Crisafulli prepares to axe Labor appointees on government boards
David Crisafulli is preparing to axe Labor luvvies from government boards, while Peter Dutton’s own MPs were kept in the dark on the federal Opposition Leader’s nuclear nuts and bolts.
G’day readers and welcome to the final Feeding the Chooks edition of 2024. On behalf of the Chooks, thanks for joining us for an action-packed, election-filled year. Bring on 2025.
Night of the long knives looms
Labor luvvies on government boards should start polishing their CVs. The Crisafulli government is preparing for a night of the long knives, starting with bloodletting at the state’s government-owned energy companies.
Chooks hears that like all new administrations, the LNP government is keen to sack directors with Labor links and install friendly board members instead.
The 2022 explosion of the Callide C coal fired power station – which cut power to 500,000 homes and businesses and sent prices soaring – has been blamed on poor maintenance and oversight of the facility.
A subsequent investigatory report into the debacle, only released by the government after some of the findings leaked in a Federal Court case, questioned the expertise on the board of the state’s CS Energy, which operated Callide C, and was headed by former Labor mayor Jim Soorley who resigned last year.
CS Energy’s non-executive directors Jacqueline King (general secretary of the Queensland Council of Unions) and Alison Smith (chief executive officer of the Local Government Association of Queensland, Beattie government senior media adviser, and wife of former ALP Deputy Premier Paul Lucas) – who were appointed after the explosion – freshly appointed Stanwell non-executive director Kara Cook (former Labor Brisbane City councillor) and non-executive director John Thompson (a former senior union leader), and defeated Labor mayor of Townsville Jenny Hill (Powerlink board) are likely to face the axe.
Dutton’s nuclear surprise
The devil is in the detail and for Coalition MPs hoping to ride Peter Dutton’s nuclear vision into power, it was left to the media to inform them of the financial nuts and bolts of the grand plan.
Most coalition parliamentarians woke on Friday to learn of the projected costings and roll-out of the nuclear energy plan on the front pages of newspapers, including The Australian.
Dutton kept the modelling to a tight circle of advisers and shadow cabinet members for obvious reasons: so that it wouldn’t leak and be picked apart by Labor before making a big splash.
But the fact that the Friday zoom briefing to coalition MPs came after it was already public has peeved some of those who will now be spruiking the plan to their electorates.
“You’d think they might bring us inside the tent,’’ one told Chooks.
“It used to be the leadership would run the party rooms through the policy and detail to get our backing.
“Now we are not even a rubber stamp.’’
And while the unveiling of the plan has caused some fission among Coalition MPs, Dutton still has a battle on his hands to convince David Crisafulli, the newly elected Liberal National Party premier of Queensland, of the plan.
There are two nuclear plants earmarked for Queensland and when Crisafulli was opposition leader, he was on a unity ticket with then Labor premier Steven Miles in rubbishing the idea.
Some thought his position was part of his small-target election strategy.
But in Townsville on Friday to sell his newly passed youth crime laws, Crisafulli said he hadn’t spoken to Dutton about nuclear since he won the state election in October.
Asked if there was any merit to the costings of Dutton’s nuclear power policy, Crisafulli said his focus was elsewhere.
“You know our focus, our focus is to make sure Queensland’s power assets remain in public hands and actually get turned back on to drive down people’s power prices. And that has to be our focus. Canberra will have a debate on energy, my focus is doing what I’ve said for the people of Queensland.”
He later said his position on nuclear had not changed, after repeating throughout the campaign that nuclear “is not part of our plan”.
Odds on Evans
As foreshadowed by Chooks in our first iteration on Friday, the former LNP MP for Brisbane, Trevor Evans, has been preselected by the party to run again for the inner-city federal seat at a vote at the Doomben racecourse on Saturday.
Evans was up against serial candidate Fiona Ward, held just after lunch in the aptly named Hometurn Room, in the public grandstand. The last time Chooks reported on an LNP meeting in that venue, it was the explosive AGM for the party’s metro north branch in May. On that occasion, sparks flew when lobbyist and powerbroker Santo Santoro was blocked from joining the state executive by party headquarters.
Brisbane is one of Peter Dutton and the LNP’s target seats to win back at next year’s federal election; the shock loss of the seat to the Greens’ Stephen Bates still smarts.
On Saturday afternoon, Dutton described Evans as a “fighter for Brisbane” while the new candidate took a swipe at the Greens (echoing the language of Labor candidate Renee Coffey in Max Chander-Mather’s federal electorate of Griffith), saying the city needs a “local MP who can actually deliver”.
“The people of Brisbane deserve infrastructure, not activism; outcomes, not slogans; hard work, not protests and division,” Evans said.
Comrades up in arms
Labor’s flip-flopping position on youth crime has exposed massive divisions inside the party on how to handle hardcore repeat offenders.
The problem has plagued Labor for years with both Annastacia Palaszczuk and Steven Miles failing to land on a position they could sell to regional voters without selling out on principles laid out in the party’s state platform.
The LNP targeting of Labor for being “soft on crime” has been attributed for the new government’s electoral success in regional Queensland, particularly in Townsville.
As David Crisafulli pushed ahead with his promise to impose “adult crime, adult time” for serious offences, Labor was still figuring out whether or not it would support the controversial laws.
After a “tight” vote at Labor’s pre-parliament caucus meeting on Monday, the decision was made to oppose. But come Thursday lunchtime, that decision was overturned at a tense emergency meeting of Labor MPs.
As reported in our news pages, Jonty Bush threatened to quit the party and told reporters she would now be “taking some time to have a think, obviously, about my future”.
Bush was visibly upset during the vote on Thursday evening, sitting in the chamber with her earphones in (maybe listening to Enya?) with her eyes closed.
Chooks hears that what Bush is really thinking about is whether she will quit her small, but apparently fragmented faction, the Old Guard.
The faction of Kevin Rudd and Peter Beattie has just six MPs, and we are told there is a split between the “older” Old Guarders – Grace Grace, Di Farmer and Leanne Linard – and the young-uns: Bush, Jess Pugh and James Martin.
The vets were returned to the frontbench after Labor’s election loss, depriving the three of a chance at making their mark in a generational refresh for the faction.
While Bush would be expected to look for a home with the Left, don’t be surprised if she remains unaligned for a time before she does take the leap.
And the uproar caused by Labor’s decision to vote through “adult crime, adult time” will not stop with Bush.
President’s rebuke
The discontent has already spread into the ALP’s youth arm. Young Labor president Angus Haigh wasted no time writing to his factional ally, Opposition Leader Steven Miles to blast him for the “weak and unacceptable” decision by Labor not to “stand in the way” of the LNP’s youth crime laws, which Haigh labelled regressive and punitive and a blatant contradiction to the party’s platform.
“The decision to back these laws is a slap in the face to Labor rank and file members. Young people across Queensland deserve better than political point-scoring at their expense,” Haigh thunders at Miles in his missive, helpfully copied and sent to every Labor MP.
Watch this space
In Townsville on Friday to meet with victims of crime and police at the epicentre of the state’s crime problem, David Crisafulli said the legislation was just the first step in the “Making Queensland Safer” laws. Crisafulli revealed he’d spoken to Bruce and Denise Morcombe, the parents of murdered Sunshine Coast schoolboy Daniel Morcombe, and promised that his next move would be a child sex offender register, a measure the Morcombes have advocated for more than a decade.
Sixth time’s a charm
If there is one thing you can say about Kerri-Anne Dooley, it’s that she is persistent.
The tyro Liberal National Party MP won veteran Labor MP Yvette D’Ath’s old seat of Redcliffe at the October state election on her sixth attempt (including one crack with Family First).
Delivering her maiden speech to parliament on Wednesday night, Dooley acknowledged her long fight to get elected and called out her doubters in the LNP.
“I have had members of my own party tell me to move out of Redcliffe – that I would never win it.
“To them I say: it was never about being a politician, it has been, and always will be, about representing a community that I was born into and have served my entire life – it is Redcliffe or nowhere.
“To every graduating Redcliffe and Queensland student and young Wade, who is 11 and is here tonight, I say: never give up on your dreams. Persevere. Work hard. When you fail, get back up again. Surround yourself with the right people and you can achieve anything.”
The Gold Coast’s Teal tide
Down the coast, the Simon Holmes a Court-backed Climate 200 movement is throwing its weight behind a new independent candidate: marathon runner Erchana Murray-Bartlett.
Last year, she ran 150 marathons back-to-back from Cape York to Melbourne (a feat she called Tip to Toe) to raise money for the Wilderness Society. Next year, she’s attempting to win the blue-ribbon LNP-held seat of McPherson from the conservatives, as MP Karen Andrews, (first elected in 2010 and Scott Morrison’s minister for home affairs, retires.
The runner will be up against the LNP’s candidate, lawyer Leon Rebello, and if there’s a swing towards Peter Dutton and his party, she’ll have a tough time chipping away at Andrews’ 9.34 per cent margin (on a two-party-preferred basis against the ALP).
But that hasn’t stopped some in LNP ranks venting about the “high quality” Teal candidate.
Clerk spotted
Queensland’s veteran parliamentary clerk Neil Laurie reappeared for the final sitting week of the year, after a back injury sabotaged his attendance at the ceremonial opening of the 58th parliament.
In the spirit of deeply important public service journalism, Chooks can reveal exactly how Laurie – who has been clerk since 2003 and was deputy clerk from 1996 – did his back in. Back in the deep dark past, a few decades ago, Laurie rode a mechanical bull at the Stanthorpe Apple and Grape Harvest Festival not once, not twice, but 32 times. Two of his spinal discs protested, and continue to protest, to this very day.
Youthful spotted
There’s a new troika at the top of the Liberal National Party’s powerful and active youth wing, the Young LNP: president Helen Craze and vice-presidents Lachlan Evans and Trayeden Fulmer. Craze (recently hired as an infrastructure policy adviser by Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie) becomes the third woman on the trot in the top job (after Alex Sinenko and Kate Samios).
Before Samios’s ascension last year, the Young LNP had only had two female presidents in 14 appointments since Queensland’s conservative parties merged in 2008 (and there were very few in the previous ranks of the Young Libs and Young Nats pre-merger).
Craze’s VPs have also been given jobs with the Crisafulli government. Evans is an assistant adviser to Police Minister Dan Purdie, and Fulmer is Townsville-based MP Natalie Marr’s electorate officer.
Bintang spotted
Who needs parliament? Three freshly defeated Labor MPs – Cook’s Cynthia Lui, Keppel’s Brittany Lauga, and Redlands’ Kim Richards – were spotted on tour in Bali having a delightful time in the wake of the loss of their seats at the October 24 state election.
Richards, who got back home on Wednesday and was out collecting toys for a local charity drive when contacted by Chooks, said it was a “a short but very lovely break with Cynthia and Brittany after a full on few months of campaign and election”.
“Bali was beautiful even though rainy season. The temples, giant swing, rice terraces and snorkelling definitely highlights,” she reported back.
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