Clive Palmer cooking up plans to resurrect the United Australia Party; LNP buries audit
Billionaire Clive Palmer is cooking up new plans after the spectacular failure of his Trumpet of Patriots party at the May federal election.
G’day readers and welcome to this week’s edition of Queensland’s favourite and most talked-about “gossip column,” Feeding the Chooks. Thanks for reading, Premier David Crisafulli.
Clive’s comeback
Clive Palmer is apparently making plans to resurrect the United Australia Party for yet another frolic across the political landscape.
Chooks’ spies tell us that the billionaire is planning to submit the paperwork to re-register the UAP after the spectacular failure of his Trumpet of Patriots party at the May federal election.
Palmer blew more than $60 million on Trumpet’s campaign and didn’t win a single House of Representatives or Senate seat.
He did only slightly better in 2022 when he spent $120 million on UAP candidates across the country and secured a senate spot for Ralph Babet in Victoria.
Readers might recall that Palmer lost a High Court bid to re-register the UAP pre-election this year after giving up its registration after the 2022 poll, citing administrative reasons.
Palmer lost his application because under the law a political party can’t deregister and re-register in the same electoral cycle.
Chooks estimates that Palmer has spent close to $400m on his political mischief-making, garnering his best result in 2013 when he personally won the Sunshine Coast seat for Fairfax and secured two Senate spots for retired footy player Glenn Lazarus (Qld) and the then tyro Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania) under the Palmer United Party banner.
Spies tells us that Palmer is serious.
But with the advent of new political donation caps, introduced after a backroom deal between Labor and the Coalition and aimed at curtailing the Teals and minor parties, Chooks can’t help but speculate that there might be another legal challenge to the laws, which come into effect in mid-2026.
Calls were made to Palmer without luck.
Banned and buried: LNP hides $45k audit, hits dissidents hard
The LNP has taken extraordinary disciplinary action against internal whistleblowers who called for an independent investigation into allegations about the party’s election printing and finances.
Federal candidate for Griffith Anthony Bishop - the chair of a local Brisbane branch - has been suspended for two years, after raising serious concerns about alleged financial and printing irregularities during the LNP’s disastrous May election campaign.
Chooks hears the LNP hierarchy is also targeting a number of other senior members who reported alleged problems with the printing of campaign materials for this year’s federal election, and last year’s state and Brisbane City Council polls.
Members voiced their worries in internal post-election meetings, in written submissions, and directly with former party president Lawrence Springborg and sitting state secretary Ben Riley.
Some of the allegations – about the alleged printing anomalies and the shambolic federal campaign – then leaked to Chooks and The Australian, sparking an investigation by this masthead.
The Australian discovered an ongoing financial relationship between LNP deputy state director Matt Chadwick, Riley’s best mate and university pal, and the printing company he and his mother once owned.
Chadwick ordered millions of dollars of LNP election printing through EPM, which is paying his family trust monthly repayments pursuant to a vendor finance arrangement with the new owners, discovered by the newspaper.
Chadwick and the LNP denied any wrongdoing.
Responding to The Australian’s reporting and internal complaints from Bishop and others, Springborg ordered an audit by BDO, which Chooks can reveal cost the party more than $45,000.
(Interestingly, BDO donated $35,000 to the LNP on July 31, after sponsoring the party’s major post-state budget fundraising lunch on June 24).
Springborg later wrote to members and said the BDO audit – which has not been published and grassroots members have not seen – found the party “appropriately” handled the conflict of interest involving Chadwick.
That’s not stopped the LNP hunting for anyone suspected of griping to Chooks or The Australian over the issues, or leaking documents and other information.
Bishop – who declined to comment – was carpeted for allegedly bringing the party into disrepute and for not following the letter of the (LNP) law when he made his complaints. Apparently he was supposed to have quietly raised concerns with the same party hierarchy that’s now overseen his suspension.
Chooks would like to make the point that these concerns were not restricted to a few recalcitrants; dozens of party members involved in LNP seat campaigns across the length and breadth of Queensland supported the need for a proper investigation into the issues.
Perhaps now it’s time for the LNP to publish the BDO audit and (former state minister) Ian Walker’s federal election review, which has been finished for weeks.
Over the years, this self-described broad church has shown little forgiveness to any of its congregation bold enough to challenge the orthodoxy of those running the show.
(More) jobs for LNP mates
Not so long ago, Finance Minister Ros Bates confidently declared that the “jobs-for-mates era is over” and the government was filling state boards with “people with qualifications, experience and passion to deliver for Queensland”.
“Only Labor could cry foul over board appointments after spending a decade stacking them with political mates,” Bates thundered in Estimates in July.
“Under Labor it was not about merit; it was about loyalty. Union officials, party operatives, and ideological warriors were parachuted into positions of influence to serve the Labor machine, not Queenslanders.”
Curious then, Bates’s announcement on Friday of yet another former blue-team politician to a lucrative government board role, and this time, not even a Queenslander, but former South Australian federal Liberal Senator Nick Minchin (1993 to 2011) who served a six-year stint as the Howard government Finance Minister.
(Ed’s note: Chooks is reliably informed that Minchin has quietly lived on the Sunshine Coast for about a decade.)
Not only has Minchin served as chair of the euphemistically named Responsible Wagering Australia, which lobbies for online betting shops Sportsbet, Unibet, Betfair and bet365, he’s now a director of Queensland’s state-owned investment arm, Queensland Investment Corporation.
In recent years, directors have pocketed taxpayer-funded fees of about $100,000-a-year for their service to QIC. Minchin joins a long list of ex-pollies sitting pretty thanks to the Crisafulli government including Michael Hart, Julian Simmonds, Jeff Seeney (x2), Amanda Cooper, Andrew Cripps and Lachlan Millar.
Minchin’s appointment comes a week after Responsible Wagering Australia spent $2424 hosting a sponsored lunch for the LNP, and a month after RWA shelled out $6,600 for the LNP’s cash-for-access fundraiser to buy a 15-minute meeting with David Crisafulli and his ministers.
Since the start of last year, the RWA has donated $21,604 to the LNP and $8550 to Queensland Labor.
The LNP in Opposition spent years criticising successive Labor state governments for handing out jobs to their mates. Short memories.
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A $12,154.29 bill sparked a heated debate in parliament this week.
The former member of Caloundra, Jason Hunt, landed in hot water after a year-old Australia Post invoice was sent to his ex-electorate office earlier this month.
But – as deputy premier Jarrod Bleijie explained following a Dorothy Dixer from Hunt’s LNP successor, Kendall Morton – the big point of contention was that the bill had actually been marked as paid and rectified (or acquitted if you use the parliament lingo) before last October’s election.
Opposition leader Steven Miles quickly shot down the allegations, arguing that the debt had been paid with Hunt’s personal funds “some time ago”.
“It begs the question,” Bleijie countered. “When did the opposition leader know that his former member did not pay his $12,000 bill? “Why did the opposition leader not disclose it to the people of Queensland about the former member for Caloundra?”
Bleijie went on to accuse Hunt of (allegedly) “personally trousering $12,000 of his constituents’ money and then fraudulently claiming the bills were paid” and of uploading a receipt to the parliamentary database that did not match the invoice.
But some in the halls of parliament were calling it a (Jason) witch Hunt.
Labor HQ tells Chooks that the bill had been paid and acquitted on October 24, two days before the state poll. However, since Hunt lost, he was not notified that the funds had bounced.
It is unclear whether the first attempt came out of Hunt’s electoral office funds or his own bank account. The former MP didn’t respond to questions.
But Chooks has been assured that the posties have now been paid.
Not (officially) Honourable
Does Queensland’s Department of Justice know something we don’t about the political destiny of LNP backbencher Jon Krause?
The Scenic Rim MP joined Attorney-General Deb Frecklington to officially open the new $19.4m Beaudesert courthouse – in Krause’s southeast Queensland electorate – the first new court building in the state since Brisbane’s new Supreme and District Courts opened in 2012.
Just one hiccup. On the fancy new brass plaque, both Frecklington and Krause are described as “The Honourable,” official titles only conferred on Ministers, Supreme Court judges, and Parliamentary Speakers.
Krause may be the deputy Speaker in this parliament, but that doesn’t mean he’s entitled to use the title.
Frecklington’s office confesses to Chooks that the inclusion is a “departmental oversight” and won’t be fixed – curious for a government champing at the bit to change the branding on every bit of official paperwork from Queensland maroon to LNP blue.
“Given Deputy Speaker Krause acts as a Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, an honorific being displayed on the plaque is acceptable to the government,” Frecklington’s office reckons.
Perhaps the bold-as-brass typo portends a promotion into Cabinet or the Speaker’s chair in Krause’s future.
Spotted
It’s painfully rare for Labor and the LNP in Queensland to be on the same team, but this week, a bipartisan gaggle of pollies booted up for a game of soccer against a team of Brisbane’s corporate and academic elite at Albion’s Perry Park on Monday night, raising $11,000 for the BUSHkids charity, which provides free allied health services to children in regional Queensland.
The LNP’s Steve Minnikin, John Barounis, Trevor Watts, Andrew Powell, Terry James, Jim McDonald, Marty Hunt, and Adam Baillie joined Labor’s Lance McCallum, Jess Pugh, Bart Mellish, Linus Power and Chris Whiting to take on Football Queensland’s Paula Robinson, the University of Queensland’s Professor John Fraser (of artificial heart fame), BDO’s Darren Black, HMW Advisory’s Angelo Catalano and others.
The corporate team was boosted by former Matilda Amy Chapman and ex-Socceroo Matt McKay.
Environment Minister Andrew Powell has gone under the knife on both of his knees in the past 2.5 years and tells Chooks that’s exactly why he played goalie.
“I was distraught at half time that I let four goals in, but one was to a Socceroo and another to a Matilda.”
The goalies for both teams were replaced by pros for the penalty shoot out after the score was tied 5-5 at the end of regular time.
Pugh – who started playing soccer in her local church league this year – says a suspicious number of goals made their way into the back of the net during the shoot out.
“I think the goalies were a little generous, I don’t think a bunch of pollies and corporates could have outsmarted the professionals like that,” Pugh says.
Football Queensland says the game ended in a draw.
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