LNP senator: women, under-40s stopped listening to Libs
G’day readers and welcome to the latest edition of Feeding the Chooks, your must-read weekly exploration of what’s really going on in Queensland politics.
McGrath’s manifesto
Women and young Australians have stopped listening to the Liberal Party and – even worse – they’ve stopped voting for them, according to a bold manifesto penned by Queensland Senator James McGrath calling for a national inquiry into the May 3 election bloodbath.
In an open letter “to my party”, McGrath declares the party’s election failure was the voters’ reflection on “our collective competence” and the Liberals need to order a roving commission “into the future of the Liberal Party”.
McGrath – an experienced campaigner who engineered Campbell Newman’s 2012 election victory, worked for Boris Johnson (before being forced to resign) and has been a Senator since 2013 – reckons this commission needs to look at “anything and everything” and be open to “all members and supporters”. A narrow focus then.
“Saturday was our second consecutive catastrophic election loss,” McGrath says. “So that there is not a third election loss we need to have a serious considered look at how the Liberal Party does politics.”
McGrath urges people not to “fall into the trap of squabbling about being too moderate or too conservative”.
‘Too moderate’
Now, McGrath’s detractors claim he’s too moderate, and accuse him of being at the helm of a Liberal National Party faction fuelled by a burgeoning youth arm, the Young LNP.
His backers say he’s merely sensible, and is separating himself from the party’s far-right “cookers”.
“There should be an election review that looks into the 2025 campaign as well as patterns and trends from other elections so long as it focuses on how to fix mistakes and doesn’t degenerate into a circular firing squad,” McGrath’s manifesto says.
“Blame games will only help the left.”
Chooks’ spies tell us McGrath was on the Queensland campaign committee for LNP HQ, and was involved in strategy. Look how well that turned out, in an election where Opposition leader Peter Dutton not only failed to win government, but lost his own outer-suburban Brisbane seat.
Former Queensland MP Ian Walker was embedded in LNP HQ during the campaign and will lead a review into the state branch’s election performance.
Despite McGrath’s urging that the post-election period not turn into a circular firing squad, plenty of his colleagues are keen to privately pull the trigger on the Senator’s campaign role and his political future.
As one griped of the open letter: “This is nothing more than an arse-covering exercise ahead of McGrath’s preselection, which could be held in the next 12 months”.
But McGrath tells Chooks the response has been “very positive”.
“Everyone knows we have to work together and come back stronger.”
He’s up for re-election at the next federal poll, but the party is likely to lock in its Senate ticket as early as next year, and Chooks understands there are already forces plotting against him.
McGrath raised the ire of the party’s conservative ranks when he faced off in a 2021 preselection battle with then Senator Amanda Stoker for the party’s No.1 Senate spot.
He won easily, bumping her down to an ultimately unwinnable third position.
Branches ‘up in arms’ over Sullivan’s forced exit
Embattled MP Jimmy Sullivan was booted from the ALP caucus this week after his own leader Steven Miles accused him of failing to comply with a return to work plan.
It was a crushing moment for Sullivan, who watched as all of his comrades voted to send him to the parliamentary crossbench, months after police turned up at his house to respond to an alleged domestic violence incident on October 27, the night after Labor’s state election loss.
While he was never charged with anything, and police withdrew their civil action in February, Miles only allowed Sullivan to come back to parliament if he promised he would not drink at work-related events and showed he was receiving medical treatment.
Miles told the caucus that Sullivan broke his promise, including by drinking beer with his union on Labour Day this month.
The second-term Stafford MP described Miles’ allegations as “completely untrue” and a “cheap political move”.
Sullivan has suffered mental health and alcohol issues stemming from the stillbirth of his baby daughter in April 2019, the year before he was elected to parliament.
Chooks hears grassroots Labor members in Sullivan’s inner-north electorate of Stafford – and nearby – are “up in arms” at his treatment, and have hastily organised meetings for this weekend in response.
Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie is preparing to weaponise Sullivan’s woes for the LNP’s political gain in parliament next week, and appeared positively gleeful about the prospect on Tuesday.
He may need to work on his poker face.
Waters wins
For the first time, the Greens have picked a Queenslander to lead the minor party in federal parliament.
Senator Larissa Waters – first elected in 2010 and temporarily felled in 2017 by s44 constitutional dramas caused by her Canadian birthplace – on Thursday declared she would “get shit done” and use the balance of power in the Senate to force the Albanese government to tackle climate change.
Brisbane-based Waters is a lawyer, and a single mum to two children, who worked as a graduate at Freehills before serving as a community environmental lawyer at the Environmental Defender’s Office for nearly a decade before she entered parliament.
Greens state MP Michael Berkman tells Chooks that Waters is a likeable quiet achiever who has previously shied away from throwing her hat into the ring for the leadership.
Please explain
The expert legal panel charged with informing the next tranche of David Crisafulli’s youth crime laws did not give evidence before the parliamentary committee investigating the draft legislation, which was found to be incompatible with the state’s human rights act.
On Friday, the committee decided the human rights incompatibility was justified due to the “exceptional circumstances” of the state’s youth crime crisis.
This tranche – if passed – would add an extra 20 serious charges including rape and attempted murder to the list of offences for which a juvenile would be sentenced as an adult.
The Australian Human Rights Commission, PeakCare and the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Protection Peak, all raised concerns about the laws impeding a child’s basic rights.
Labor issued a 20-page statement of reservation, asking how the expert legal panel of five, led by barrister April Freeman, was selected and why other stakeholders in the legislation were not given the opportunity to contribute to the panel or assess its findings.
Greens MP Michael Berkman’s dissenting report said the government’s analysis on the efficacy of youth detention relied on research involving alleged offenders as old as 25 – not just young people – and called for the expert advice to be released.
“One could be forgiven for assuming that the government, acting on reliable advice from a panel of experts, would be eager to share that advice and afford the community an opportunity to understand the rationale and evidence in support of such a bold legislative response,” Berkman’s report says.
On Friday, Crisafulli said the panel’s advice had not been released so that the group can continue working “free of any sort of political interference”.
On notice
Premier David Crisafulli and Youth Justice Minister Laura Gerber were flat out on Friday, posing with fruity sunglasses and a pink surfboard, to parochially promote Queensland Day on June 6.
Too busy, apparently, to answer a series of legitimate questions on notice about whether ministers and their staff have done mandatory anti-corruption and conflict of interest training recommended by the state’s corruption watchdog, and about the work of the government’s hand-picked youth crime expert panel.
Crisafulli – who has been travelling around in a fluoro Kombi van to spruik Queensland Day, which marks the state’s official separation from NSW in 1859 – is nearly two months late answering a question from Labor MP for South Brisbane Barbara O’Shea about how many taxpayer-funded ministerial staff are employed in each office, and how much they’re paid.
He’s a month late in telling Labor opposition leader Steven Miles whether all his ministers have done the Griffith University training.
Crisafulli can’t argue the inquiry is not important or relevant. When he was opposition leader, Crisafulli put the same questions to then Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who answered (promptly).
With crime back on the agenda in parliament next week, Gerber is sure to be asked again about the expert legal panel behind the Making Queensland Safer laws (two weeks overdue) and the progress of 60 recommendations from the Youth Justice Reform Select Committee Report (10 days late).
The Chooks don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to calling out lateness (thank you to all of our loyal readers who patiently wait for our column every Friday), but we’re also not ministers of the crown.
Equality or ethics?
Labor MP Jonty Bush has defied a request from parliamentary clerk Neil Laurie to remove a social media video of Olympic and Paralympic Minister Tim Mander describing Paralympic swimming champion Alexa Leary as “the most beautiful woman that is playing sport at the moment”.
Bush has blasted Mander for the comments made during a parliament debate, which she described as “not only unnecessary but inappropriate – particularly from someone tasked with driving equity and excellence in Queensland sport”.
Mander tells Chooks the comments were referring to the two-time gold medallist’s character, and Bush’s clip “misrepresented the sentiment” of what he was trying to convey.
Laurie asked Bush to remove the video from social media by Laurie, who polices the standing orders which prevent images and videos from parliament of being used improperly.
Bush took down the Facebook video but it’s still up on TikTok, Instagram and Threads.
The Labor MP for Cooper sent Mander a letter on Friday suggesting he rewatch the video to see if he agreed it was an inappropriate comment, and adding the request for it to be removed had broader implications, given women in public life were often censored for speaking out about sexism and inequality.
Mander has asked for the matter to be referred to parliament’s powerful ethics committee.
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