‘LNP is being hijacked by young inner-city Liberals’: Young guns shoot for power in Queensland
G’day readers, and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks.
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YOUNG GUNS SHOOT FOR POWER
Federal Liberal frontbencher Stuart Robert and backbench senator Gerard Rennick should be looking over their shoulders.
It is said that youth is wasted on the young but if you listen to the chatter in the preselection playground, the LNP’s next generation is organising and have the pair in their sights.
Last week, Chooks revealed that Labor’s gender quotas could end the parliamentary careers of two veteran backbench MPs – Graham Perrett and Shayne Neumann.
Over in the other camp, the sprightly pace of the Young LNP (age cut-off: 31) of their member recruitment in certain branches (including Robert’s Gold Coast seat of Fadden) and expanding power on State Council shows they have no intention of wasting time.
Plotting and manoeuvring by YLNP members into positions, including as chairs of state electorate councils and policy committees, has also bagged them a block of more than 30 votes (and rising) on the 400-strong State Council.
That number rivals the 35 held by state MPs on council – which runs senate preselections.
One mature LNP member told Chooks said: “They’re up to something. I don’t know what it is, but they’re cunning and they’re up to something”.
Another said: “The LNP is being hijacked by young inner-city Liberals.”
Interestingly (or maybe, tellingly), the push is led by YLNP president Darcy Creighton who, when he is not doing the numbers, is a trusted political staffer of the LNP’s most senior MP in Canberra, federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton.
But the 22-year-old is typically playing down the talk of rolling anybody.
“It’s important to get young people involved in the party; there’s definitely no secretive gaming or scheming going on,” says Creighton, who is also SEC chair of the Pine Rivers branch.
“We’ll try to get maximum representation at state council, but it’s nothing more than that.”
The YLNP is hosting “welcome drinks” on the Friday night of the state council meeting for apparently the first time ever.
As for muttering about the YLNP doing the bidding (and knifing) of their more senior patrons, such as Dutton, Creighton again nixes the suggestion.
Creighton says: “It’s just our movement putting their best foot forward.”
He says his VP works for a cyber company, the YLNP secretary is employed by an engineering firm, and the treasurer works for Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner.
Creighton says the youth wing hasn’t settled on their policy platform for next month’s state council meeting yet.
Watch this space.
THE EMPEROR AND HIS NEW ROBES
Mike Kaiser, once touted as a future Labor premier before being forced to quit as a state MP in 2001 over his involvement in vote-rigging in party ballots, is looking like he will live up to his name and be appointed to rule over Queensland’s public service.
Kaiser is currently Director-General of deputy premier Steven Miles’ Department of State Development and is about to temporarily “dual-hat” in the role of Coordinator-General as the government struggles to find a permanent replacement for the outgoing Toni Power.
But Chooks has been told that the redemption and rise of Kaiser won’t end there.
He is now the odds-on favourite to replace public service head, the Director-General of the Department of Premier and Cabinet Rachel Hunter, later this year.
“There are some very good DGs in the government, but he is in a different league,’’ a senior Palaszczuk government insider told Chooks.
After the Shepherdson Inquiry revelations and his resignation from parliament, Kaiser worked in the private sector before returning to politics to serve as chief of staff to then-NSW premier Morris Iemma and later in the same role to then-Queensland Premier Anna Bligh.
Almost all of the qualified electrical engineer’s many guises and achievements are detailed on his LinkedIn page, including his time as state ALP secretary.
But there is one glaring omission; his year-long stint between February, 2000 and February, 2001 as the member for Woodridge, in Brisbane’s south.
His forgetfulness reminds Chooks of when Annastacia Palaszczuk just ahead of the 2020 state election was asked by a regional reporter (who mispronounced his name) about Kaiser (then a KPMG partner) and his paid consultancy on the government’s Covid response.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about, sorry,’’ the premier said after the opposition labelled it as a job for a “Labor mates”.
Her memory improved after she won the poll, and soon after she lured him away from KPMG and appointed him DG of Resources and the rest, as they say, is history.
SOUTHSIDE MAFIA
Labor rising star Kara Cook, the lawyer-turned-councillor for the Morningside ward, caught everyone by surprise when she announced on January 1 she was leaving the Brisbane City Council in March, after five years in the job.
Swiftly, Health Minister Yvette D’Ath’s media Adviser Lucy Collier – the stepdaughter of another Palaszczuk government minister Di Farmer – put up her hand, announcing her intention to replace Cook.
Collier’s Facebook lit up with congratulatory messages from Labor luminaries such as Erinn Swan (social media campaigning supremo and Wayne Swan’s daughter) as news got around.
Chooks hears there was a neat arrangement in place. Farmer was to retire at the 2024 election, Cook would take her seat of Bulimba, and Collier would step into the Morningside ward.
But the spanner now in the works is Farmer’s decision to stay on. Cook, who had a thriving legal career before making the decision to join Labor’s Brisbane City Council team, is likely to go back to the law in the short term.
But watch this space. Cook is seen in Labor ranks as destined for a brighter political future.
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
Under-fire and under-investigation ALP backbencher Jim Madden will not be attending next week’s Labor love-in at K’gari Fraser Island’s Kingfisher Bay Resort.
The Australian broke the story last week that Madden has been probed for months by the QLD ALP, after a former electorate office staffer lodged a formal bullying complaint against him.
Madden has refused to answer questions. Annastacia Palaszczuk, while insisting she does not condone bullying, would not say whether she’d block him from attending the annual caucus retreat.
Turns out, she doesn’t have to.
Chooks hears Madden has given his apologies for the event, citing medical appointments.
Parliament is back on February 21, so Madden can’t avoid awkward conversations with his colleagues forever.
BURN BABY BURN
Turns out, David Crisafulli can dish it out but won’t dish it up. Crisafulli lambasted the Palaszczuk government for its “integrity inferno” (an amplified alliteration if there ever was one) and lack of transparency last year, over its close ties to Labor-aligned lobbyists.
But his demands for transparency seem a little hollow. the LNP leader would not answer questions about his cash-for-access fundraiser held at the beachfront Sails restaurant at Noosa this week.
In Queensland, all political donations over $1000 have to be declared and are published by the electoral commission.
Details about donations below the threshold legally do not have to be disclosed and any information about those relies on an honesty system.
Repeatedly asked how many people attended his $500-a head fundraiser dinner this week, Crisafulli said: “Everything I do will always comply with the law”.
“Any donation that goes above the threshold … will always be declared, that is fair and reasonable. Even if that donation comes in 10 lots of $100, that donation will be declared.”
Palaszczuk banned her ministers from holding cash-for-access events last year after introducing new donation caps that Crisafulli has slammed as a “corrupt financial gerrymander” that benefits Labor.
REDCLIFFE SPELLS TROUBLE
Speaking of shopping pollies to squeeze cash out of donors, the LNP hosted a (much cheaper) breakfast fundraiser on Thursday morning at just $40-a-pop, as part of its blitz of Redcliffe this week.
The flyer advertising the brekky event at The Komo with David Crisafulli and the shadow cabinet – in Health Minister Yvette D’Ath’s electorate – reveals Crisafulli dubbed it his “own personal patron seat”. Hmmm.
But can Chooks suggest to the LNP invitation-scribes that they employ an editor?
LNP Deputy Leader Jarrod Bleijie’s surname was misspelt twice as ‘Bleijike”.
Yikes.
Chooks’ spies report D’Ath was spotted tucking into lunch at the Komo, while the LNP’s policy forum was still going on inside.
IN DEFENCE OF THE UNIONS
A hearing of the Crime and Corruption Commission’s parliamentary oversight committee took a tense turn on Friday morning.
The integrity watchdog released a controversial report this week recommending union officials, in-house lobbyists and “other interest groups” declare any contact with the government when they seek to influence policy or law changes or obtain a government grant.
During a stiff exchange in which Stafford MP Jimmy Sullivan interrupted CCC chair Bruce Barbour a number of times, the first-term Labor pollie demanded to know whether any industrial relations experts had been “engaged” before sweeping recommendations were made.
Sullivan also questioned whether Barbour understood “internal democracy of registered industrial relations organisations”.
Here is a bit of flavour of the exchange.
Barbour: “We aren’t saying that it is inappropriate to advocate, we aren't saying it is inappropriate to lobby, we think that is a fundamental right and appropriate step. We are just saying that some people have rules that apply to them and others don’t.”
Sullivan: “Some people are paid to lobby by third parties and some people are volunteers at their local footy club who are trying to advocate for a grant, or it could be the local P and C or local DV groups who want a change in policy and you are putting them in the same basket as people who are paid as a professional to lobby government”.
Barbour: “I think generally the community would say it is in the public interest to understand as clearly as possible and as openly and transparently as possible, the way significant decisions are made by government in relation to public funds”.
Given the demonstrated influence of unions over this government, it is not a giant leap to speculate that Sullivan wasn’t arguing about any impost of the proposed rules on the local footy club president but on the union bosses who wield enormous factional power.
BISMA ON THE BLOCK
At first blush, a citizenship ceremony on Brisbane’s northern outskirts would not generate much talk.
But the appearance of a certain rising political star on stage at the Sandgate Town Hall last week has sent political watchers into a frenzy.
Bisma Asif, a former young ALP president, is rumoured to be next in line for the coveted safe Labor seat of Sandgate, currently held by Tourism Minister Stirling Hinchliffe.
Eyebrows were raised when Asif bought a home in the heart of the electorate in April 2021 but it was her appearance next to Hinchliffe, Aged Care minister Anika Wells (whose campaign she ran last year) and Labor councillor Jared Cassidy that really sent tongues wagging.
Every male Labor politician in Queensland is acutely aware of the party’s affirmative action policies which stepped up again last year and now requires women to be preselected in 45 per cent of winnable seats.
With women making up 40 per cent of the current state Labor caucus, two men in Annastacia Palaszczuk’s caucus are facing the axe before next year’s election.
Chooks have heard Hinchliffe could be one of them and we couldn’t help but notice that Asif’s face is obscured in the event photo Hinchliffe chose to upload to his Facebook account.
ON YER BIKE
There’s a crime wave sweeping the Tower of Power, the Brisbane riverfront skyscraper home to Annastacia Palaszczuk’s cabinet and top public servants.
OK, perhaps ‘crime wave’ is overstating the point, but there’s definitely a thief on the prowl.
Chooks hears that while the executive building itself is protected like Fort Knox, the bicycles of the powerful are fair game.
A number of bikes were stolen last week from the ‘End of Trip’ facility at the bottom of the building, which bizarrely is open to members of the public frequenting the food court on the lower ground level.
In an effort to deter the bike burglar, a security guard has been ordered to stand outside, sweltering through Brisbane’s 1000 per cent humidity this week.
As one of Chooks’ correspondents commented: “Yet another design flaw with this building”.
Commissioned by the Newman government for an eye-watering $650m, the 41-storey CBD monolith is also falling apart, starting with the balconies.
SPOTTED
Deputy Premier Steven Miles has a new chief of staff, the unflappable Katharine Wright, who has acted in the role many times and has been Miles’ senior media Adviser for years. Chooks hears Miles’ longstanding chief of staff, Danielle Cohen, is off to government-owned power company Stanwell.
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