Labor’s fortunes bounce back as LNP flails on abortion
Internal polling shows Labor’s election campaign is bouncing back to life as LNP leader David Crisafulli – a self-described conviction politician – flails on the issue of abortion.
G’day readers, and welcome to Feeding the Chooks from the second week of the Queensland election campaign.
Shot in the arm
Steven Miles is gearing up for Sunday’s official launch of Labor’s election campaign, with a little bounce in his step.
ALP insiders tells Chooks that internal polling shows the race is tightening after a week that David Crisafulli would probably prefer to forget.
With a little help from his friends – long-term (and now likely permanent) backbencher Jon Krause and frontbencher Tony Perrett – the Opposition leader couldn’t get away from questions on whether the Liberal National Party would move to repeal or restrict Labor’s laws decriminalising abortion if he wins the October 26 election.
What started out as a Labor-union scare campaign (given Crisafulli repeatedly declared he won’t change the laws) turned into a real issue with the two opposition MPs caught spruiking for change in their electorates and the Katter MPs committing to introducing a private member’s bill that would likely elicit a conscience vote within the LNP.
Not lost on many is that it’s all blokes speaking out on what women should be allowed to do with their own bodies.
Chooks has been told that dominance of the issue in the second week of the campaign has helped Labor’s cause in Brisbane, where it faces losses to the LNP and the Greens.
Leaked ALP polling, for instance, shows that in the inner-city seat of McConnel – held by state development minister Grace Grace – Labor’s primary vote (27 per cent) is improving and is now ahead of the Greens (24 per cent), with the LNP on 34 per cent.
That puts the seat on a knife-edge but better than at the start of the campaign when it was regarded as Labor’s most likely loss to the Greens, who are targeting four government seats across the city.
And a senior Labor insider tells Chooks that while the party is still expecting heavy losses in the regions – Gladstone being the only safe seat – there are glimmers of hope in Cairns, Rockhampton and Maryborough.
Still, there is no talk of Miles pulling off an election miracle and holding on to government.
Over on the other side, the telling of the story is different.
LNP insiders and MPs say the abortion issue has made the Queensland Premier look desperate.
“This is not an issue that will change much, voters hear David say he hasn’t got plans to change the laws and they accept that because their mind are on cost of living and crime,’’ one said.
Conviction politician?
The day David Crisafulli was chosen as leader of Queensland’s Liberal National Party, he sold himself to his party room and voters as a “conviction politician”.
Fast forward four years, with an election victory in tantalising reach, and he is refusing to give a straight answer on his voting record on abortion.
Crisafulli voted against laws to decriminalise abortion in 2018, alongside all-but three LNP MPs. He did not give a speech in parliament when the laws were being debated.
Given Crisafulli has revealed little about his personal view on the matter, we thought voters might want to know exactly why this “conviction politician” decided to vote against the laws that removed abortion from the Criminal Code and allowed the procedure on request up to 22 weeks’ gestation.
Here is the back and forth from a press conference in Townsville earlier this week.
Chooks: “You voted against decriminalising abortion, you didn’t give a speech in the parliament, so could you just lay out for voters now, why? Why did you choose to vote that way?”
Crisafulli: “Well, put that to one side –
Chooks: “Well that is my question, it is not to put to one side. Could you just explain to voters why you decided to vote that way?
Crisafulli: “I won’t trivialise an issue by pointing to you at different examples of other politicians who may have said other things. We are going to an election, and I’m putting forward our plan. I am putting forward our priorities. I am putting forward a commitment to Queenslanders and that is pretty definitive, and ultimately that’s what matters.”
Clear as mud.
Blast off
Secrecy surrounds the venue of Labor’s campaign launch, with media yet to be told where the shindig is being held with the usual paranoia about giving wannabe protesters (really?) an early heads-up.
The invitation touts a big announcement. Could it be more cost-of-living relief? A school student voucher?
We will have to wait and see, as well as keep an eye on which Labor luminaries attend.
Chooks hears that Annastacia Palaszczuk has been invited.
But as of Friday afternoon, the former Labor premier had yet to respond.
The LNP is also being tight-lipped about when and where it will be holding its campaign launch.
LNP HQ helpfully says it will be held between now and election day. Our bet is on next Sunday.
Forever young
Steven Miles has defended his own union for attacking a 22-year-old LNP candidate in a marginal Labor seat for having never lived out of home, saying it was “fair game”.
The United Workers Union – controlled by Miles’s self-described “mentor” and Left faction leader Gary Bullock – is running social media ads and doing letterbox drops in Pumicestone targeting Ariana Doolan, who is running against Miles’s former staffer Ali King.
“Does a 22-year-old who has never lived out of home have the life experience to deliver for us,” one leaflet thunders.
In a social media post, the UWU has Doolan and Crisafulli standing side-by-side: “Can a 22 year old who still lives at home stand up against LNP cuts?”
Asked about the tactic at a press conference on the Sunshine Coast on Friday morning, Miles refused to step in and put a stop to the tactic.
“You can’t be too sensitive in this game,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to point out the life experience of the candidate, that’s pretty fair game actually.”
Labor’s Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon was 24 when she was elected at the 2017 state election in the Gold Coast seat of Gaven. Miles reckons Scanlon has been an “excellent representative”.
King holds Pumicestone on a margin of just 5.27 per cent, a buffer on current polling that would mean she’d be swept away in the predicted swing to the LNP.
Going negative
Speaking of attack ads, up in far north Queensland, Labor has the LNP’s Cairns hopeful Yolonde Entsch in its sights.
Entsch has long refused to answer questions about taxpayer-funded grants directed to her companies while her husband, Warren Entsch, was an MP in the Morrison federal government.
The candidate was less than forthcoming yet again this week when approached by Chooks at a football ground in the Labor-held seat, as she posed for pictures with LNP leader David Crisafulli.
Entsch insisted she had answered the questions in the past, a response that was unfortunately incorrect. The full story can be read here.
Labor HQ has launched a social media attack campaign based on Entsch’s non-answers, and Cairns MP and Labor Tourism Minister Michael Healy declared Entsch needed to “come clean with voters in Cairns”.
“This goes to the heart of political credibility and integrity,” Healy griped.
Above the ministerial paygrade
But as Michael Healy – who holds Cairns for Labor on a margin of just less than six per cent – went after his LNP opponent, his own political credibility was questioned.
Sky News unearthed some anti-Israel private Facebook posts made by Healy between 2018 and 2021, including one suggesting Australia should “follow the Irish” and boycott Israel as an “apartheid state”.
The posts were made when Healy was a backbencher but before he was elevated to Cabinet by newly installed Premier Steven Miles in December last year.
Asked about Healy’s social media activity on Friday, Miles said everyone had been shocked by what was happening in the Middle East and “we would like to see an end to it”.
“Foreign affairs is well above our pay grades, and certainly well above Michael Healy’s pay grade,” Miles said, adding “everyone I speak to wants to see peace”.
For his part, Healy tells Chooks he’s “anti-war, nothing more. The killing has to stop”.
Chooks wonders if Miles thinks foreign affairs is above former Labor Premier Peter Beattie’s pay grade, after he penned an editorial for The Australian’s Friday edition condemning the Albanese government’s policy on the Middle East.
Crisafulli loosens up
Almost everyone who has worked closely with David Crisafulli uses the same words to describe the LNP leader – disciplined” and “in control”.
Crisafulli – a former TV journalist – has been trying desperately to get some colour and lightness into his serious, crime-heavy campaign with various picture opportunities of him playing sport (netball in Rockhampton, soccer in Pine Rivers, cricket in Redlands, league in Cairns).
But it wasn’t until Thursday afternoon, when the son of a sugar cane farmer toured the Sarina Sugar Shed, that he finally started to loosen that white knuckle grip.
Telling jokes with punters, chatting with the travelling media pack and role-playing behind a bar, it seemed like Crisafulli was finally enjoying himself on his jam-packed Tour de Queensland.
The good mood continued on Friday – aside from (another) tense exchange on abortion at a press conference – with Crisafulli due to head for a couple of coldies in Longreach with journalists and frontbencher Deb Frecklington in Longreach.
Let’s see how long it lasts.
Leaderboard update
Former Deputy Premier Jackie Trad hit the hustings this week to help out her old AMWU mate Peter Russo, who is fighting to keep his seat of Toohey in Brisbane’s southern suburbs.
Rumours were rife in the lead up to the 2020 election that Trad would be parachuted from her marginal electorate of South Brisbane (which she lost) into Russo’s safer seat after the LNP reversed its preferencing decision and put Labor last on its how-to-vote cards in Trad’s electorate.
Trad’s star power seems to have given Russo some oomph this week with the backbencher finally making it on to Labor’s internal candidate leaderboard.
As loyal Chooks readers know, one of our many spies has been giving us a running update on the party’s weekly leaderboard which tracks the total number of “doorknocks” and phone calls made to voters in each electorate in the past seven days.
Labor’s candidate in Moggill, Eric Richman is still the hardest working comrade, personally doorknocking on 895 homes this week (though made no phone calls). He was followed by Sandgate candidate Bisma Asif who knocked on 676 doors and made 102 calls (hopefully not from the electorate office this time). Mansfield’s Corinne McMillan came in third place followed by Wendy Bourne (Ipswich West), Chris Johnson (Coomera), Naomi McQueen (Maroochydore), Russo (Toohey), Belle Brookfield (Clayfield) and Bart Mellish (Aspley). It is interesting to see the ones out there hitting the phones and homes the hardest are overwhelmingly Labor’s unelected candidates rather than sitting MPs.
Now to the overall campaign leaderboard, which also includes the calls and doorknocks made by volunteers and gives the best insight into the seats that the party and unions are funnelling resources.
Aspley topped the list for a second week in a row, followed by Nicklin, Gaven, Redcliffe, Mansfield, Cooper, Sandgate, Miller, Caloundra and Mundingburra.
Meet Jacob Heremaia, candidate for Springwood … no Waterford
The Liberal National Party has been so focused on steering the conversation away from abortion, they have stopped proofreading their own generic candidate statements.
In a profile that ran in the My City Logan publication this week, the LNP’s Waterford candidate Jacob Heremaia told voters he was looking forward to “working to deliver solutions on behalf of all residents of the Springwood electorate”.
If you are going to run for parliament, you really should know who you want to represent.
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