland.
Brisbane’s Liberal National Party mayor Adrian Schrinner looks like he is going to be voted back in, and the Greens are in striking distance of leapfrogging Labor to become the opposition in city hall.
At the moment, the LNP has the mayoralty and 19 wards, with Labor holding five – its lowest level since Tim Quinn was ALP Lord-Mayor in 2004 – and the Greens with one.
The Greens swept Brisbane at the last federal election – picking-off two city-based Liberal-held seats, Brisbane and Ryan, and Kevin Rudd’s one prized seat of Griffith.
Before the federal election, Chooks predicted the three federal seats were in danger on the back of what we were being told on the ground and “polling” the Greens had put together during their mass doorknocking of constituents.
And now they are telling us that the same polling is showing the progressive minor party could win an extra five council wards.
The research – which uses the grassroots doorknocking data collection method pioneered by now-federal Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather – predicts the Greens will hold the Gabba ward, win Paddington and Walter Taylor from the LNP, and are close to taking Coorparoo, Central and Enoggera from the LNP as well.
In Paddington and Walter Taylor, the polling predicts the Greens will secure a primary vote of 43.4 per cent and 41.8 per cent respectively, a swing of five per cent and nearly seven per cent from the result at the last election in 2020.
Labor strategists are hopeful of picking up two extra seats – the LNP-held Calamvale and Northgate – which would stymie the Greens’ chance of stepping into opposition, even if the minor party won five extra wards.
Becoming the council opposition would be a herculean feat, but in 2020, the Greens came second ahead of Labor in four LNP-won wards: Central, Coorparoo, Paddington and Walter Taylor.
If it plays out, that means the Greens will enjoy ratepayer-funded resourcing that will only help them get bigger.
Dutton talks tactics
Federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton dropped into a Brisbane real estate business last month for what was billed as an “evening of exquisite food and wine, French champagne, connection and conversation” in front of Queensland’s “most influential leaders”.
The host was commercial property company TACTIC Spaces and the firm’s managing director Mel Pikos, who apparently quizzed Dutton about his “plans to stimulate the business environment” for his Talking Tactics YouTube channel – an episode that Chooks is devastated to discover has not yet been uploaded (Pikos says it’ll hopefully be out next week).
So did Dutton attend purely for the aforementioned champagne, connection and conversation?
Chooks asked Pikos and LNP state director Ben Riley whether the event was a fundraiser, and heard crickets.
But electoral disclosures show TACTIC is a regular donor to the LNP ($84,400 since June 2022) and the company gave three cash gifts worth $11,000 to the party in February.
TACTIC’s chief growth officer Matt Kratiuk helped organise the event and invite the VIP guests. The former-bikie-done-good (he’s now an ambassador for Vinnies’ CEO Sleepout and a motivational speaker) caught the attention of the LNP’s state deputy Opposition leader Jarrod Bleijie at budget estimates last year, after government agency WorkCover Queensland organised for Kratiuk inspire public servants.
In 2022, Kratiuk pleaded guilty to a one-punch attack, which his lawyer described as out of character.
Outside estimates last year, Bleijie said: “Only amongst the chaos and crisis of the Palaszczuk government would they ever think it was a good idea to hire a convicted criminal and former bikie to motivate staff”.
Waste of time
Steven Miles’ backbench patsy Tom Smith has been appointed to lead the government’s ‘Supermarkets Are A … holes Inquiry’ after failing to secure a deal with crossbencher Robbie Katter.
As Chooks has revealed, the parliamentary inquiry is part of Miles’ re-election strategy and will publicly grill grocery giants over soaring prices in marginal seats along the state’s coast.
Miles was keen to have Katter lead the inquiry for the optics of bipartisanship – but negotiations fell over this week.
Katter told Chooks: “I was offered the chair position but it wasn’t going to be independent and if it is not independent, it is a waste of time”.
“Parliament and the new premier had an opportunity to work together, but they couldn’t let go of partisan politics.
“To his credit, Miles did want to make it work but it didn’t.”
Sounds to Chooks like there was some push back in caucus.
Instead Smith, who won the seat of Bundaberg in 2020 by just nine votes and is a Miles loyalist, has been appointed chair with the casting vote and a $$66,939-a-year pay rise.
Labor MPs Joan Pease and Jess Pugh will get a spot on the select committee while the LNP has put up Tony Perrett, Ann Leahy and Steve Minnikin.
Playing hooky
Retiring LNP pollies Lachlan Millar and Mark Robinson seem to have given up on their day jobs already.
The pair ditched Wednesday’s sitting of parliament to help out the LNP’s Inala by-election candidate Trang Yen on the pre-poll.
An LNP spokesman said Millar and Robinson were paired-out of voting because two Labor MPs were sick this week.
“As such, they were not permitted to be present for any votes in the chamber so they headed out to a community that currently isn’t represented by a member of parliament,” they said.
Still, it’s not a good look to play hooky from your taxpayer-funded job to go out campaigning.
Labor is confident of holding Inala – its safest seat in the state – but is bracing for a swing against it.
Party faithful are crossing their fingers that Annastacia Palaszczuk will be well enough to hit the hustings with candidate Margie Nightingale this weekend.
The former premier has been in a moon boot for weeks after a slip at home last month and has been absent from the campaign to elect her successor.
Women’s Week snub
Labor’s plan to lash the Liberal National Party over its perceived “women's problem” backfired spectacularly this week.
Pious Labor MPs tumbled from their high horses when they forgot to extend an invite to the LNP women to attend the government’s International Women's Day parliamentary shindig on Wednesday night.
Particularly given the theme of women’s week this year was “count her in”.
Chooks hears not one non-government MP was invited to the Department of Premier and Cabinet-organised soiree, but every Labor pollie got an invite and at least five tickets to bestow on constituents of their choice.
“It’s electioneering, it’s just wrong,” one politics-watcher grumbled to Chooks. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The non-invite didn’t stop some members of the crossbench (and a Chook) from popping in, with KAP leader Robbie Katter and One Nation MP Steve Andrew spotted enjoying the festivities.
The display makes Miles’s performance in parliament this week- in which he cynically used Women’s Week to attack the LNP and distract attention from his own admission of misleading the House – even more cynical.
LNP’s Deb Frecklington asked in question time on Thursday: “Why were female LNP MPs not counted in for Queensland’s Women’s Week?”
Steven Miles’ defence? He wasn’t in charge of printing the invitations.
Jones texts Crisafulli
Opposition leader David Crisafulli’s phone pinged with a text message from an unexpected source on Tuesday morning, just before parliamentary Question Time.
Who was the mysterious texter? None other than former Labor minister Kate Jones, under scrutiny for her work as a “specialist consultant” with lobbying firm Akin Agency.
According to Crisafulli’s colleague Fiona Simpson, the LNP’s integrity spokeswoman, Jones was telling Crisafulli she’d just quit Akin – a strategy apparently designed to thwart awkward questions from the LNP to Premier Steven Miles during QT.
“Then she texted the Premier to advise him that she had advised the Leader of the Opposition of this (resignation), the integrity smell over this government did not go away,” Simpson told parliament that afternoon.
Miles had scolded Simpson for asking about Jones in Question Time, saying: “The member, I believe, is aware that Ms Jones has made a statement this morning advising that she has resigned from that position”.
“I would ask that future questions on this topic do not evade the knowledge that the opposition already have.”
Talk about satellite
Speaking of receiving unexpected messages, some shiny taxpayer-funded promotional material made its way into the letterbox of Toowoomba South MP David Janetzki last week.
The brochure spruiks the state government’s five satellite hospitals (which are more like GP clinics than hospitals).
The only problem is the closest satellite hospital is 100km away.
As Janetzki rightly asked parliament this week, why are taxpayers funding government advertising in communities that don’t even offer the services being promoted?
“The avalanche of taxpayer funded government advertising is just beginning – and they don’t care where they put it,” he said.
With a state election in October, Chooks expects to see more advertising material being dropped on the taxpayers’ dime.
Behind the scenes
In this week’s episode of Feeding the Chooks’ video series that goes behind the scenes of Queensland parliament, Police Minister Mark Ryan reveals the secret staircase tucked away in the back of his office. The staircase, which is 150-years-old, runs from his ministerial office on the ground floor up to the back of the Legislative Council chamber. Find out what it was used for.
Spotted #1
The LNP’s candidate for the Labor seat of Cairns, Yolonde Entsch, was spied in Queensland parliament this week, shoulder-to-shoulder with leader David Crisafulli and Bree James, the party’s candidate for the neighbouring far-north Queensland seat of Barron River (also held by the ALP with a margin of less than six per cent).
Both are in the LNP’s list of 14 target seats.
Dedicated readers of Chooks may remember Entsch from The Australian’s reporting last year, when it emerged she received a $213,725 two-year grant from the Morrison government’s Indigenous Language and Arts program to teach pottery in the remote Queensland Aboriginal community of Doomadgee.
Entsch is non-Indigenous, and some Doomadgee residents were peeved the program was not run by locals with cultural knowledge and skills.
When the stories broke in June, Crisafulli was unfussed by the whole thing and gushed Entsch was “a great humanitarian”.
Spotted #2
As mentioned above, Labor is increasingly worried about holding Ipswich West, so much so Premier Steven Miles’s chief of staff Katharine Wright has been out in the electorate on the weekend, doorknocking voters for candidate Wendy Bourne.
Wright’s boots-on-the-ground approach has not gone unnoticed by staffers and true believers, with one impressed observer telling Chooks: “Kat is leading from the front”.
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