Pressure on Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to act on Speaker Curtis Pitt
Moves are afoot to make it a permanent break for Qld Speaker Curtis Pitt — pictured conquering mountains while on leave for ‘back problems’.
G’day readers, and welcome to Feeding the Chooks, where too much Queensland politics is never enough. Reported this week by Michael McKenna, Sarah Elks, Mackenzie Scott, and Lydia Lynch.
This’ll be our last column for a few weeks; we’re taking a midwinter break.
QLD’S SPEAKER MAY HAVE TAKEN FINAL PITT STOP
Another cabinet reshuffle for the Palaszczuk Government is on the cards with moves afoot to make Curtis Pitt’s latest rest from the role of Speaker a permanent thing.
The veteran MP and one-term Treasurer has taken leave for the second time in a month after again taking the chair and slurring his way through Question Time on Wednesday.
This time, he blamed back pain medication on his befuddled behaviour after citing the effects of a “bad flu,” and not a long night on the drink, for showing up late and slurring at the Cairns sitting of parliament on May 9 when cops were sent to his hotel room to wake him up.
But Labor party room compassion for Pitt – who took leave after Cairns to “care for his mental health” – is evaporating with this week’s return performance as the slurring Speaker.
One MP told Chooks: “The backbench are pretty shitty about taking the oxygen away from a good budget, and he was the Treasurer”.
Some have also questioned his recent social media posts – showing him conquering mountains around his north Queensland home – alongside his pleadings that he was affected by strong painkillers because of severe back problems ahead of imminent surgery.
A number of senior Labor insiders tell Chooks that they now don’t expect Pitt to return as Speaker and that the “jostling” is underway to take the chair.
Pitt is a member of the Old Guard faction and, under the factional split for ministries and senior roles with the Left and Right, was offered the Speakership by Annastacia Palaszczuk as an extra to what his grouping was entitled given their small number of MPs.
So, now the expectation is that Palaszczuk, and, as always, with the guidance of union and Left faction boss Gary “Blocker” Bullock, will tell Pitt it’s time and turn to a serving minister from the major factions to replace him.
The frontrunner is tourism and sports minister Stirling Hinchliffe, a member of the Right, one-time staffer to former speaker Ray Hollis, former leader of government business and true parliamentary pedant, to be offered the chair.
“It is a job that is normally reserved for someone in the twilight of their political careers,’’ a Labor colleague told Chooks in backing Hinchliffe if the job comes up.
SPEAKER’S CAUTIONARY TALE
But while it seems a majority of the caucus thinks Pitt is gone, a little history might give the premier even more pause to her usual reluctance to take action against a troublesome Labor MP.
Her political icon, former premier Wayne Goss, in 1995 moved to sack then-Speaker Jim Fouras with the support of the caucus and replace him with, you guessed it, Henry Palaszczuk.
Labor had just won the election with only a one-seat majority, and there were moves by independent Liz Cunningham to nominate Fouras as Speaker and re-elect him with the opposition’s support, to embarrass Goss.
Palaszczuk withdrew his candidacy and Labor nominated Fouras, who then took the chair.
MOLTO COSTOSO
Queensland Labor’s Business Roundtable program is off and running, and boy, is it expensive.
Annastacia Palaszczuk banned her Labor ministers from attending cash-for-access fundraisers in July last year, before doing a prompt about-face this month and breaking her promise.
The first cab off the rank for the QLBR is a lunch with Tourism and Sport Minister Stirling Hinchliffe at Italian restaurant Gusto da Gianni at Portside in Brisbane on June 27.
It’s free for members of the QLBR (a year’s subscription costs $10,000 plus GST), or you can pay a whopping $1500 per person for the two-hour event, hosted by Jared Cassidy, leader of the Labor Opposition in the Brisbane City Council.
The invitation, circulated by Labor’s director of business partnerships Whitney Luzzo-Kelly, also thanks Chris Tyquin, GOA executive director.
$1500 a pop? Let’s hope the lasagne is good.
TIKTOK TAKEBACK
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is back on TikTok after a three-month hiatus.
The comeback video updates her 30,500 followers on the $550 energy rebate promised to every Queensland household in the government’s Tuesday budget. It has quickly become one of her most popular videos, with 323,500 views.
But young people, who are feeling the cost of living crunch the hardest, didn’t appear to totally back the spend.
“What about the homeless crisis Anna?” one commenter replied.
Another said: “My HECS (university debt) just went up by $7500 so no $550 won’t help.”
Behind the scenes, Palaszczuk’s social team is notorious for staff turnover. After posting nearly a video each day in March, the TikTok page suddenly went silent around the time digital director, Emily Arlidge, left.
With the election a little over a year away, will the team be built backup? One thing the premier had going for her account was a unique command of the idiosyncrasies of the platform, taking advantage of the latest trendy song, sound bite or editing style.
But that didn’t stop Chooks from declaring opposition leader David Crisafulli Queensland parliament’s King of TikTok last year after he clocked more than 3.5m views on a video about the LNP’s plan to reduce learner driver fees.
But his TikTok budget breakdown for the kids only reached 4,462 eyeballs.
SOLID GOLD GAMES
The International Olympic Committee thought Brisbane was pretty well ready to host the 2032 Games when its heavyweights visited the city last year, Annastacia Palaszczuk has revealed.
“When the Olympics committee came out here, just to check on our status, they said ‘you could essentially have an Olympics tomorrow’,” she boasted to Labor’s post-budget lunch this week.
“That was a very good tick of approval because most of the infrastructure was already built.”
That raises an expensive question.
Why then, are we replacing the Gabba with a new $2.7bn stadium and building a new $2.5bn arena at Roma Street?
OVERHEARD IN PARLIAMENT
Deputy Opposition leader Jarrod Bleijie caused consternation in the parliamentary chamber this week, when he interjected during a debate about new birth certificate modernisation laws.
The Palaszczuk government legislation – which passed on Wednesday night – ensures adults and teenagers wanting to change their sex on their birth certificates no longer have to have sexual reassignment surgery.
During a speech by Labor MP Chris Whiting, Bleijie interrupted: “Feminine identity? It’s blokes in a dress.”
Cringe.
Bleijie went on to make his own speech, opposing the legislation, and accused Labor of ignoring feminist groups.
“The Birth, Deaths and Marriages Registration Bill is an attack on women, it is an attack on women’s rights and it is an attack on young girls,” Bleijie said.
When the laws passed, there was celebration from national LGBTIQ+ group Equality Australia.
Equality Australia’s Ymania Brown, a trans woman, said: “We have been waiting for these life-changing reforms for a very long time and this is a momentous day for our community”.
“Queensland was one of the last places in Australia to have cruel and outdated legal barriers that deny many trans people ID that accurately reflects their gender.”
SPOTTED: MAKING NICE IN MANLY
As Chooks revealed last week, there’s been a biff on Brisbane’s bayside over the selection of new Wynnum-Manly councillor, Sara Whitmee.
Labor state MP for Lytton, Joan Pease, was spitting chips that Whitmee had been parachuted into the seat, at the direction of union and party powerbroker Gary Bullock and the ALP’s admin committee, over her preferred candidate, Brenda Ryan.
ALP sources told Chooks that Pease went “postal,” threatened to resign, and appealed to Anthony Albanese to intervene.
But what do we have here? Pease and Whitmee popping up on Instagram together, smiling cheerily at the Manly Lota RSL’s Friday night raffle at the Manly Hotel.
All’s well that ends well perhaps, but there was no mention of Whitmee in Pease’s post.
FEED THE CHOOKS
Got a tip?
elkss@theaustralian.com.au
mckennam@theaustralian.com.au
lynchl@theaustralian.com.au
More Coverage
Crisafulli’s night of the long knives looms for Labor luvvies
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.
Albo’s bloke faces battle for Blair
Will Anthony Albanese’s decision to save a Queensland MP from gender quotas come back to bite him, as the LNP prepare to preselect a woman to contest the federal seat? And who is state Labor’s new comrade in chief?