LNP faces ‘pro-life’ takeover plot from activist forced out of party
A 25-year-old crusader claims he has recruited 200 anti-abortion members to the LNP youth wing as part of his ambition to get Queensland abortion laws overturned.
G’day readers, and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your unmissable guide to what’s really going on in Queensland politics. Remember to sign up to our newsletter.
Anti-abortion activists target ‘wholesale capture’ of LNP
Barclay McGain, the general manager of the Conservative Political Action Conference Australia, reckons he’s been permanently blocked from rejoining the Liberal National Party in Queensland.
But that’s not stopped the 25-year-old – forced to quit the LNP in the blowback from a racist video posted on the Young LNP’s social media accounts in 2019 – from shouting from the rooftops about his plan to infiltrate the party and force it further to the right.
Chooks reported last week about the former chair of the Gold Coast Young LNP boasting he’s recruited 200 of the 800 members of the party’s powerful youth wing who are anti-abortion and anti-immigration.
McGain’s gone further, telling a recent launch event for a Christian “political discipleship” movement of his plans to “wholesale capture and reform the Queensland LNP, which only has 9000 to 10,000 members, then we can make it a pro-life party”.
Describing abortion as a “genocide”, McGain said young Christians needed to join the LNP to influence the outcome of candidate preselections to ensure people with anti-abortion views succeeded.
“(And) kick out some of the people who have really infected the Liberal Party in recent years,” he said.
That was the strategy to get to 47 seats in the Queensland parliament, the “magic number to overturn the Termination of Pregnancy Act”, McGain said.
At the end of the event, the host told attendees there were representatives of three political parties waiting to help people join: people from Family First and One Nation, and “if you want to talk to Barclay about the LNP, please do that”.
Premier David Crisafulli – who in the final days of last year’s election campaign declared himself to be pro-choice – secured party-room support last December to gag the parliament from debating any changes to abortion laws at least until the 2028 election.
Crisafulli and the LNP’s campaign to win seats in Brisbane was thrown off course by the issue of abortion, inflamed by crossbencher Robbie Katter declaring he would introduce a private member’s bill to wind back the legislation if the LNP won.
The last thing the ultra-disciplined Crisafulli needs is someone like McGain – or his disciples – to stoke the debate anew.
A CFMEU coup?
The commission of inquiry into the CFMEU in Queensland has heard the militant construction union used a ruthless “campaign of violence” to command “political, industrial and financial power,” likely planned and directed by Michael Ravbar and Jade Ingham.
Ravbar and Ingham, secretary and assistant secretary until they were tossed out in the Labor-ordered forced administration in mid-2024, ran the CFMEU like it was their own personal fiefdom, the inquiry heard.
From the evidence before the probe, the pair were tight. Rock solid. Solidarity forever, comrade.
But how close were they actually?
Chooks was fascinated to this week hear Queensland Council of Unions boss Jacqueline King reveal Ingham requested an urgent meeting with her in March last year – International Women’s Day, to be exact – ostensibly about the state Labor government’s planned workplace health and safety legislation reforms.
“He essentially said … he needed my support to put pressure on the government to delay or have the bill indefinitely delayed,” King said.
The QCU’s King said she rebuffed Ingham, telling him it’d be “highly inappropriate” for her to make such a request of government.
Why was he asking? Ingham revealed if he pulled off the manoeuvre, it’d win him “kudos to be able to solidify his position to run against Mr Ravbar in an election”.
Again, King turned him down, explaining she was “old school” and didn’t get involved in the internal politics of other unions.
She later agreed with counsel assisting the inquiry Mark Costello KC that Ingham appeared to be “mounting a challenge to take the top job off Mr Ravbar”.
The challenge didn’t eventuate; the CFMEU was forced into administration before that year’s elections could be held.
So did Ravbar ever find out about his faithful deputy’s plotting? If he didn’t, he certainly knows now.
Welcome, Wayde
The dust has settled on the Hinchinbrook by-election, and Premier David Crisafulli’s childhood mate and the newest MP, Wayde Chiesa, will be flying down from Townsville to celebrate and clock in for his first shift.
But will he be a passenger or a player in the final week of parliamentary week? Well, that’s up to the Electoral Commission of Queensland.
Despite there being little chance for Katter’s Australian Party candidate Mark Molachino to leapfrog Chiesa, the ECQ has not yet returned the writ, indicating it could do so on Monday.
Speaker Pat Weir tells Chooks “we are ready to go” with the swearing-in as soon as the result is confirmed. If not, Chiesa will be sidelined until the new year.
We also checked in with the Katters following their extraordinary move to kick off defamation action on the eve of the election by sending letters of concern to the LNP state director Ben Riley and Crisafulli.
Their issue was over the release of an attack advertisement and subsequent press conferences that compared KAP candidate and RAAF veteran Molachino to former Townsville mayor Troy Thompson, who the CCC found lied about his military career, including training with SAS soldiers, alongside a string of other claims.
Chooks understands the Katters are assessing their options and getting official legal advice.
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Marketing 101
The Olympics organisers have unveiled their first slogan for the Games, wanting Queenslanders to share a vision to “believe, belong, become”.
After apparently conducting the most extensive consultation in Olympic history, many were seemingly underwhelmed by the generic word selection. Others were quick to point out the evangelical Christian overtones (a quick Google search shows it is the motto of a South Australian school and is a favourite motto among churches).
We asked marketing expert Vanessa West, client service director at Khemistry, to share her thoughts.
“Vision statements are brutal to get right,” West tells Chooks. “You’re trying to bottle the hopes of over five million Queenslanders – plus a global audience – into a handful of words. And the line they landed on works.”
But we here at Chooks put our tiny feathered heads together just to see if we could do one better, and came up with an alliterative alternative of our own: Beers. Bananas. Brown Snake. Brisbane 2032.
We think encapsulates the whole of the state. Beers honours our famous XXXX brew, Far North Queensland is represented by one of our prized crops, and the capital’s serpentine river is also given a nod. Really, it captures our spirit and brings it all together.
Either way, it has to be better than our attempt at an Olympic logo a few months ago.
You can be rest assured, none of us are changing our day jobs anytime soon.
Spotted: King in the North
Newly elected Townsville mayor Nick Dametto has donned his ceremonial mayoral robes for the first time, and immediately noticed a design flaw.
“Test fitting the mayoral robes before my civic reception next week. I hope it cools down before then,” Dametto (who recorded an enormous 61.53 per cent of the primary vote in last month’s by-election) joked.
Townsville’s average maximum temperature is 32C, with an average humidity of 73 per cent. One of his constituents suggested an alternative: “You’d think they’d make an NQ version with some fur lining around stubby shorts and singlet”.
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