Phoning a friend in three-cornered fight for Brisbane
Neck-and-neck in Brisbane
Peter Dutton is hoping a little of David Crisafulli’s recent electoral form could help in the three-horse race for the seat of Brisbane that has everyone guessing.
Party hardheads in the Greens, Liberals and Labor are all baulking at predicting a winner for the prized seat, now held by the Greens but once in the stable of both major parties.
Former Apple store worker Stephen Bates rode the anti-Scott Morrison sentiment back in 2022 and surprised most pundits when he knocked off then assistant minister Trevor Evans on the back of Labor preferences.
Evans is back in the saddle and hoping for a redemption story.
Interestingly, as Evans entered the home straight it was Queensland premier David Crisafulli, and not Dutton, who he turned for help with convincing voters.
In an eleventh hour blitz, a recorded message from Crisafulli lobbed directly into voters’ voicemail inboxes, imploring voters to back “an economist, not an activist”.
“Only Trevor Evans can beat the extreme Greens in Brisbane.”
Labor insiders say Brisbane is still their best hope of picking up a seat in Queensland, the state where they hold just five of the 30 federal seats.
According to internal party polling, the Greens’ primary is down by about three per cent since 2022 and the government is apparently soaking up that vote.
If Labor manages to beat the Greens on primary and land in the top two, it’s likely they’ll ride Greens preferences home.
Voters’ voice in Blair
For the LNP, Labor-held Blair is the dark horse seat they’re throwing everything at winning.
Voters in backbencher Shayne Neumann’s electorate – which takes in Ipswich, west of Brisbane, and rural voters in the Somerset region – were bombarded by text messages from Peter Dutton’s party overnight, seizing on comments from Labor’s Penny Wong that appeared to leave the door open for a revival of the Indigenous voice to parliament.
Neumann’s constituents were dead against the voice, and more than 70 per cent voted No, despite their local member campaigning for the Yes vote.
As well as texts, giant red corflutes, featuring pictures of Anthony Albanese and Neumann in Yes T-shirts, were being printed at the last minute, ready to be erected at Blair polling booths on Saturday.
Labor sources say Neumann has had trouble rounding up local volunteers for his Blair campaign, with reinforcements sent in from the AWU in Brisbane. A senior Labor strategist late on Friday tells Chooks: “We’re hopeful of holding onto Blair”.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement for Neumann, first elected in 2007 and saved from a preselection battle under the party’s affirmative action rules by Albanese, who declared him a “hardworking and effective member of my team”.
Labor’s dark horse seat is Bonner, where former Brisbane City Councillor Kara Cook is taking on longtime Liberal backbencher, Ross Vasta (for more on that, keep reading).
From comrade to commentator
We know it’s a little early, but we may have already found this year’s stocking stuffer.
An unnamed “award-winning author” turned ghostwriter has been furiously crafting former Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s book since last year, ahead of its planned release by publisher HarperCollins in the final quarter of 2025.
Just in time for Christmas!
When Chooks spoke to Palaszczuk this week, we were keen to know all about the forthcoming tome. Should her old comrades in the Labor party be worried? What about the faceless men who forced her resignation in late 2023? Would any score-settling be done in the pages of her memoir?
Unfortunately, the ex-ALP leader was tight-lipped.
“I can’t talk about that,” she said. “I have to get permission from the publisher to talk about the book.”
On top of speaking engagements and role as an international ambassador for the Smart Energy Council, Palaszczuk is keen to bolster her commentating credentials ahead of Saturday’s poll.
When asked whether she had been involved behind the scenes of Labor’s campaign, Palaszczuk said: “I haven’t because I’m a commentator now. So I’ve been doing political commentary.”
Palaszczuk’s celebrity publicist Max Markson has been shopping around interview opportunities with his client this week.
For the record, Palaszczuk believes the seats to watch in Queensland are the southside Brisbane electorates of Griffith, where first-time candidate Renee Coffey is taking on Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather, and the Liberal-held seat of Bonner, which is being contested by former Labor councillor Kara Cook.
From the cafe to the C-suite
Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie used the cover of the Easter long weekend to announce the Crisafulli government had given ex-federal LNP MP Julian Simmonds a prized posting: acting chief executive officer of the state property development agency, Economic Development Queensland.
Was the position advertised? Nope. Do we know how Simmonds came to be considered by the board? Nope. Was Simmonds actively campaigning for the LNP state government to get elected in October? Yep, as executive director of conservative ginger group Australians For Prosperity (A4P), funded by Coal Australia.
And did that campaigning continue into the federal election, appearing as authoriser on anti-Labor material even after he got the EDQ gig? Yep and yep.
One-term MP Simmonds has been busy since he was beaten by the Greens’ Elizabeth Watson-Brown in the Brisbane seat of Ryan at the 2022 federal election. As well as his work at A4P, Simmonds was on the board of the South Bank Corporation, and development manager at Newstead-based property developer Cavcorp.
But a Chooks spy also spotted him serving behind the counter at trendy Newstead cafe Evra in March, which got us wondering: was Simmonds moonlighting as a barista before taking on the EDQ gig?
Almost. Simmonds tells Chooks that Evra is one of Cavcorp’s retail operations he ushered into life, but the picture was snapped when Cyclone Alfred shut down public transport. “I jumped behind the counter to save them from closing due to being short-staffed,” he says.
Spotted
Former Labor Brisbane City Councillor Kara Cook’s campaign to snatch the seat of Bonner from the Liberal National Party’s Ross Vasta (local MP for all but three of the last 21 years) is shaping up to be the dark horse of the ALP’s Queensland campaign.
Strategists say the ALP’s internal polling shows Cook has a “red hot go” in Bonner, which Vasta holds on a margin of just 3.4 per cent. Labor has poured resources into the seat, making even the most straight-faced LNP strategists a little nervous.
Cook’s video pitch to voters says Labor has delivered cheaper medicines, cheaper childcare, energy rebates, and promises to “make free TAFE permanent, training the tradies to build affordable homes”.
But who is the fresh-faced tradie beaming at Cook in the clip? Chooks has confirmed it’s none other than former Young Labor president Angus Haigh, the communications and campaigns officer for the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union in Queensland.
As one LNP source tells Chooks, “If Bonner really mattered to Labor, the unions could’ve at least splashed out for a local drama student instead of getting a party insider to play dress up.”
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G’day readers and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your essential behind-the-scenes guide to what’s really going on in Queensland politics.