PM poised to override affirmative action rules in QLD
Is Anthony Albanese going to swoop in and save his Queensland fellas? And why is David Crisafulli jetting to Melbourne with cap in hand?
G’day readers and welcome back to Feeding the Chooks, your weekly behind-the-scenes guide to what’s really going on in Queensland politics.
PM to save Qld blokes?
Is Anthony Albanese poised to intervene and save a few of the fellas in his Queensland party room from Labor’s usually-strict gender quotas?
Labor insiders tells Chooks that a report was delivered to the ALP administrative committee on Monday about the federal election, due next year, and the seats to be defended and targeted.
The report, authored by ALP returning officerTerry Wood, raised Labor’s affirmative action policy, requiring women to be preselected in at least half of the party’s held seats and senate spots by January 2025.
At the moment, Labor has just one woman – Aged Care ministerAnika Wells in the north Brisbane electorate of Lilley – in the five seats (out of Queensland’s 30) the government holds in the state.
Labor has just three senate spots, with the only female being Nita Green.
Woods did the maths and made the point that two of eight doesn’t come anywhere near the current 45 per cent quota or the half-half split required by next January.
As Chooks has previously reported, the two likely victims of AA are Moreton MP Graham Perrett and Blair MP Shayne Neumann, given the rest of the Labor blokes are on the frontbench (Jim Chalmers, Murray Watt, Anthony Chisholm) or Speaker of the House of Representatives, Milton Dick.
Rumour has it that Perrett has accepted his fate and is willing to retire but Neumann, who was dumped from the frontbench by Albanese, is digging in.
Insiders have told Chooks that Albanese has made it clear he wants to protect Neumann in the belief the veteran MP – who first stood for the Ipswich-based seat in 2004, and has held it since 2007 – is the only one who can hold Blair.
Another insiders suspects it has more to do with the Australian Workers Union-led Right faction wanting to keep its hold on the seat.
Forget his jibes at the Liberals for having a problem with women, the prime minister seems to be prioritising his government’s hold on power over Labor’s commitment to equal female representation.
Under the rules, the National Executive has control over federal preselections and can override the state branches and any inconvenient affirmative action rules.
Crisafulli chases cash in Victoria
David Crisafulli will jet out of the state in which he’s trying to win government next month to rattle the can for corporate political donations in Victoria.
Chooks hears the cash-for-access event in a private Melbourne boardroom was originally touted as a $950-a-head sit-down meal with the Queensland Liberal National Party leader, but was so oversubscribed it’s now a standing-room-only cocktail affair.
The bean-counters at LNP HQ have told donors it won’t be the only interstate fundraiser for Crisafulli – and possibly other members of his shadow cabinet – as they furiously try to stockpile cash ahead of the October state election.
“People see Crisafulli as the great hope of Team Blue at the moment,” one LNP insider tells Chooks, while another political observer notes that there is a “lot of pent-up Liberal Party cash in Victoria” given the miserable state of the local Libs.
This week, the LNP was caught spruiking a $990-a-ticket “semi-private” lunch with Crisafulli on February 28 in the Queensland parliamentary cellar, with the optimistic TryBooking advert describing him as the “Queensland Premier (elect)”.
There’s no rest for the Premier (elect) in his grovelling efforts; the LNP will charge $1000-a-pop to business and mining leaders for “an intimate lunch” with Crisafulli, and the LNP’s central Queensland candidates for Keppel and Rockhampton Nigel Hutton and Donna Kirkland, in a private room at Rockhampton’s Criterion Hotel next Wednesday.
Former QLD Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk temporarily banned her ministers from attending cash-for-access fundraisers in a fit of ethical pique, before performing a balletic about-face after realising the conservatives were raking in the cash by continuing the morally bankrupt practice of selling access to elected officials to anyone with deep enough pockets.
Despite Labor resurrecting its corporate donation scheme, renamed the Queensland Labor Business Roundtable Program in May last year, the LNP still out-fundraised the ALP by about $1m in 2023.
Donation records show Labor declared 299 donations last year, worth $898,129, dwarfed by 627 donations to the LNP worth $1.8m.
LNP state director Ben Riley tells Chooks the party needs to fundraise as much as it can to combat Labor’s “undemocratic financial gerrymander,” referring to a ban on property developer donations, the installation of spending and donation caps, and the authorisation of third-party campaigns that allow bodies such as unions to spend about $1m during an election.
“While the Palaszczuk/Miles Labor government used taxpayers to fund $400,000 of polling, the LNP would need 100 donors to fund the same piece of work,” Riley says.
“LNP candidates and members will continue to work harder for Queenslanders, within strict spending and donation caps, to deliver change in October.”
And in other fundraising news, the LNP’s candidate for the Ipswich West by-election, Darren Zanow, has tipped $30,000 into LNP coffers – just three days after Chooks’ last column which noted he’d previously donated only to Labor between 2016 and 2022.
Rennick ruminates on court challenge
Controversial Queensland Senator Gerard Rennick was busy in Canberra this week demanding Labor Agriculture minister Murray Watt table evidence on the existence of climate change.
Watch the video for the tit for tat between the pair, which left a bemused Watt with his head in his hands.
But it prompted Chooks to call Rennick about whether he had gathered evidence for a widely-mooted legal challenge to last year’s Liberal National Party preselection, which led to him being booted off the party’s Senate ticket.
The LNP’s state council backed LNP treasurer Stuart Fraser 131 votes to Senator Rennick’s 128, after the sitting senator was questioned about his “party loyalty” at the closed-door meeting.
As Chooks has previously reported Rennick had some fairly reasonable questions about the bonafides of a handful of voters in the preselection.
His appeal to the LNP hierarchy was unsuccessful in securing a new preselection ballot and the senator later sought legal advice.
Rennick didn’t get back to Chooks but there are rumours he is still planning a court challenge, though he’s not yet served legal documents on LNP HQ.
AWOL Annastacia
There’s been a notable absence from the campaign trail for the March 16 Inala by-election, the poll triggered by the sudden exit of Annastacia Palaszczuk in December.
And that’s the former Premier herself.
Now that Palaszczuk is back from the ski chalets of Whistler (where Chooks hears she bumped into her former deputy and frenemy Jackie Trad; Oh, to have been a Canadian chipmunk in the snow for that undoubtedly awkward encounter), it was thought she would be hitting the hustings with her wannabe replacement, Labor candidate Margie Nightingale.
Not so.
Every local Labor identity and his brother – including federal speaker Milton Dick, his actual brother and state treasurer Cameron Dick, state MPs Jess Pugh, Jennifer Howard, Lance McCallum and Charis Mullen, local councillor Charles Strunk, and Labor mayoral candidate Tracey Price – have campaigned alongside the Labor staffer and former teacher or turned up to her campaign launch.
Chooks hears Palaszczuk wanted to go to a Nightingale event but had to send her apologies after she ruptured her Achilles and was left on crutches after a fall.
Also throwing a spanner in the works for Labor’s Inala campaign is an unexpected independent candidate for the by-election, former Labor staffer Nayda Hernandez, who recently quit the ALP to run against Nightingale.
Hernandez worked for Forest Lake councillor Strunk for years, and briefly for Shayne Neumann, and had been touted as a possible future Labor candidate.
The ALP has such dominance in the electorate that even Hernandez’s strong Labor branch support is unlikely to dramatically dent Nightingale’s chances.
Trad turns up
Speaking of Jackie Trad, she’s been on hand to campaign for Bec Mac, Labor’s candidate for the Brisbane City Council Gabba ward at the March 16 local government elections.
Mac – an artist and radio broadcaster whose performance alter-ego was Aphrodite the Goddess of Love (complete with giant clam shell) – is up against sitting Greens councillor Trina Massey, and gave the “one & only legend” Trad a big wrap when the former South Brisbane MP joined her on the hustings this week.
“Having Jackie by my side really prompted people to talk about how much was achieved when she was our state representative and how so little has been achieved since we lost her,” Mac gushed.
The Greens smashed Labor in the Gabba ward at the 2020 council elections, with former councillor (now mayoral candidate) Jonathan Sriranganathan winning 45.55 per cent of the primary vote, eclipsing the LNP’s Nathaniel Jones on 29.48 per cent and Labor’s Rachel Gallagher on 24.97 per cent.
Spotted
Vivian Lobo, former LNP candidate for the marginal Brisbane seat of Lilley, appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Friday morning, on charges relating to allegedly providing false information to the Australian Electoral Commission.
The AFP confirmed this week that Lobo had been issued a court summons for allegedly providing a false address to the AEC ahead of the 2022 election. It came after a 20-month investigation sparked by The Australian’s reporting that Lobo’s declared Everton Park address was abandoned and dilapidated.
He was photographed leaving for work from another house, a 23-minute drive away in Windsor in the neighbouring electorate of Brisbane.
Lobo has been charged with four counts of knowingly providing false or misleading information, and the matter has been adjourned for four weeks.
Behind the Scenes
This week, Feeding the Chooks introduces a new video series, taking our readers behind the scenes of Queensland parliament. Speaker Curtis Pitt has given Chooks unprecedented access to the historic building and its staff. The first instalment descends deep into the bowels of parliament, to the Opposition offices, where LNP leader David Crisafulli and manager of Opposition business Andrew Powell are shirt-fronted to show Chooks around.
Keep an eagle eye out for Crisafulli’s Ironing Borg (not a typo).
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