Labor unrest over Annastacia Palaszczuk‘s treaty retreat with LNP
Annastacia Palaszczuk blindsided her own ministers and MPs when she retreated on government treaties with Indigenous groups.
G’day readers and welcome the latest edition of Feeding the Chooks, The Australian’s weekly peek behind-the-scenes of the murky and marvellous world of politics in Queensland.
BLINDSIDED
Annastacia Palaszczuk’s retreat from her own government’s policy to pursue treaties with First Nations groups has shocked her Cabinet ministers and MPs, and already prompted a clarification/walk-back by her heir apparent Shannon Fentiman.
Chooks understands her colleagues - including Treaty Minister Leeanne Enoch - were blindsided by Palaszczuk’s insistence that treaties could only go ahead with bipartisan support, which Liberal National Party David Crisafulli publicly withdrew on Wednesday night.
Transport Minister Mark Bailey had already gone on radio blasting Crisafulli, describing his decision “one of the most pathetic things I’ve seen in terms of displaying real leadership or lack of, that I can recall”.
“The treaty process will continue and if he doesn’t agree to it, well, he’s just another leader with no courage and I think people can see that when it comes to principles, he’s willing to sell them out,” Bailey told ABC Radio Brisbane.
Labor backbencher Jonty Bush chipped in on Facebook about Crisafulli: “To walk away from a commitment already made, with work underway, is cowardice”.
Young LNP development officer Ryan McDonald chirped back at Bush, “This post did not age well … someone from your caucus liaison team will be in touch eventually”.
Bush retorted: “They have. We remain committed to treaty”.
Chooks understands Enoch - Queensland’s first Indigenous Cabinet minister - had already prepared a statement criticising Crisafulli for his backflip, which had to be quickly torn up once Palaszczuk moved to abandon her own commitment to enable treaty deals and reparations with more than 100 Indigenous groups.
Palaszczuk said she doubted there would be reparations, would only commit to truth-telling, and said the treaty process “would need bipartisan support”.
It was a direct contradiction of her Cabinet minister Craig Crawford, who in May shepherded the Treaty legislation through parliament and said at the time, the deals would likely mirror New Zealand, where reparations of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars were awarded to individual groups.
Her comments distressed some of her colleagues - at least one was left in tears - and forced an emergency caucus phone meeting on Thursday afternoon in a bid to calm the MPs.
While it appears to have ensured no-one has broken ranks, Chooks has been told there is widespread unrest.
Fentiman was left to mop up Palaszczuk’s clumsy comments on Friday, insisting the Labor government was still committed to treaties, which “should” have bipartisan support rather than requiring it, as the Premier said.
“Our government is committed to the path to treaty and that hasn’t changed. We took that to the election and we had landmark legislation pass the parliament with bipartisan support,” Fentiman said.
“What has changed is that David Crisafulli has really told Queenslanders he would do and say anything to get elected.”
There is a big difference between hoping the LNP agrees with you and requiring their backing.
LNP’S TREATY RETREAT-Y
Late on Wednesday evening, David Crisafulli killed the LNP’s backing for Labor’s Treaty laws, telling members he would “not pursue” a Path to Treaty if he won next October’s election.
It was a decision many in his party had been agitating for since May, when the LNP shocked its rank and file by voting en masse for the legislation.
And it came just days before Crisafulli was expected to face the heat again from members, emboldened by Queenslander’s rejection of the voice referendum, at the LNP’s state council meeting, at the Eatons Hill Hotel in federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s Brisbane electorate of Dickson, at the weekend.
One LNP MP says if Crisafulli did not act, there would have been a blow-up in the closed session on Saturday afternoon.
“If he didn’t move there would have been blood on the floor of state council at the weekend; it’s the right decision,” the MP tells Chooks.
At the LNP state conference in Brisbane in July, Nationals leader David Littleproud exposed the split in the party over Treaty.
“I find no circumstances that I can see our party room even accepting a treaty. We don‘t believe a treaty is necessary,” Littleproud said in his speech to party members.
And a heads up for Chooks readers, read Jamie Walker’s revealing interview with Crisafulli in The Weekend Australian on Saturday.
I’LL BE DAMMED
With the LNP’s Treaty policy off the agenda at the weekend’s state council meeting, whatever will the rank and file talk about?
Chooks has obtained the list of open session resolutions, and there are some doozies, including one from the Glass House state electorate council (SEC), which wants the next Dutton/Crisafulli federal and state governments to “research the potential of Coastal reservoirs (dams in or near the sea) to contribute to water security”. The Inala SEC is perturbed about “Electro-Magnetic Pulse Protection” and wants a Dutton government to prepare “a risk and readiness assessment against malicious or accidental EMP at both national level (eg atmospheric nuclear) or the micro level (small portable devices)”.
The LNP Women’s committee is calling for an urgent review of the “current treatment of paediatric gender dysphoria” and a suspension of “all puberty blockers, hormone treatment and surgical intervention” for children under 18 until the review is finished.
One LNP MP pointedly noted that unlike policy resolutions debated at state Labor conferences, the members’ votes are not binding on the LNP’s parliamentary wing.
PIKE SPIKED
Henry Pike, the LNP politician for the Brisbane bayside electorate of Bowman, became the first federal MP to be kicked out of parliament during an adjournment debate in 20 years.
He loudly objected to Greens MP for Griffith, Max Chandler-Mather, who accused the Israeli government and military of preparing for a “full-blown genocide” of Palestinians in Gaza.
“We must push for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, illegal settlements, and blockade of Gaza,” Chandler-Mather said in parliament, and quoted David Cameron describing Gaza as an “giant open prison”.
Speaker Milton Dick kicked Pike out, under the 94a rule of the House of Representatives standing orders, and instructed Chandler-Mather to continue.
SPOTTED
Chooks spotted Australia’s richest person - mining magnate Gina Rinehart - leaving the No campaign event on Saturday night at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Brisbane’s CBD at about 11pm AEST.
Media were barred from the gathering and were instead corralled in the lobby and a media room, where Warren Mundine and Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price appeared for press conferences and (frequently fiery) live television crosses.
Rinehart was at the party, but did Mrs R (as the billionaire’s staff affectionately refer to her) sling some of her considerable wealth to bolster the No campaign?
According to a Hancock Prospecting spokesman, no. He tells Chooks neither Rinehart nor any of her companies made any donations to either side of the referendum debate.
“She’s been a friend of Jacinta since long before Jacinta went into parliament; there’s a long friendship there so she was catching up with her friend,” Rinehart’s spokesman says of her appearance at the party.
TRY TIME
The last time Chooks reported on federal Labor backbencher Graham Perrett’s sporting travails, he’d just been brutalised by a Kiwi boot at the bottom of a ruck at the Parliamentary Rugby World Cup in France in September.
Perrett - who risks being forced out of his marginal southern Brisbane seat of Moreton ahead of the next election by Labor’s strict affirmative action gender quota rules - is having more luck this week.
Chooks’ spies say he scored a mighty FIVE tries at touch footy in Canberra on Tuesday morning before the parliament sat. So how did the Queenslander’s football fortunes turn so dramatically?
Turns out Perrett happened to helpfully position himself on the wing, just outside a sporting nobody, first-term Independent ACT Senator David Pocock.
Chooks asked Pocock about his teammate’s performance, and the Senator remarked that the standard on Tuesday was a bit lower than usual with “a few of the Nationals absent”.
“But Graham was on fire, darting and weaving through the defensive line like Alfie Langer or Willy Genia in their prime,” Pocock said.
“Unfortunately for Graham, the only way to go from here is probably down.”
WOLFF IN WALTER TAYLOR
Coffee maven Penny Wolff - the co-founder of Wolff Coffee Roasters and the chair of the St Margaret’s Anglican Girls School board - has been endorsed by the Liberal National Party to replace quitting sitting councillor James Mackay in the Walter Taylor ward (in Brisbane’s leafy west, including Fig Tree Pocket, Indooroopilly, St Lucia and parts of Toowong) of Brisbane City Council.
Mackay (who is suffering from long Covid) exited less than a year out from the council elections in March 2024, subverting the need for a by-election and allowing the LNP to install a replacement.
Chooks had heard former councillor and federal MP Jane Prentice had been considering a tilt, but decided against it.
Walter Taylor is one of the Greens’ target wards, and the minor party’s candidate Michaela Sargent came second at the 2022 election, 46 per cent of the vote to Mackay’s 54 per cent, on a two-party preferred basis.
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