LNP members furious after City Hall candidate blunder
LNP HQ is desperately trying to placate member anger after it endorsed a teardrop-tattooed council candidate who turned out to be an online troll with a lengthy criminal record.
G’day readers, and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your inside guide to what’s really going on in Queensland politics.
Teardrops on the LNP’s guitar
Eyebrows are being raised over the LNP’s supposedly robust vetting of city hall candidate Brock Alexander, who poker-faced his way to endorsement, in an interview with an internal panel sporting a teardrop tattooed under his eye.
This week, the party was left with egg on their faces (yes, we are face-fixated on this issue) and were forced to dump Alexander – who was contesting the Labor-held Brisbane City Council ward of Deagon – after a raft of revelations.
Alexander was ditched – but will remain on ballot papers under the LNP banner – after some of his “spicy” social media posts - including an allegedly racist business review - were shown to party HQ. It later emerged he was allegedly facing active criminal charges, had been in jail - twice, and had been an alleged vicious online troll who had blamed Bruce and Denise Morcombe for the kidnapping and murder of their son, Daniel.
The LNP has since referred Alexander to the cops for allegedly forging his police check documents.
How many steps were skipped in the purportedly stringent vetting process – which apparently includes an exhaustive deep-dive into a prospective candidate’s social media accounts – to give Alexander the green light? He was selected just days before nominations were due.
The party insists the process was tough, they were hoodwinked and misled by a determined Alexander, who apparently covered up the teardrop tattoo with makeup during his interview with HQ. When it was noticed, he explained it was in honour of a dead relative.
It’ll be up to the LNP now to tighten vetting procedures to make sure a similar blunder doesn’t happen again, and the party is considering adding independent checks - performed by a third-party and already used by Labor - to the process.
LNP president Lawrence Springborg wrote a lengthy email to members, acknowledging he’d been contacted by rank-and-file party people about the snafu, and confirming Alexander’s applicant review interview had been done by “experienced rank and file members and supported by secretariat staff”.
“Our systems and processes are based on trust and honesty and reasonable and available processes of discovery,” Springborg said, conceding it was impossible to be across every social media site and private discussion board.
He said the party was reliant on potential candidates handing over official documents with tax, criminal history, and financial information, that was “not possible” for the LNP to independently verify.
“This is information that is not readily, or independently accessible to the party for understandable privacy reasons,” Springborg said.
“In these cases each applicant sources the information and provides it to the applicant review committee.”
“It is not possible for the above reasons for the party to independently validate, or verify such information.”
But LNP members across the state are furious, none more so than local branchies.
Out on Brisbane’s bayside, LNP members are livid at state director Ben Riley’s team, and are threatening to move a no-confidence motion at a branch meeting after the March 16 local government elections.
“As a longtime party member, the branch is disgusted in the candidate that the state executive chose for the party, and local branch members didn’t even get a say,” one veteran LNP member tells Chooks.
“The LNP head office is so caught up with internal politics that they are not doing the job that they are paid to do.”
“A no-confidence motion will be considered after the council election in the Sandgate SEC, in state director Ben Riley and deputy director Michael Negerevich.”
“And if the state executive don’t take action, members will rally to get 30 state council signatures to force a state council meeting to deal with it.”
“I struggle to understand how someone can walk into a vetting committee with a teardrop tattoo and not be picked up. It goes to show their utter incompetence.”
In Springborg’s email, he told members “significant energy and focus” was on the Brisbane City Council campaign, and 20 candidates were already endorsed for the October state election, “which is ahead of where we have been at this stage of previous election cycles”.
Friends with benefits
Steven Miles is cosying-up to those wily country boys from Katter’s Australian Party as if his (political) life depended on it.
With polls showing a hung parliament after this October’s state election is a very real prospect, the Premier has learned the lessons of the past and is seemingly determined to lasso the KAP as Labor’s new friends, with benefits.
Remember, Campbell Newman treated the normally conservative-leaning KAP with derision while premier and the Liberal National Party later received a cold shoulder as they tried to secure their help to form minority government, ultimately achieved by Labor with other crossbench support.
And Annastacia Palaszczuk wasn’t any better; giving the KAP MPs a spray and cutting their staff funding - which led to her being found guilty contempt of parliament in 2018 - over their refusal to denounce the party’s then senator Fraser Anning who had called for a ban on Muslim immigration and referenced the “final solution”.
This week, Miles did something quite extraordinary in shooting a social media video with KAP MP Nick Dametto in front of the minor party’s billboard in Townsville.
The billboard was splashed with “Make Townsville safe again” in a pretty clear dig at Labor’s record in the regional city where youth crime has been rampant.
Miles joined his new pal after adopting the KAP’s signature crime policy to send recidivist youth offenders to remote properties to “work on the land” while completing compulsory therapeutic programs.
“When it comes to keeping Queenders safe, I don’t care where the ideas come from,’’ Miles said on the social media post before giving the floor to Dametto.
Chooks gave KAP leader Robbie Katter a bell, who says his phone has been running hot with calls from Labor MPs.
“I would say our popularity meter seems to be lighting up at the moment with the government,” he says.
“I have plenty of friends back in the north west, I don’t need any more friends down at parliament.”
Katter says there have been no formal chats about what would go down in a hung parliament or possible preference deals but: “I think most things are implied”.
“I expect the opposition and the government to say 10 times before the election they won’t do deals - they never do until they do.”
Katter was tight-lipped about any wooing, but watch this space. The KAP, which has three MPs, is hoping to capitalise on regional anger about Labor and increase their numbers.
Worried out West
Steven Miles might have staunched Labor’s spiralling support in the polls but as the pollies like to say there’s only one measure that really matters and that is on election day.
Next month, the Labor leader’s honeymoon could be eclipsed by the outcomes of two by-elections: one for Annastacia Palaszczuk’s seat of Inala and the other for Ipswich West, where “Call me Sir” Labor MP Jim Madden has exited.
Inala is Labor heartland and, with a 28.17 per cent margin, is all but certain of being retained by the government – even in the absence, so far, of the former premier making an appearance to help out candidate Margie Nightingale.
But Ipswich West, won by Labor in 2020 with a 14.35 per cent margin, is a different story.
It might seem to be a big enough buffer to survive a swing, but the seat was lost to One Nation in 1998, soon after local gal Pauline Hanson burst onto the federal political scene, and to the LNP in the Campbell Newman-led wipe-out in 2012.
And there are other factors at play: cost of living and youth crime.
The latter has been fuelled in recent weeks by the shocking killing (in the neighbouring seat of Bundamba) of 70-year-old Vyleen White, in front of her young granddaughter, allegedly at the hands of a teenager on bail.
The seat is being contested for Labor by former Palaszczuk staffer Wendy Bourne, who is up against local show society president and businessman Darren Zanow for the LNP, One Nation’s Mark Bone, and Melody Lindsay from the Legalise Cannabis QLD Party.
Labor insiders tell Chooks that Labor HQ has “only just woken up that the seat could be lost” and that the campaign machine has been in disarray.
“It is probably the worst place, apart from Townsville, for Labor to defend in a by-election: it’s got a big One Nation vote, is outer suburbia and youth crime is very real for them,’’ one senior Labor insider says.
“The margin doesn’t matter, this seat can swing hard.”
“If it is lost it spells the beginning of the end for the government.”
The LNP are this weekend ramping-up their campaign, telling voters to “send a message to the Palaszczuk-Miles government to do more on crime and cost of living,” and erecting anti-Miles billboards in the electorate.
LNP insiders have confirmed that they have held discussions with One Nation and the two parties will be preferencing each other, another blow for Labor’s chances in a tight field of just four candidates.
Jimmy wins, and loses
What did newly minted assistant minister Jimmy Sullivan do to Labor big boss John Battams?
Sullivan easily won a preselection battle this week in his inner-north Brisbane electorate of Stafford, trouncing public servant and former electorate officer Susan Lynch - but Chooks hears ALP state president Battams snubbed the sitting MP.
The contested preselection was a rare challenge not seen in faction-dominated state Labor circles in decades and ruffled some feathers.
Sullivan, who served as chief of staff for Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath before being elected in his dad’s old seat in 2020, had a convincing win on the final weighted results: 83-17.
But what is interesting (and a little awkward) is the voting breakdown detailed in a confidential report by returning officer Terry Wood.
Premier Steven Miles and Battams were each given an “ex-officio” vote and the results were split – meaning one of them chose to back Lynch over Sullivan.
Chooks has it on good authority that Miles voted for his caucus colleague. Battams didn’t return Chooks’ calls.
Sullivan declined to talk about the internal machinations, but tells Chooks: “I am very thankful and humbled by the overwhelming support from party members to continue working for this beautiful community and I think it’s a strong endorsement of the work the Miles government is delivering”.
Will Corinne bet it all on Red(cliffe)?
Is Star casino’s in-house lobbyist going to roll the dice and gamble on the seat of Redcliffe, to be vacated at the next election by Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath?
The casino giant’s Corinne Mulholland - who unsuccessfully contested the federal seat of Petrie for Labor in 2019 - is Steven Miles’ pick to be Labor’s candidate in the Brisbane bayside electorate, one of the LNP’s 14 targets come October.
D’Ath announced her retirement on Thursday.
Chooks hears Mulholland has been considering her options, but is reluctant, even though she has the backing of her Right faction as well as the Premier.
Former Moreton Bay councillor Koliana Winchester’s name has also been tossed around as a potential contender.
But if Mulholland decides not to run, Chooks is told there’s currently no back-up plan.
ALP state secretary Kate Flanders emailed branch members on Thursday afternoon, revealing expressions of interest will be open until March 22, and that only women need apply.
New video: Behind the scenes
In this week’s episode of Feeding the Chooks’ new video series that goes behind the scenes of Queensland parliament, Labor backbencher Jonty Bush gives us an exclusive peek into the MPs’ reading room. Bush won the Brisbane seat of Cooper at the 2020 election, after the retirement of Tourism Minister Kate Jones, but before she entered parliament, she was a high-profile advocate for victims of homicide and their families after the killings of her father and sister.
Red flag for JPL
The LNP’s multiculturalism spokesman John-Paul Langbroek is an enthusiastic attendee of the opening of an international-themed envelope and also a prolific user of Instagram, a combination that got him into strife recently.
JPL, as he’s known on the mean streets of his Surfers Paradise electorate, popped up in Inala to mark the Lunar New Year and to campaign alongside the LNP’s by-election candidate, Trang Yen, the acting Chief Financial Officer of Trade and Investment Queensland and the president of the Vietnamese Football Association.
So far, so good.
But Langbroek raised the ire of some Vietnamese-Australians in Annastacia Palaszczuk’s old seat when he posted a happy selfie with Yen, with an emoji of the Vietnamese flag and the Australian flag.
Chooks hears Vietnamese Community in Australia Queensland chapter president Cuong Bui, one of the first Vietnamese refugees to come to Australia in 1975, rang Yen and told her to tell JPL to remove the flag, which is seen by some as synonymous with the communist regime many refugees fled.
Langbroek deleted the Vietnamese flag emoji from the post, and Bui tells Chooks he swiftly rang to apologise.
“I’ve known him for a long time, and I think it was a genuine mistake,” Bui – a GP in Inala – says.
“But I think he should study his lessons a little bit more and study the Vietnamese community a little bit more.”
The indefatigable Langbroek (who this week has been to the opening of the Worongary mosque, the Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office Chinese New Year function, and at least two more Year of the Dragon events) tells Chooks: “We all make mistakes. It was quickly corrected”.
Labor Health Minister Shannon Fentiman roasted Langbroek in parliament this month about one of his Instagram stories, in which he jokingly referred to fellow LNP MPs as the “boys’ club”.
He’s since blocked Fentiman and her minions from his account, a move some have seen as a challenge.
“He’ll never be able to block all of us,” an ALP staffer tells Chooks.
O’Donoghue gets Premier gig
Annastacia Palaszczuk’s post-Premier life has been bolstered by a taxpayer-funded executive assistant, one of a handful of perks bestowed on a former leader for at least the first 12 months of their re-entry into the civilian world.
Chooks can reveal Palaszczuk’s new right-hand-woman is Donna O’Donoghue, a long-time staffer in the Premier’s office and the 1998 Labor candidate for the western Queensland seat of Gregory.
A former colleague of both Palaszczuk and O’Donoghue recalls the latter describing herself to colleagues as “the sharpest legal mind in Queensland”.
Palaszczuk - like all QLD Premiers who have served for five years or longer - will get “reasonable” office accommodation, an EA, $2000 worth of phone and correspondence expenses, a car and a driver on an “as needs” basis, and home security if the state’s police commissioner decides it’s warranted.
“Generally after the first 12 months, the office accommodation, executive assistant and home security are no longer provided,” the ministerial handbook sniffs.
Spotted
Bundaberg mayor – and former LNP MP – Jack Dempsey has broadened his horizons beyond worrying just about the usual local government remit of roads, rates and rubbish.
The one-time cop has dipped his toe into higher education, promising that if he’s re-elected at the March 16 local poll, he will “investigate establishing a Regional University Study Hub” in the Bundaberg region.
Dempsey’s official announcement explains that the federal government-funded hubs help “students in regional areas access higher education without having to leave their community”.
An extremely worthy aim that’s left Chooks’ Bundy spies a touch confused. You see, the Bundaberg campus of Central Queensland University has been giving young people access to higher education without having to leave town since 1988.
A fact we presume Dempsey knows, because emblazoned across the top of his campaign announcement is a photograph of himself smiling proudly in front of the town’s CQU outpost.
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