Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s three-hike pay rise plan
Qld’s teachers, nurses and cops would be advised not to look too closely at the Premier’s pay schedule, as they battle for a rise of their own.
CHICKEN FEED?
Queensland’s hardworking teachers, nurses and cops have been offered pay rises by the Palaszczuk government of 4 per cent a year for the first two years of their new pay deal, and 3 per cent in the third year.
That’s above the government’s usual 2.5 per cent wage policy for the public service, and comes after a pay freeze during the dark days of the pandemic.
The Chooks note that Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk herself – and the other chickens in the QLD parliamentary chook shed – are in line for THREE pay hikes in a year: 2 per cent in September 2021, 2.25 per cent in March, and 2.5 per cent in September. That’s a 6.75 per cent in a year, or for the Premier, a bump of about $30,000, hiking her pay from a feather under $400,000 to $427,500 by September.
Awkwardly for Palaszczuk, that flew in the face of a promise she made in the 2020 election year, that QLD pollies wouldn’t receive a pay rise until 2023. (As Palaszczuk pointedly pecked, it’s the decision of the Independent Remuneration Tribunal – the same body that agreed to a pay freeze for pollies when Palaszczuk asked in 2020).
POLITICAL SWINGERS
It was a bit of a Freaky Friday moment at the State of Origin decider in Brisbane this week.
While Annastacia Palaszczuk was knocking back a chardy with NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet at Brisbane’s Hotel LA at the top of Caxton Street, her political rival was rubbing shoulders with a Labor legend.
Unlikely friends David Crisafulli and Peter Beattie snapped a selfie together in front of the Origin shield just before kick-off in a thrilling decider.
Palaszczuk’s prediction earlier in the day that Queensland could pull off the win without star player Cameron Munster proved true and she won the premiers’ traditional State of Origin bet.
“Time to light the Harbour Bridge Maroon!!” she tweeted.
KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE, YOUR ENEMIES CLOSER
Whoever is in charge of proof reading the LNP’s annual reports needs an extra coffee. That, or they have a wicked sense of humour.
In her report to the LNP convention Jane Hooper, Metro West Women’s chair, said she looked forward to “continuing to support our sitting councillors.”
Included on the list of conservative councillors Hooper plans to support was Labor’s Steve Griffiths and independent Nicole Johnston – a thorn in the side of Brisbane’s LNP-controlled council.
Johnston quit the LNP in 2010 to sit as an independent and has been a headache for the party ever since.
Is this a case of keep your friends close and your enemies closer?
SUNNY SIDE UP
Labor lobbyist Elliot Stein has ditched busy QLD lobby mob Hawker Britton in Queensland and shifted to Canberra to work as new Aged Care and Sport Minister Anika Wells’s interim chief of staff.
It’s a temporary, two-month gig, and The Chooks hear Stein – who worked for former federal Labor agriculture minister Joe Ludwig in the Rudd/Gillard government and QLD Labor ministers Bill Byrne and Stirling Hinchliffe in the Palaszczuk state administration – has another job lined up afterwards (not as a lobbyist) and there’s a permanent COS waiting in the wings for Wells.
But is there a conflict of interest between Stein’s old lobbying clients and Wells’ ministerial portfolio? Stein insists not, and he’s steering clear of Hawker Britton operatives if they try to lobby his new boss.
Hawker Britton has 47 clients in Canberra logged on the lobbyist register, 14 of which jumped on board after Labor won the May federal election.
CHANGING OF THE GUARD
The head of the Queensland arm of the Australian Workers Union, Steve Baker, has retired after 23 years as an official and four years at the helm of the state’s oldest blue-collar trade union.
The AWU executive on Thursday voted for southern district secretary Stacey Schinnerl to replace Baker.
It is the first time a woman has been chosen to lead a state branch of AWU, the bedrock of Right faction Labor politics.
“As a woman, the importance of my appointment as secretary has not escaped me,” Schinnerl said.
“In a gender sense, I represent a portion of our membership that has previously not been reflected in senior management levels in our organisation.”
“I think that is a really important step in terms of the changing face of the modern AWU.”
With Labor’s Left dominant in Queensland for the past decade, will Schinnerl be up to the job of pushing the Right back in the driver’s seat?
JUST A DAY-OLD CHICK
Queensland state parliament has a new youngest MP, the Liberal National Party’s Bryson Head, not quite 27, who won the rural seat of Callide at a by-election on June 18.
Head fills the shoes of the outspoken Colin Boyce, who shifted to federal politics when he won the electorate of Flynn at the May poll. You might remember Boyce for causing headaches for Scott Morrison during the campaign when he told the ABC that Morrison’s promise to hit net zero emissions by 2050 was “flexible” and left plenty of “wiggle room”.
Head enters parliament after getting into politics at uni in Brisbane and after working as a geologist at coal mines in central Queensland. From Chinchilla, on the western downs 300km west of Brisbane, Head is keen for fellow MPs who spruik “environmental positions that impact on rural and regional Queensland” to spend some time in the bush.
“See how your food gets to your table, and how the lights come on when you flick a switch,” Head says.
“And it’s not just Greens MPs (who should come) but independents and Labor MPs and even colleagues of mine who don’t understand everything that happens in the bush.”
And as any office that’s got a resident youth will attest, Head’s now the go-to person to fix IT issues in parliament, on both sides of the aisle.
“My election to parliament probably means computer literacy has improved by about a factor of 10,” he jokes about the famously tech-averse Boyce.
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