Michael McKenna
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk could lose more comrades before October 2024 poll
G’day readers, and welcome back to another edition of Feeding the Chooks, your weekly insight into the thrills and spills of Queensland politics.
SINKING SHIP
Are any more rats about to flee the HMAS Palaszczuk as it flounders in troubled waters?
As Tourism and Sport minister Stirling Hinchliffewalked the plank this week, citing family reasons rather than the threat from the sisterhood and Labor’s need to meet gender quotas, party HQ put out a call for nominations in all government-held seats to contest next year’s election.
You would recall that when Annastacia Palaszczukreturned from her Italian vacanza last month, she issued an ultimatum to her MPs to declare their intentions by the end of October.
It was a classic play by the premier whose own leadership has been leaking support among caucus and the Labor movement for months as polls show that the government is about to hit an electoral iceberg.
The call for expressions of interest to nominate has the rank-and-file chattering about who will be forced out by faction-backed wannabes and who is going under their own steam.
Labor insiders say that Minister for Treaty and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships Leeanne Enoch and Resources Minister Scott Stewart are both weighing up retirement, as is Mackay MPJulieanne Gilbert, while Agriculture MinisterMark Furner will be given the heave-ho against his will.
Chooks hears knives are also being sharpened behind the backs of Sunnybank MP and Labor backbencherPeter Russo and embattled SpeakerCurtis Pitt.
But so far, all of Palaszczuk’s troops – apart from Hinchliffe and Ipswich West ‘Call me Sir’ MP Jim Madden who announced his retirement in April – have publicly said they plan to recontest.
ALP returning officer Terry Woods, who is running the EOI process, told officials this week that the nominations would show whether the party needed to intervene to ensure AA rules were met.
Nominations close November 10.
SQUEAKY WHEELS
Some noses were put out of joint in Queensland’s Labor party this week.
The kerfuffle was over who the Left and Right factions would put forward as their nominee for a special new parliamentary committee tasked with investigating the youth crime crisis.
Cop-turned-Labor-backbencher Melissa McMahon was the hot pick for the Left, and Kim Richards had also nominated, but Chooks’ spies say Townsville-based MP Aaron Harper “insisted” he be selected.
A Left source said Harper, a former ambo, had been very outspoken and had worked hard on the issue, and the committee needed someone from Townsville, a hot spot of youth crime and where Labor MPs are nervous about btheir re-election chances.
The final call was made by Deputy Premier Steven Miles, who Chooks hears was keen for a regional MP to be on the committee.
There was plenty of drama in the Right too, with former school principal Corrine McMillan, ex-staffer Jimmy Sullivan and Les Walker – who worked in youth detention for 18 years – overlooked for Hervey Bay MP Adrian Tantari.
It was a no-brainer for the pint-sized Old Guard faction, who chose former victims-of-crime campaigner Jonty Bush.
Bush will be deputy chair of the committee, led by Independent Noosa MP Sandy Bolton.
The LNP put up two former cops – Dan Purdie and Jim Macdonald – and ex-prosecutor Laura Gerber.
VALE CHUCK FEENEY
Tributes have flowed for Chuck Feeney, the American billionaire who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Australian research institutions, after his death in San Francisco on October 9.
Over his lifetime, Feeney – who made his money from duty-free shops and investments in tech start-ups – gave away an estimated $8 billion.
Feeney poured tens of millions into Queensland-based research, including a $27.5 million donation to the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in 2009.
Feeney bought into then-Premier Peter Beattie’s “Smart State” vision and helped fund some of the research that was borne out of that strategy.
Beattie tells Chooks that “the partnership between Chuck Feeney and the Smart State strategy changed Queensland for the better”.
“Queensland now has a number of world class research institutes which are delivering innovative outcomes,” Beattie says.
“Chuck understood the critical importance of innovation as a diver of economic growth.”
“He was a selfless, humble man who wanted to use his money to improve lives. He was one of a kind.”
“We are lucky he fell in love with Australia and Queensland in particular.”
STOKING THE FIRE
Culture warrior Amanda Stoker has made her return to politics.
The incendiary former federal senator, recently preselected to run in safe state seat of Oodgeroo, is working on a rebrand.
She has toned down the controversy and is getting on board with Liberal National Party leader David Crisafulli’s disciplined media strategy (which is don’t talk about anything except for health, crime, integrity and the cost of living).
But Labor frontbenchers in Question Time this week were quick to remind voters about Stoker’s more contentious moments over the past few years.
Health Minister and Minister for Women Shannon Fentiman criticised Stoker’s support for men’s rights activist Bettina Arndt, and remembered Stoker’s attack on former LNP leaderDeb Frecklington for “playing the gender card”.
“This is the woman that the LNP leader has hand-picked to change the LNP’s image problem for women – Amanda Stoker,” Fentiman cried.
From across the chamber, the LNP’s Amanda Camm heckled Fentiman for her Stoker take-down.
“This is the Minister for Women, criticising women. Very classy.”
Treasurer Cameron Dick called out Stoker’s “fierce and genuine advocacy for nuclear power in this state” and keenness to “wind back women’s right to termination of pregnancy”.
“When will the LNP reveal its plan to repeal and wind back abortion laws in this state?” Dick asked.
Labor attack dog and deputy premier Steven Miles went straight for the jugular.
“Who would have thought the LNP would need another extreme right-wing, crazy, woman-hating lunatic, but that is who the Leader of the Opposition chose as his candidate in Oodgeroo,” he said.
Judging by the attention given to Stoker, she has Labor worried about her inclusion in the LNP team.
VOICELESS GREENS
As Yes campaigners in Queensland brace themselves for a bruising result in the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum on Saturday, recriminations are already brewing.
Some Labor folks are furious at what they see as a lack of action by some high-profile Brisbane-based Greens, including federal MPs Max Chandler-Mather and Stephen Bates and Brisbane Lord-Mayoral candidateJonathan Sriranganathan, in mobilising public support for the voice.
(A notable exception, Labor sources say, is Greens MP for Ryan Elizabeth Watson-Brown who has organised Yes volunteers for most of the polling places in her electorate.)
Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Minister for Treaty and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships Leeanne Enoch, a Quandamooka woman and Queensland’s first Indigenous Cabinet minister, was so incensed, she told parliament she wrote to Bates and Chandler-Mather a fortnight ago.
In a letter to Bates, Enoch asked the pair to “put other politics aside … and mobilise your supporters to win the referendum,” after the Greens MPs took to Facebook to advertise events to teach volunteers how to campaign successfully to win seats for the progressive party.
“Over the coming 18 months we have an incredible opportunity to increase our Greens representation at every level of government here in Queensland,” Chandler-Mather told supporters.
“Next Saturday (September 23) I’m going to be running through our plan to turn the southside Green and how we have critical conversations that secure our success.”
As one irate Labor/Yes campaigner asks Chooks, “The Greens say they’ve got this all-powerful doorknocking machine, well, why didn’t they turn it on for this progressive cause?”
Greens MP for BrisbaneStephen Bates replied to Enoch’s email within hours. In the response, seen by Chooks, Bates says he’s “actively involved in the Yes23 campaign” - as are his staff in a voluntary capacity, including one who is co-captain for Yes23 in the Brisbane division - and has recruited volunteers to staff pre-poll booths, hosted events, and organised phonebanking.
Bates also invited Enoch to join him on the pre-poll at the state’s busiest polling place, Brisbane City Hall, to demonstrate “how Labor and the Greens are putting politics aside to secure a Yes vote”.
He never heard back.
Chandler-Mather shot back at Enoch via Chooks: “Around the same time the Minister was attacking the Greens, I was standing on pre-poll handing out for Yes, while I have spent months speaking at rallies for Yes, flyering and other campaign activities”.
The first-term federal MP – who spearheaded the Greens’ attack on PM Anthony Albanese over Labor’s housing policy – says it’s “sad and disappointing” that the state Labor government was “trying to use the voice campaign to launch bad faith personal attacks”.
ROSTERED ON
Does someone in Queensland Labor’s parliamentary rostering team have an ironic sense of humour?
When Health Minister and former Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman – in the absence of current AG Yvette D’Ath who is sick – introduced legislation on Wednesday morning to create a new criminal offence of coercive control, Labor backbencher Jim Madden was in the house, as scheduled.
Faithful Chooks readers might remember Madden was accused of coercive control by his ex-partner Sarah Grist, who told The Australian that Madden made her call him “Sir” during their years-long relationship.
Grist alleges Madden paid for her party membership and coerced her to take executive roles in his ALP branch, and told her how to vote, to gain internal party influence.
“I was coerced into acting how he wanted, in order to benefit him alone,” Grist told The Australian in April.
Madden has denied all wrongdoing, and won’t recontest next year’s election.
HAND ON HEART
There was a moment of drama in the parliamentary chamber on Wednesday afternoon, when LNP frontbencher Tim Nicholls fell unconscious during a debate on new racial vilification legislation.
As it happened, LNP MP and doctor Christian Rowan happened to be sitting next to Nicholls, and leapt into action, making it the fifth emergency he’s responded to at parliament this term.
Nicholls reassured Chooks from hospital on Wednesday night that he was recovering well.
“Poor old Doc Rowan! Thought he would have to leap on top and start giving me mouth to mouth & heart massage. Mixing his 2 professions. Medicine and politics.”
On Thursday morning, Speaker Curtis Pitt told parliament he was “proud of the way all sides of the house immediately came together to help the member” and that Nicholls seemed to be in “very good spirits”.
“(Nicholls) says that, despite rumours he does not have a heart, one has been discovered and it is still beating. “Therefore, he will not be troubling me to issue writs for a by-election,” Pitt said.
THE REAL-LIFE CHOOKS ARE DYING
Chooks has been distressed to hear that the actual parliamentary chickens appear to be dropping dead at an alarming rate. Of the four feathered members of the “Eggsembly” (near the wilted lettuce of the parliamentary vegie patch and behind the smoker’s area), only one, the Cluck of the Assembly, survives.
Miss ErskineLay, Dorothy Dixer, and Miss Hensard have all departed to that great chicken coop in the sky, a matter the human clerk of the assembly, Neil Laurie, insists is due to natural causes.
“They probably died of diabetes because they are so well fed,” Laurie tells Chooks.
He’s already ordered three more fowls to keep the Cluck company, as well as a fancy new pen, known as the “Eggstate”.
SPOTTED #2
Surely the most glamorous person ever to step foot into Queensland’s Parliament House since 1868, legendary star of stage, screen, and musical theatre Rhonda Burchmore was spied on Wednesday in the members’ reading room.
Burchmore had been invited by Labor MP Joan Pease to spruik the upcoming Wynnum Fringe on Brisbane’s bayside from November 15 to December 3, which will also feature Chooks’ favourite Daryl Braithwaite, as well as Marcia Hines, Diesel, the Bamboos, Robbie Porter’s magical oyster show, and comedians Wil Anderson, Jimeoin and Geraldine Hickey.
The songstress blew the roof off the reading room, belting out When You’re Good to Mama from the musical Chicago, and Dinah Washington’s What a Difference a Day Makes.
FEED THE CHOOKS
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