Lobbyists splash cash at ALP national conference
Anthony Albanese says the Liberal conference is all about fundraising — as Labor cashes in with donors and lobbyists in Brisbane.
G’day readers, and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your exclusive insight into the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of Queensland politics.
LOBBYISTS LARGESSE
Anthony Albanese put himself on a collision course with the truth when making out Labor took the high road at its national conference in Brisbane this week.
Speaking on the ABC’s 7.30 program on Thursday night after the first day of the Labor love-in, the PM claimed “the difference between us and the Liberal Party is they hold conferences and no-one focuses on anything they’re talking about because they’re essentially just fundraisers”.
The distinction might be lost on the corporate donors and lobbyists throwing cash around to get access to the assembled Labor leaders and MPs now sitting on the Treasury benches in Canberra and across mainland Australia.
As revealed by Chooks, Albanese and local lad, treasurer Jim Chalmers were the double bill for a $10,000-a-head cozy dinner for donors held on Tuesday night after both arrived in Brisbane to prepare for conference and the housing debate at national cabinet the next day.
An iron curtain has been drawn around who attended, but Chooks has been told it was packed affair.
Two nights later, at exactly the same time the PM was getting all pious on telly about political panhandling, his Left factional mates were enjoying a booze-up across town at Howard Smith Wharves.
And who better to pick up some of the bar tab than blacklisted Labor lobbyist Evan Moorhead and his firm Anacta Strategies. (Anacta declined to comment).
You might remember that Moorhead, a former Queensland ALP state secretary is one of three lobbyists banned from approaching Annastacia Palaszczuk’s government for the rest of its term.
It followed Chooks revelations that Moorhead helped run Palaszczuk’s successful 2020 re-election campaign while continuing to lobby her government on behalf of corporate clients, including train manufacturer Downer.
Moorhead’s Anacta Strategies set up shop in Canberra immediately after Albanese’s election win last year and now has 27 clients including TikTok and The Uluru Dialogue.
The lefty get-together was the “hottest ticket in town” for weeks, according to one Labor minister.
Guests included the PM, senate leader Penny Wong, Environment minister Tanya Plibersek, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Queensland’s deputy premier Steven Miles.
Moorhead wasn’t the only lobbyist paying their way into the action.
Also on Thursday night, Palaszczuk was at her own lobbyist-sponsored event with NSW Premier Chris Minns, SA Premier Peter Malinauskas, and WA Premier Roger Cook.
The $550/head “Labor Premiers’ Reception” was co-sponsored by lobbying firm Principle Advisory, Suncorp and events management company SoldOut.
About 250 business leaders attended the rooftop event at Suncorp’s CBD office, MC‘ed by Bill Shorten‘s former chief of staff Ryan Liddell, now a registered lobbyist with Principle Advisory.
It will be interesting to see whether any of this lobbyist largesse will appear on the public political donation declaration website.
Meanwhile lobbyists were busy pressing the flesh among party faithful at the conference and “Labor fringe” at Brisbane’s convention centre.
Denise Spinks, hired by Anacta just two months after she resigned as Palaszczuk’s deputy chief of staff, was seen doing the rounds at the conference on Thursday.
Spinks ducked into the Australian Workers’ Union-hosted Fringe event discussing critical minerals, and was joined briefly by new Anacta recruit Amber Setchell, an ex-advancer for federal Labor.
One of Anacta’s lobbyists, Jessame Tibbitts, made a conference appearance.
Labor lobbyist Steve Michelson – a former adviser to Shorten and founder of Michelson Alexander – will be speaking about addiction policy on a panel at the conference on Saturday morning.
Seasoned political operative Eamonn Fitzpatrick, once dubbed the “agent of infection” by the Liberal National Party, made a return trip north this week, and Dee Madigan, who ran the federal ALP’s advertising campaign during the successful 2022 election campaign, was also spied among the true believers.
LONG WAY TO GO
The last time the ALP jamboree was held in Queensland was on the Gold Coast in 1973, a few months after Gough Whitlam returned Labor to government.
Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s National Party might have been half way into its 31-year rule at a state level, but Whitlam’s Labor still managed to pick up eight of Queensland’s 18 seats at the ‘72 election.
Anthony Albanese has nowhere near the form as Labor’s hero had in Queensland, holding just five of the state’s 30 federal seats.
It is the smallest proportional showing in Queensland of a party in government for more than a hundred years.
The first ALP national conference held in Queensland in 50 years was a move to show that it cares.
But Labor has a lot of work to do in the resource-rich state between now and the next federal election, as Peter Beattie noted in The Australian this week.
“If the Labor Party is going to improve its electoral performance in Queensland at the next election, it has to start at this conference,” Beattie wrote.
RENNICK APPEAL
The internal probe into the Liberal National Party’s seemingly botched senate preselection last month has been taking its time.
Chooks understands the holy trinity of inquisitors – former Brisbane mayor Graham Quirk, former Liberal president Bob Tucker and lawyer Craig Ray – will deliver their findings ahead of the LNP state executive next Friday.
And they are likely to recommend that the ballot – which saw sitting Senator Gerard Rennick booted off the LNP ticket in favour of party treasurer Stuart Fraser – be held again.
The trio have been taking legal advice with each step of their deliberations in the expectation it could all end in the courts.
Rennick lost the July 7 preselection for the third spot on the LNP ticket by just three votes, with Fraser purportedly securing 131 votes to Rennick’s 128.
But the controversial first-term senator later appealed the result, questioning the eligibility of some voters (we hear about a handful) at the closed-door meeting.
Chooks also revealed that among the alleged “voter irregularities” was that Peter Dutton (who supported Rennick) was wrongly advised by LNP officials that he couldn’t deliver a vote by way of a proxy in his absence.
In contrast to the federal Opposition Leader, Nationals leader David Littleproud and Brisbane’s Liberal lord mayor Adrian Schrinner – also permanent state council members who support Mr Fraser – were allowed to have votes cast on their behalf despite not attending.
LNP EXIT
One of the Liberal National Party’s life members has quit the party in the wake of its recent state convention, shocking his fellow blue-blooded true-believers.
Former party trustee Greg Newton was circumspect when reached by Chooks – “I’ve never spoken to the media and I don’t intend to start now, but I appreciate your call” – but party members say they were shocked by the former chair of the Sunshine Coast branch’s decision.
“The party’s lost its way,” one member says of Newton’s decision; another suggests Newton is upset about Gerard Rennick losing his third place on the party’s Senate ticket to Treasurer Stuart Fraser.
“Losing life members is not something to consider an achievement,” one LNP member says dryly, noting that Newton had also been a prolific fundraiser.
Chooks has also confirmed another former long-term member of state execute has recently quit the party.
“When integrity, equality (particularly for women in that party), truth and respect are non-existent I can’t remain and claim to be a member upholding the party’s published values,” the ex-member tells Chooks.
WANNA VET?
Nominations for preselection for the LNP state seat of Oodgeroo, on Brisbane’s bayside, closed on Wednesday at 5pm.
The big question now? Will the Federal Court’s recent critical judgement against Andrew Laming stymie the former federal MP’s chances of being approved as a candidate by the LNP’s vetting committee.
As Chooks reported last week, the court ordered Laming pay a fine of $20,000 for three unauthorised and misleading Facebook posts he authored, ahead of the 2019 federal election.
Laming is appealing the judgement.
LNP sources are split on what this means for Laming in his preselection contest against former LNP Senator Amanda Stoker and ordained Anglican priest Daniel Hobbs to replace retiring LNP state MP Mark Robinson.
In Stoker’s camp, supporters say the Federal Court ruling means Laming has “more chance of running on for the Matildas” than getting through the LNP’s candidate review process.
“He’s got zero chance,” one Stoker backer says.
An unaligned Oodgeroo branch source says: “There is no way they will let him through. He is nervous about it”.
But a local Laming supporter reckons it’s “50:50”.
“There’s a lot of sympathy for him in the party given what Nine put him through. He’s appealing the AEC (Australian Electoral Commission) decision and will probably furnish a letter from his KC to the vetting committee outlining his case,” the supporter says.
“Also, nobody wants to see him throw his toys out of the cot and run as an independent spoiler.”
Laming was disendorsed by the LNP ahead of the 2020 federal election, after allegations aired of harassment and taking an inappropriate photograph of a constituent.
But the former MP for Bowman has since won a defamation case against Nine over the reporting, securing an apology and a financial settlement.
A date has yet to be set for the preselection vote. Chooks understands Laming will pause his fly-in, fly-out work at the Cairns hospital to be in the electorate
GREEN WITH ENVY
Brisbane’s LNP Lord-Mayor Adrian Schrinner won 47.82 per cent of the primary vote at the last council elections in 2020, but he didn’t act like a frontrunner this week.
As Chooks reported late on Tuesday night, former Greens councillor Jonathan Sriranganathan will be the minor party’s candidate for the mayoralty at the next local government poll in March.
Sriranganathan’s predecessor in the mayoral race, Kath Angus, secured just 15.30 per cent of the primary vote, trailing in third place behind Labor’s Pat Condren.
Surely Schrinner isn’t worried about the musician/youth worker/climate activist/rapper-turned-politician beating him?
The Lord-Mayor’s actions would suggest otherwise. Within hours of Sriranganathan’s announcement, Schrinner’s spinners had circulated a statement warning about the “destructive Greens, led by a self-declared anarchist, want to defund the police, eradicate road funding and support shoplifting and breaking-and-entering” and attaching a list of his new rival’s most egregious offences.
“Considers himself an anarchist! Hates the Australian flag! Wants to reduce the police force!”
Schrinner even put up one of his colleagues, Coorparoo councillor Fiona Cunningham, on a Brisbane public holiday, for a press conference to take questions on the “destructive Green/Labor coalition of chaos”.
Sriranganathan says the “personal attacks” reveals “how nervous” the LNP are about the “rising support for the Greens”.
“They know our policies are popular and sound,” he says.
But one of Sriranganathan’s utterances had strategists in both major parties frothing.
In his first radio interview since announcing his candidacy, the former councillor told local ABC Radio that “rents and house prices have to fall” to address the housing crisis.
“We’re not going to get on top of the homelessness crisis unless we get housing costs down,” Sriranganathan said.
“That doesn’t just mean a vague appeal about affordable housing, it means rents and house prices have to fall. The point here is we need big, deep change. We can’t just tinker at the edges.”
FULL OF HOT AIR
Climate activists Extinction Rebellion are extremely displeased that their artwork, the ‘Stop Hot Air Balloon,’ was defeated in the Ekka’s outdoor sculpture competition by a model excavator by Christopher Ryan.
Pippi, one of the group’s “artivists” (get it?), says the piece was made from reclaimed plastic bags, and decorated with “the messages of hundreds of climate activists calling for the end of new coal and gas”.
Not ones to take things lightly, Extinction Rebellion reckons the outcome is more significant than a difference in artistic taste.
“While in no way questioning the judges’ decision, the result could be viewed as a sad, symbolic representation of our government’s current climate policy,” Pippi says.
“It brings into stark contrast the destructive, exploitative actions of fossil fuel companies and the calls from the public for action and protection of nature.”
The two pieces are pictured above. Did the judges make the right call?
Unfortunately for the hot air balloon and the excavator, both were beaten for the overall prize by a sculpture by Troy Bennett entitled “Aussie Pride”: a full-size Australian flag made out of wood.
WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT
On Thursday morning, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk boasted to true believers at conference that by 2035, “Queensland will have no regular reliance on coal-fired power at all”.
Then, the lights went out in the media centre. Talk about keeping journalists in the dark.
SPOTTED #1
Jackie Trad has been laying low since she lost her seat to the Greens at the 2020 state election.
But the former deputy premier and Left faction supremo made an appearance at an ALP conference fringe event on Thursday.
She was spotted at a drug law reform panel with other Lefties Peter Russo, Lance McCallum, Ali King and Tom Smith.
Chooks wonders if she also took the opportunity to do the numbers for a possible senate preselection tilt ahead of the next federal election.
Yes, that is still an expectation among some of her former colleagues.
SPOTTED #2
Agriculture Minister Mark Furner was spotted feeding the chooks at the Ekka this week.
Former premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s oft-repeated description of press conferences, the namesake of our column, has lived on as a challenge for Queensland reporters to get behind the spin.
A keen eye would noticed Furner chose chickens from Nanango State High School to feed, which happen to hail from Bjelke-Petersen’s old electorate.
FEED THE CHOOKS
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