Nats leader absent from flooded electorate for city fundraiser
Money bags not sand bags
Nationals leader David Littleproud’s western Queensland electorate is underwater, inundated with some of the worst flooding the region has seen in half a century.
Local mayors are warning devastated graziers are unlikely to bring in any income for up to three years, as the floodwaters wipe out more than 150,000 head of cattle, goats, sheep and horses.
But on Thursday night, where was the local MP for the disaster-hit region? At an exclusive inner-city venue in Brisbane, hosting a $5000-a-head political fundraiser.
Chooks can reveal the Maranoa MP took a break from the National leader’s traditional “wombat trail” election campaign route through regional electorates to gladhand donors who had been personally invited to the top-shelf soiree.
“We can’t afford another three years of (Anthony Albanese and Labor),” the invitation from Nationals corporate relations manager Beth Gazard read.
“That’s why we’re holding a critical fundraising event – and we need you there. Your support will help us take our message to more Australians and offer a clear alternative: real economic management, lower inflation and a better future.”
Invitees – who were told the precise location of the event would be disclosed only when they bought a $5000 ticket and confirmed their attendance – were promised a “private dinner event and discussion” with Littleproud from 5pm AEST.
Maranoa takes in all of the towns inundated by the floods engulfing Queensland’s west: Quilpie, Thargomindah, Jundah and Adavale. The disaster is worse than the historically bad 1974 floods in the region, and an area twice the size of Victoria has been swamped.
Quilpie Shire mayor Ben Hall has warned that graziers in his region were likely to go “three years without income”.
Asked by Chooks why he didn’t cancel the $5000-a-head fundraiser, neither Littleproud’s office – nor Nationals campaign HQ – would answer the question.
Littleproud and Opposition leader Peter Dutton – who was heavily criticised last month for flying to Sydney for a fundraiser with billionaire Justin Hemmes as Cyclone Alfred was days away from a forecast landfall near his suburban Brisbane electorate – were in flood-hit Thargomindah on Monday.
Dutton and Littleproud promised $10m for a new weather radar for the west if the Coalition wins the May 3 election. And Littleproud was in Quilpie last Saturday, as the Albanese and Crisafulli governments announced $2.5m in cash for feed drops for livestock, and extra disaster funding.
Political fundraisers are a fact of campaign life. But sometimes, it’s more important to turn your back on the flow of money and be there for your constituents.
Glass houses
Queensland’s major parties are as bad as each other when it comes to playing politics with the Electoral Act.
This week, Steven Miles and Labor were full of pious indignation, and threats of going to the Crime and Corruption Commission, over the make-up of the three member panel charged with the herculean task of redrawing the state’s electoral boundaries.
At issue was the nomination for appointment of Jarrod Bleijie’s director-general John Sosso as the non-judicial member of the three-person Queensland Redistribution Commission.
Sosso has a long history of links to conservative politics in Queensland – having served as deputy DG for former Coalition premier Rob Borbidge – and was one of the members of the (very small) Crisafulli transition to government committee.
Miles used parliamentary privilege to label as “shameful” Sosso’s nomination by Attorney-General Deb Frecklington, who made the point he had also been a senior public servant under Labor’s Wayne Goss.
(Political historian Malcolm McMillan tells Chooks Frecklington was incorrect to tell parliament that Sosso had been deputy director-general under Goss. He was Borbidge’s DDG.)
Miles accused the government of planning to bring back the former “Bjelkemander” system, where the gerrymander of electoral boundaries under the then-Nationals premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen helped keep him in power for decades.
“Anyone with any understanding of Queensland political history would know how critical it is that we have fair electoral boundaries determined by people who are not just impartial, but are perceived as impartial,” Miles said.
(In an interview in 2011, Sosso himself says he applied to join Young Labor as a 14-year-old in the 1970s, but then the Whitlam government “turned me the other way” and he joined the Young Liberals.)
Putting that aside, Chooks wonders why a DG of such a big and important department (State Development, Infrastructure and Planning) should be anywhere near the drawing of electoral boundaries.
And doesn’t Sosso have enough on his plate, given his department is responsible for the delivery of the government’s new Olympic infrastructure plan – purportedly within the existing $7.1bn state-federal budget.
But Labor is in a glass house when it comes to making these kinds of allegations against the LNP.
Remember 2016, when Annastacia Palaszczuk bypassed public consultation and gave only a few minutes notice to bring back compulsory preferential voting to hoover-up Greens preferences for Labor, a reform which flew in the face of the Fitzgerald-era recommendations.
And then, of course, there was Palaszczuk’s ban on political donations from property developers, which have traditionally been financial backers of the LNP. Palaszczuk introduced retrospective legislation into parliament in October 2017, just weeks before calling an election.
While the laws did not pass until 2018 – after Labor won the election – the ban was retrospective, and had the effect of scaring off LNP backers from donating to the party.
It is estimated the LNP’s campaign war chest was reduced by up to $1 million by the threatened prohibition.
At the time, Palaszczuk said she was acting on CCC recommendations which, in truth, only ever said the bans should apply at a council level.
Redistribution rumble
The redistribution is due to start this year, after the last electoral shake-up was finalised in 2017, and it already has a lot of MPs nervous about whether they will have a seat left after the whole exercise.
Each of Queensland’s 93 electorates will be reviewed, to make sure each seat remains within 10 per cent of the average enrolment, which is about 39,850.
There are eight seats that are bigger than they should be – four held by Labor and four for the LNP – and six seats have too few voters, three each held by Labor and the LNP.
On the Gold Coast, Labor MP Meaghan Scanlon’s ultra-marginal seat of Gaven is 11.39 per cent under quota, sparking some concern that her electorate could be abolished or its boundaries redrawn.
Scanlon – who is pegged as a future Queensland leader for the ALP – edged out LNP candidate and former television journalist Bianca Stone by just 392 votes after preferences were distributed at the October 2024 election.
Scanlon’s margin is just 0.67 per cent. And on the Gold Coast – where Gaven is surrounded by LNP seats – it’s possible her electorate could become even more marginal if its boundaries are redrawn.
Experts tell Chooks there’s likely to be extra seats created in the growth corridors between the northern Gold Coast and southern Brisbane, and between Brisbane’s northern outskirts and Caloundra South on the Sunshine Coast. One described the idea that Gaven could be deleted as “bullsh*t,” and said it was more likely LNP-held regional seats such as Callide, Nanango and Condamine could go.
What a croc
Queensland’s proposal to host the Olympic rowing on the croc-dotted Fitzroy River in Rockhampton at the 2032 Games – devised by central Queensland-based Nats Senator Matt Canavan – got some international attention this week.
British Rowing announced it had approached “reptile experts and the Salford City Council to explore a new plan to give our future Olympians and Paralympians the best possible training advantage for the Games”. That strategy? Introducing up to three breeding pairs of crocodiles to Salford Quays, in Manchester, to give the next generation of UK rowers something to really race for (or flee from). For safety, there will be “strict monitoring in place to track any increase in crocodile attacks in the area”.
British Rowing’s Nathaniel Reilly-O’Donnell explained: “We know that Rowing Australia is hoping for a bit more bite from their team, but we didn’t see this coming”.
Chooks assumes it’s purely coincidental that news of the new training method was released on April 1.
Order!
Chooks hears the Crisafulli government’s newest appointment to the bench will be Cairns and Innisfail-based solicitor Chris Kahler, who will become the third District Court judge located in Townsville.
Kahler – a long-time local who is also the acting chancellor of the Anglican Diocese of North Queensland, an honorary adviser to the Bishop of North Queensland, and a Queensland Law Society councillor – will fill the newly created judge’s position in Townsville, an LNP election promise.
Attorney-General Deb Frecklington also recently announced that Supreme Court judge Thomas Bradley had been elevated to the Court of Appeal, to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of judge Jean Dalton, and Paul Smith would be promoted from the District Court to the Supreme Court.
Frecklington is advertising to replace Smith.
Leahy of the land
Politicians love the optics of a good disaster, and between the north and western floods and southeast Queensland’s cyclone threat, our elected representatives have not been short of opportunities.
But on Sunday, Water and Local Government Minister Ann Leahy was not only fronting the disaster in her electorate of Warrego, she was caught up in it.
Leahy was visiting Thargomindah as the town made last-minute attempts to protect itself from the flooding of the Bulloo River, which inevitably surpassed 1974 records. She was staying at the Oasis Motel when there was a 1am knock on the door, and everyone had to leave for higher ground.
She slept the night at the evacuation centre, the council depot. The following night, most of the town slept in their cars at the airport, after even the evacuation centre had to be evacuated.
When Chooks approached Leahy in the halls of parliament, she confirmed the depot’s stretchers were surprisingly comfortable.
Leahy’s got a big ministerial job – her portfolio includes local government, water, fire, disaster recovery and volunteers – and the Crisafulli government earlier this year lightened her load a bit, taking “community recovery” off her and shifting it into the principal ministerial responsibilities of another frontbencher with an enormous job, Amanda Camm (families, seniors, disability services, child safety, and the prevention of domestic and family violence).
Chooks hears the change happened before Cyclone Alfred last month, but was only formalised in Friday’s government gazette.
Departmental exit
Speaking of Ann Leahy, the director-general of her Department of Local Government, Water and Volunteers Linda Dobe has made a swift and unexpected exit from the public service.
The long-time Queensland bureaucrat – who has served under governments of both stripes and was made a DG in May 2024 under Labor – tendered her resignation on Thursday March 27 to “explore opportunities in the private sector” and finished the following day.
“We thank Ms Dobe for her service to Queensland,” a government spokesman tells Chooks, confirming deputy DG Josh Hannan has been acting in the role since Monday.
Chooks hears there was a little more to the departure than the government’s diplomatically worded statement, but neither Dobe, nor the Crisafulli administration is commenting.
In a 2019 profile of then Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk by The Courier-Mail’s Frances Whiting, Dobe was identified as one of Palaszczuk’s inner-circle who celebrated the Labor leader’s 50th birthday.
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