Labor’s chances of holding Ipswich West up in smoke, as Newspoll predicts defeat at October election
G’day readers and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your essential guide to what’s really going on behind the scenes of Queensland politics.
Pass the dutchie to the left hand side
Steven Miles’ first electoral test as Queensland premier is Saturday – with two state by-elections – and his hopes of holding onto the in-danger seat of Ipswich West could be going up in smoke, literally.
Miles is already stinging from the results of Newspoll, published in The Australian, which shows the buzz in the caucus about a bounce in support for the government after he took over in December has disappeared, if it was ever there.
Labor is now headed for defeat in October, his personal popularity numbers are worse than Annastacia Palaszczuk ever were and just slightly above that of Anna Bligh before she faced voters in 2012, and we know that didn’t go well.
Asked about the Newspoll and if Labor could lose Ipswich West, Miles said “you have a Newspoll which suggests that there is a very substantial swing … and winning Ipswich West will be really, really hard.”
But apparently there is hope, HIGH hopes that Labor can hold on.
Secret correspondence within Labor’s ranks shows that party insiders are so worried about losing the seat that they have called on ALP members to “roll up” on election day and hand out how to vote cards for the Legalise Cannabis Party.
The “pass the Dutchie to the left hand side” strategy is all about hoovering-up preferences for Labor in the absence of the Greens, who boycotted the by-election because …. they can be amusingly spiteful, not just pious.
“Anyone keen to hand out for Legalise Cannabis on Saturday in Ipswich West or know anyone who is?” read a text message from a union worker to a group of young ALP members.
“ALP is needing to support 2nd preference flows from them”.
ALP state secretary Kate Flanders says the call for help is not coming from party HQ.
The reason things are so dicey for Labor – which won the seat in 2020 with a healthy 14.35 per cent margin – is there are only four candidates running.
The Liberal National Party will lap up preferences from One Nation and with no Greens running, Labor’s only hope of picking up preference flows lies with Legalise Cannabis.
As one Labor insider tells Chooks: “The party is freaking out because there’s no Greens to preference us”.
“So they must be thinking if we at least hand out for Legalise Cannabis and tell people to put Labor second, that might help.”
Flanders has flooded Ipswich West with as much cash as she can under the state’s election spending cap laws, but Miles says he is still bracing for a double-digit swing.
Under strict spending cap rules, parties cannot spend more than $90,748.65 in each by-election. LNP insiders say the party will come close to hitting the limit in Ipswich West but have spent about half the cap in Inala.
As for the Newspoll, it spells disaster for Labor, showing the LNP vote surging eight points clear of Labor, 54 to 46 per cent after preferences.
If the 7.2 per cent swing against Labor – identified in the poll – was uniform across the state at the October election Miles would lose 18 seats.
But the new premier says he doesn’t “think there’s any surprises here”.
“Winning this election is very, very challenging.
“I think that the best way we can campaign is by governing well and that’s what I’ve been trying to do.”
Opposition Leader David Crisafulli delivered his tired line that poll numbers are “not the numbers that drive me”.
Bad look
Over in Inala, the LNP’s candidate Trang Yen was caught in an embarrassing gaffe.
Yen – the acting chief financial officer for Trade and Investment Queensland – posted some pics to social media with the caption “Voted!” and a ballot paper showing a “1” next to her name.
The only problem is Yen does not actually live in Inala and so can’t vote for herself in Saturday’s by-election.
The LNP insists she didn’t actually cast a ballot, just pretended to, but the misleading photo is not a good look.
Dutton talks tactics
In true man-of-the-people style, federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton has used an “evening of exquisite food and wine, French champagne, connection and conversation” with Brisbane’s business and property elite, to attack the Greens mayoral candidate Jonathan Sriranganathan as “completely insane, completely mad”.
Dutton, in a filmed YouTube interview with TACTIC Spaces managing director Mel Pikos (a major LNP donor; $84,400 donated since June 2022), says that if Sriranganathan is elected on Saturday at the Brisbane City Council elections, or if the Greens hold the balance of power, “pity help our state”.
Pikos laughingly added: “I think he’s opposed every single new development application.”
Dutton: “Yeah, you’ll all be out of work but he’ll be grateful.”
It’s a long, friendly interview, in which Dutton calls for an “orderly migration program,” a positive debate about nuclear power, endorses the long-term future of coal in Australia, attacks the judiciary which he claims doesn’t “believe in locking people up,” and rails against Coles and Woolies for “telling me what I think outside of what the ingredients should be in a recipe”.
LNP MP Henry Pike, Brisbane LNP councillor Ryan Murphy, and Friday Capital’s managing director Chris Mundey and director Simon Douglas, MinterEllison’s real estate business unit leader Adrian Rich, Goldfields Group development manager Nicole Bogdanovic, Inertia managing director Scott Clements, Haus Holdings founder and director Medy Hassan, Alceon Queensland executive director Todd Pepper, Commonwealth Bank major client group general manager Jon Coombes, Atlas Alliance managing director Douglas Pye were all on hand to hear Dutton.
And Pikos made special mention to Chooks of his chief growth officer Matt Kratiuk – a former bikie-done good who helped organise the event (see the full story in last week’s column) – who Pikos says raised over $300,000 for the Vinnies CEO Sleepout last year, and is aiming to raise $1m this year.
“He’s made mistakes, but everyone deserves a second chance at life,” Pikos says.
Miles tight-lipped on quotas
Steven Miles likes to beat his chest as a champion for women but he could not bring himself to wade in on his party’s fracas over gender quota rules this week.
There is some serious tension bubbling away inside the ALP about how many blokes need to give up their seats at the federal election, due next year.
Labor introduced an affirmative action policy in 1994, mandating a 35 per cent preselection quota for women in winnable seats at all elections by 2002. This increased to 45 per cent in 2022 and from 2025 will be 50 per cent.
Things were fine and dandy until a “transitional rule” expired last year that has protected any sitting councillors, MPs and senators from affirmative action in preselection battles.
There are differing opinions within the party about how the AA maths has been done and whether one, or two, sitting MPs need to hit the road.
Veteran backbencher Graham Perrett is considered a definite goner (set to be replaced in his southern Brisbane seat by former state secretary Julie-Ann Campbell).
The big question is whether Anthony Albanese will swoop in to save campaign-hardened Blair MP Shayne Neumann (a frontbencher for nine years in opposition, who was demoted to the backbench after Labor claimed victory in 2022). There are fears within Labor that only Neumann will be able to hold Blair for the ALP, which only has five federal electorates in Queensland.
After last week’s sitting of state parliament, when Miles went after the LNP over its “women’s problem”, Chooks thought we better ask the premier what his thoughts were while he was out and about in Blair this week.
While he would “certainly” campaign alongside Neumann, Miles was tight-lipped about whether he should bow out and let a woman have a crack.
“The party’s rules will play out, I don’t have an opinion I want to share on it,” he said.
Neumann’s glass ceiling
Chooks dived deep into the federal parliamentary archives this week – with the help of an informed tipster – to discover Shayne Neumann’s long-held public commitment to Labor’s affirmative action policy and equality for women in the workplace. Except, it seems, when it comes at the expense of his own job.
Neumann rose in the House of Representatives on May 29, 2012, to speak glowingly in support of the Gillard government’s Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Amendment Bill 2012, and praising Labor’s gender quotas.
“The member for Farrer (Liberal MP Sussan Ley) was quite critical of quotas and quite critical of the steps taken by the Australian Labor Party, but I note that the party in Queensland is led by a woman (Annastacia Palaszczuk); that the Premier, when Labor were in government in Queensland, was a woman (Anna Bligh); and that the Prime Minister (Julia Gillard) here is a woman,” Neumann boasted.
“We have actually taken steps in our conferences and our party units, as well as in this government, to advance the role of women, because we know that gender inequality is a huge disincentive to participation of women in the workforce.”
Later, he really gathered steam: “We believe that women can do anything, and we think they should be able to do everything they want to do – that their skills and talents and abilities should be fostered and there should be no obstacles in the workplace, in politics, and in the community to stop them. There should be no barriers; there should be no glass ceiling”.
What is it Shakespeare says about being “hoist with his own petard?”
Own goal
Whoever is running the social media pages for Queensland Labor needs a refresher course on how to win votes.
After Annastacia Palaszczuk spent two years combating LNP attacks for being a “red carpet premier”, somebody in Labor HQ thought it would be a good idea to impose a “Wendy Bourne, Labor for Ipswich West” shirt over actor Simu Liu’s Oscars red carpet look.
The gaffe was promptly seized on by the LNP which commented: “@wendybourneforipswichwest has picked up where her old boss @annastaciamp left off – on the red carpet”.
Behind the scenes
In this week’s episode of Feeding the Chooks’ video series, Labor MP Stirling Hinchliffe (the parliament’s unofficial historian) joins LNP frontbencher Christian Rowan to take us back to the 1980s. Hinchliffe, who holds the seat of Sandgate, was elected to parliament in 2006 but will call it quits at the October state election. Rowan, who serves as the LNP’s education spokesman and represents Moggill in Brisbane’s west, is not going anywhere anytime soon and was coy about his leadership ambitions when asked by Chooks.
Spotted #1
While we’re on Christian Rowan, his expertise as the parliament’s in-house doctor was again called upon during the recent parliamentary sitting week. Rowan was at an evening event in the Premier’s Hall when a parliamentary staffer rushed in to tell him a guest had collapsed on the Speaker’s Green, where she had been attending the government’s International Women’s Day event. (Chooks readers will remember all LNP MPs, including women politicians, were pointedly not invited to the event, which was run by Steven Miles’ Department of Premier and Cabinet.)
When Rowan reached the woman and started introducing himself, she interrupted and asked: “You’re not from the Liberal Party are you?”
Rowan conceded that he was, and the woman gave a lighthearted sigh, and presumably with tongue in cheek, said: “I guess you’ll have to do.”
Spotted #2
The LNP’s candidate for the ultra-marginal regional seat of Bundaberg, Bree Watson, was given a rare gift from an unlikely source this week: three hours of prime-time local radio coverage on Triple M Bundy’s breakfast show. Watson, the CEO of Bundaberg Fruit and Vegetable Growers, was invited to co-host Monday’s program alongside regular compere El, after the departure of her sidekick Joe. Chooks’ spies say Watson wasn’t exactly a natural on the airwaves, but reckon the public exposure in such a tight race is invaluable. First-term Labor MP for Bundaberg Tom Smith won the seat with a paltry nine votes in 2020, and tells Chooks he’ll make his own radio co-hosting debut on Triple M at a later date.
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