Holidaying Queensland Premier left friendless by labour movement
G’day readers, and welcome to Feeding the Chooks, your insight into the behind-the-scenes drama of Queensland politics. What a week it’s been.
UNION OMERTA
If there was any doubt remaining about Annastacia Palaszczuk’s future it has disappeared as quickly as a gelato on a hot Italian afternoon.
The deafening silence from the trade union movement speaks volumes about the momentum building behind an imminent Labor leadership change.
Palaszczuk would not have been living La Dolce Vita on the Amalfi Coast after reading the latest dispatch from home.
The only union boss willing to come out publicly and support her in Friday’s The Australian was Stacey Schinnerl, who as AWU head is factionally-obliged to back the premier to the end.
Chooks was told by Labor don Gary Bullock’s office that the United Workers Union boss was “not answering questions on that,”
when asked if he still supported Palaszczuk as leader and whether she remained the best person to lead Labor to the October 2024 election.
A gaggle of other unions were asked the same questions but could not, or would not, declare support for the holidaying premier.
With Palaszczuk on the other side of the world and Acting Premier Steven Miles on the other side of the country, it was up to Shannon Fentiman to fill the void of silence.
“I talk to a number of union officials, businesses and families, we all do as we go about our job as ministers in the government,” said the health minister on Friday morning, as speculation swirls she’s one of Palaszczuk’s most likely successors.
“I am absolutely confident that the premier has all of our support.”
Maybe Fentiman is just looking on the bright side, or perhaps she’s worried about waking up with a horse head in her bed.
When Palaszczuk returns, will she be ready to go to the mattresses?
PHOENIX RISES
While Annastacia Palaszczuk is facing her political demise, Jackie Trad is rising from the ashes.
Palaszczuk and Trad, the once dynamo team who led Labor’s triumphant comeback from 7 seats to 44 at the 2015 election, have had their fair share of troubles in the past few years.
But after a three-year break from the spotlight, the former deputy premier is dipping her toes back into the political waters.
After appearing at a an ALP conference fringe event in August, the former deputy premier posted a selfie withone-time cabinet colleague Leeanne Enoch at Queensland’s Yes campaign launch earlier this week.
Trad – who championed the state’s Treaty laws through the party room before her political exit – has been a longtime supporter of an Indigenous voice to parliament.
And while she might have been out of the game for a while, after losing her South Brisbane seat to the Greens at the 2020 election, but Trad still has plenty of friends in high places.
In a now-deleted comment on Trad’s photo, Left faction powerbrokerand federal MP Julian Hill wrote: “ Yes to indigenous recognition and Yes to Jackie Trad.”
A senior state government source told Chooks earlier this year that Trad was coming back and she was going to the senate.
But others close to Trad say there is “zero chance” she would make a return to politics.
Left faction senator Nita Green is expected to run again at the next federal election, and traditionally the second spot on the ticket would be reserved for the Right.
But some in the Left say it’s about time the all-powerful faction asserts its dominance and flexes its numbers to take the No. 2, opening the door for Trad’s return.
CRISAFULLI BOLTS TO RIGHT ON CLIMATE CHANGE
As Annastacia Palaszczuk’s leadership flounders, LNP leader David Crisafulli will increasingly be scrutinised for what he actually believes, beyond his attacks on the government.
Take climate change, for instance. Does Crisafulli reckon it’s real?
The Opposition leader joined Andrew Bolt on Sky News on Thursday night, and Chooks was bemused to watch as Crisafulli – the son of north Queensland canegrowers – dodged questions about his views on human-induced climate change and whether it “really is an existential threat”.
Bolt: “A lot of people who have come from farming backgrounds, like with global warming, they see the seasons come, they see the seasons go, they’ve paid attention to rainfall. You tend to get more people sceptical about the global warming scare in the countryside, because they’re more in touch with nature, than you do in the concrete cities. Where are you on global warming?”
“What do you think about how much influence man’s really had on the climate, and whether it really is an existential threat?”
Crisafulli: “Well Andrew, I’ve lived it, and I’ve seen my dad who I would rate as a genuine conservationist, I’ve seen the way that he farms. You don’t get better conservationists and better environmentalists than farmers.”
“Now you speaks about energy, I think energy has got to be a few things: it’s got to be affordable, it’s got to be reliable and it’s got to be sustainable.”
The LNP leader then segued into a longwinded answer about the government’s mismanagement of state-owned power stations, deftly avoiding the opportunity to declare he believed in the well-established science of climate change, and the need to do something about it, before Bolt pulled him up.
“David, you’re just so cut out now for the role (of Premier), I’ve noticed how you very neatly sidestepped the thing about global warming, and went straight to the power issue, which is a real issue. If you do that much, you’ll do enough.”
CASHED UP LNP
Chooks was astonished to discover the Liberal National Party has shifted $9.8m in cash from the coffers at headquarters to high-end money managers LGT Crestone Wealth Management Limited since January.
The money shuffle occurred in several instalments – ranging between $300,000 and $2.75m – in the first six months of this year, and has been described in the party’s official returns to the Electoral Commission of Queensland as a “cash investment”.
LGT Crestone boasts that it provides “private wealth services to high net worth and ultra high net worth families, family offices and for purpose organisations, focused on long term results to last generations”.
So what’s going on?
According to Ben Riley, the LNP’s state director, the move is prudent financial management of the party’s election war-chest.
“The LNP is doing all we can to put ourselves in the best position possible to earn the trust of Queenslanders and managing money well is key to that,” Riley told Chooks.
PITT-STOP OVER
Speaker Curtis Pitt is back to work on Friday after a tumultuous few months.
The veteran MP has been on leave after slurring his way through Question Time in May, and again in June.
He blamed back pain medication and a “bad flu” for the strange behaviour. He underwent surgery last month and will take back the Speaker’s chair from Joe Kelly when parliament resumes on September 12.
It will be a good timing for Pitt’s return with all eyes on Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who is due back from her Italian holiday the day before.
TOUR DE CHAMBER
A visit to Queensland parliament might be free, but a flock of Sunshine Coast business owners have been convinced to stump up $95 for an “intimate tour” of the People’s House with deputy LNP leader Jarrod Bleijie.
The group will be bussed to parliament from Bleijie’s Kawana electorate and served canapes and drinks on arrival.
“(They) will then get an intimate tour of parliament and get to visit Chamber where Jarrod Bleijie may raise something in the house!” the advertisement reads.
None of the cash raised will go to the LNP, the Opposition insists, telling Chooks the parliamentary jaunt is an event in aid of the local chamber of commerce.
PAYDAY
Train-building cost blowouts are not the only overrun for which Queensland taxpayers are footing the bill.
Wages for political staff who work for Annastacia Palaszczuk and her ministers have ballooned by more than $7m in two years.
Taxpayer-funded salaries and superannuation have climbed from $29.24m in 2020-21 to $36.36m in 2022-23.
So what’s the cause of engorged pay packets?
Political staffers have been given a payrise (the Premier’s office won’t say how much) and some extra “governance” staff have been employed to oversee integrity recommendations from Professor Peter Coaldrake.
SPOTTED
Liberal National Party MP for Surfers Paradise, John-Paul Langbroek, took to Instagram to tease his shadow cabinet colleague Sam O’Connor this week.
O’Connor, also Gold Coast-based, is on a research tour of the Channel Country in far western Queensland, and is apparently becoming well-acquainted with winged locals.
On spying O’Connor in his fly-repelling headwear, Langbroek (still comfortably ensconced in southeast Queensland) sniped on social media: “The one where the Shadow Minister for the Environment can’t handle the Environment”.
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