Mike Kaiser’s golden handshake revealed after he goes federal
Kaiser’s golden handshake
Anthony Albanese’s latest bureaucratic recruit – Mike Kaiser – was disappeared by David Crisafulli pretty much as soon as the new Liberal National Party Premier got his feet under the desk at 1 William Street.
But his sacking wasn’t without a silver – or more accurately, golden – lining.
Kaiser had been hand-picked by Steven Miles as the director-general of his Department of Premier and Cabinet when Miles took over from Annastacia Palaszczuk as Labor leader at the end of 2023, following her (mostly) bloodless factional ousting.
Even though all the opinion polls agreed the Labor government was headed for defeat at the October 2024 state election, Kaiser was hired on a five-year contract, in accordance with a provision in Peter Coaldrake’s public service review.
Crisafulli warned he should only “iron one shirt” if the LNP won, and he’d be replaced as DG by the incoming government.
And so it was. But don’t feel too sorry for the former ALP state secretary, who had to quit as ALP MP for Woodridge in 2001 over historical branch-stacking allegations before serving as chief of staff to Queensland Labor premier Anna Bligh and NSW ALP premier Morris Iemma.
Chooks hears Kaiser left the employ of the Queensland government with a golden handshake worth about $400,000, the equivalent of about six months’ pay, after his five-year contract was abruptly cut short (the DPC director-general is paid more than $770,000-a-year).
Kaiser’s also on a good wicket in the nation’s capital.
As newly hired secretary of the Albanese government’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, he will command a fairly tidy annual salary of $932,120.
Amanda Mander
The lid was lifted on the worst-kept secret in Queensland politics this week: Sports Minister Tim Mander and Child Safety Minister Amanda Camm are romantically involved.
Their relationship was formally declared to Cabinet by Premier David Crisafulli on Monday, but Chooks understands their colleagues have known about the couple for months.
Mander, who holds the Brisbane seat of Everton, is said to have separated from his wife of many years earlier this year.
Word around town is that the Olympics minister – who is earning more than $300,000-a-year – didn’t bother renting out a bachelor pad after leaving the marital home.
Instead, Mander has been holed-up for about three months in his taxpayer-funded digs in the Annexe, the building attached to Parliament House for MPs to stay overnight when in town for parliamentary business.
The rooms are allocated (in order) to ministers first, then regional MPs, the opposition leadership and finally to the remaining MPs, according to the geographical distance of their electorates from Parliament House.
About five inner-city MPs miss out on getting a bedroom. For the record, Mander’s electorate office in Everton Park is just a bit over 9km from Parliament House.
There are no rules and no policing of who stays in the annex, when, or for how long in their allocated rooms.
But every year, MPs must declare to the Tax Office any night they stay in the annex that is not related to parliamentary business, and pay a sum, under fringe benefits tax rules.
Mander, a former Scripture Union chief executive and rugby league referee, is not the first to stay in the annex after a marriage break-up.
Spies have told us that some ministers a few decades ago lived in the annex for years.
Mander didn’t respond to questions about his temporary lodgings.
His Excellency?
Chooks last month revealed that Lawrence Springborg had decided to step down from his role as LNP president.
He has led the LNP since 2021, and is considered the father of Queensland’s merged conservative parties.
And while he is still the mayor of Goondiwindi, there is mounting chatter in LNP ranks that he will be rewarded by David Crisafulli with a new job in Brisbane.
Spies tells us that Springborg is the favourite to be appointed as the next governor of Queensland.
The current incumbent, Jeannette Young, has about a year left in the stately mansion on Fernberg Road in Paddington.
Springborg is close with Crisafulli and is seen as a trusted figure who, despite losing three elections as opposition leader, is well-liked in the city and the bush.
But whether the LNP government is willing to spend the political capital required to make such a partisan appointment to the vice-regal role is yet to be seen.
In the meantime, party members will choose who will replace Springborg at next month’s convention.
The smart money is on current metro vice president Doug Hawkes to be elevated into the presidential role, and Gold Coast chair Trent Belling to be shoehorned into the VP job.
Hawkes and Belling are already on the campaign trail, jetting to Cairns this week – with Crisafulli and Tourism Minister Andrew Powell – for the party’s ‘‘town and country’’ breakfast.
Chooks hears defeated Petrie federal MP Luke Howarth was pushed to run for one of the top positions but couldn’t be persuaded.
Solicitor Adam Stoker – the husband of state MP Amanda Stoker and a member of the LNP executive – is understood to also be weighing his options.
Youth group
The LNP’s powerful youth wing has elected its new executive, installing a slew of LNP government staffers in office-bearer positions.
A conservative ticket led by Samuel Chamberlain (a KPMG auditor and Queensland co-ordinator of the Australian Catholic Students Association) was beaten by moderate candidates headed by Ben Kozij (a policy adviser for Brisbane’s LNP Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner).
Kozij is now Young LNP president, joining the ranks of Bens in political high places in Queensland (Ben Riley is state director of the grown-up LNP and Ben Driscoll is ALP state secretary).
The YLNP metro vice-president is Ryan McDonald, an assistant adviser to Mines Minister Dale Last, who also employs the YLNP’s social director Maddy Sparrow as a media adviser.
Cairns-based dentist and judge’s associate Hannah Treston is regional vice president. Staffers in offices of the Premier David Crisafulli, Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie, Youth Justice Minister Laura Gerber and Agriculture Minister Tony Perrett were also voted in as office-bearers.
The moderate Senator James McGrath-aligned faction of the YLNP are celebrating the result as a resounding victory, but the conservative challengers (seen by some as anti-headquarters agitators, and others as defenders of the soul of the party) say the presidential race was closer than it’s been in the past.
Chooks hears that in the hungover fog of the second day of the YLNP convention (after a ball the night before), an urgency motion calling for the federal Coalition to reject net zero was successfully put by Sebastian Padget, a staffer for Senator Matt Canavan.
It’s a debate that’s likely to be replicated on the floor of the LNP’s convention next month.
Confusingly, the YLNP also passed a motion calling on the Coalition to continue to support mandatory emissions reporting requirements.
Fired up in Petrie
New Labor MP for Petrie Emma Comer’s electorate office opening on the weekend sparked a novel way for the rookie politician to ignite conversations with her constituents.
Chooks hears a smoking ceremony at the party set off fire alarms in the Clontarf building, forcing the evacuation of residents in the 40-something apartments above Comer’s new digs in the Brisbane bayside electorate of Petrie and the arrival of the fire brigade.
Comer’s neighbours and the firefighters were offered some hastily dug out Lindt chocolates to apologise for the commotion, and Chooks hears the body corporate will forward any emergency services call-out fee to the new MP (and presumably, the taxpayer).
Still, it gave Comer a chance to mingle with her new neighbours, as well as guests including ALP federal president Wayne Swan, Labor senators Anthony Chisholm and Corinne Mulholland, former state Attorney-General and one-time Petrie MP Yvette D’Ath and Labor’s Brisbane City Council leader Jared Cassidy.
Sharp exit
Barrister Julie Sharp this week quit as deputy president of Queensland’s Parole Board, shortly after clocking up eight years in the role.
Sharp’s length of tenure in the quasi-judicial role will see her take home a judges’ pension equivalent to 48 per cent of her annual salary for the rest of her life when she hits the right age.
The parole board confirmed Sharp’s resignation to Chooks and relatively new president Michael Woodford thanked her for her service to the board and the Queensland community.
Last month, Corrective Services Minister Laura Gerber ordered a review into “systemic failures” of the board under the former Labor government, to be led by barrister Peter Hastie KC, indicating that the exit of previous president Michael Byrne would be probed among other issues.
The Hastie review will take submissions until July 31.
Watch this space
Chooks hears the Crisafulli government is preparing for another shake-up of the boards of government-owned corporations, as Labor appointees’ terms end and others are moved on.
Already this year, former LNP MPs Michael Hart and Jeff Seeney were given plum jobs on government boards (chair of Queensland Work Health and Safety and deputy chair of CS Energy respectively).
Will Crisafulli, his Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie, and others be able to resist doling out taxpayer-funded sinecures to other political pals? Only time will tell.
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G’day readers and welcome to the latest edition of Feeding the Chooks, your weekly insight into what’s really going on in Queensland parliament.