Michael McKenna
Queensland CFMEU in spy camera probe; Labor HQ sings praises of David Crisafulli
G’day readers, and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your unmissable guide to what’s really going on in Queensland politics.
CFMEU caught on camera
The Queensland branch of the CFMEU is in the frame, like their mates over at the United Workers’ Union, for allegedly secretly recording staff in its Brisbane office.
Chooks can reveal an official of the CFMEU, which is in forced administration along with its other branches across Australia, has been suspended and is facing investigation over the allegations that bosses were spying on their own employees.
It is alleged that a closed circuit television camera inside the offices at Bowen Hills was filming admin staff for an extended period of time.
What is it with these unions and their apparent lack of trust in their own workers?
If the allegation was made against a company employing members, all hell would break loose.
It follows revelations in August that Steven Miles’s own union, the UWU – headed by the Queensland premier’s self-described mentor Gary Bullock – had been caught out secretly recording conversations in its Brisbane offices.
That came out in documents relating to an unfair dismissal case in the Fair Work Commission launched by one of its former top officials, Matt Lawrence, who was sacked earlier this year over alleged drug use on the premises.
Lawrence, who once served as the chief of staff to Miles Government minister Mick de Brenni, was allegedly captured taking drugs on CCTV footage.
The union told the commission that it was during the investigation into Lawrence that they discovered that the “CCTV devices used at its premises were recording audio as well as video footage”.
In August, the UWU said a contractor who was upgrading the CCTV network had mistakenly turned on the audio recording capability.
Lawrence successfully sought an order for UWU to produce the recordings but the union indicated it may take legal action to block their release on the grounds it could trigger “complex criminal law considerations”.
The case is continuing but insiders tell Chooks that the revelations angered staff.
It’s understood the UWU staff are waiting to see what will happen over the next few weeks but are considering making a complaint to police.
Longtime CFMEU state boss Michael Ravbar (who has already been sacked by the administrators and is not the official under investigation over the alleged spying) tells Chooks there was one camera in the admin area for “good governance and welfare of the women staff”.
“It’s in the area where the girls work which we had break-ins and where a lot of money is transacted and we had internal theft,” Ravbar says.
He says the camera has been there for 10 years, was still operational, and only one staff member had complained about it to the administrator.
“All our cameras do not do audio recordings and never have,” Ravbar says.
David Crisafulli’s biggest fans: Queensland Labor?
A Queensland election website paid for and authorised by Queensland Labor state secretary Kate Flanders has taken inspiration directly from LNP leader David Crisafulli’s playbook: the unputdownable 44-page tome, The Right Priorities for Queensland’s Future.
In a bizarrely glowing biography of Crisafulli on www.qldvotes.com.au, the Labor copywriters declare that “restoring Queensland’s opportunity is what drives David. An LNP government will do this by providing stability and governing with integrity”.
And yes, this is directly under an effusive write-up about Steven Miles dedicating his life to “standing up for the rights of working people” including those sacked by Campbell Newman’s LNP government.
Then over in the issues section, Labor’s 50-cent fares, state-owned petrol stations, satellite hospitals, and energy rebates are spruiked, along with the LNP Opposition’s focus: “campaigning on four key issues, which it has labelled as crises: crime (particularly youth crime), cost-of-living, housing affordability and health”.
Who needs an LNP spin unit when you’ve got Labor’s?
Over at LNP HQ, they’ve been busy in recent weeks registering much less polite websites – seemingly to host their anti-Labor petitions.
There is the fairgoforfishers.com – to attack Labor about recreational fishing in Central Queensland, betterroads4mirani.com – to attack Labor about roads in Mirani and various iterations of crime petitions, like stoptownsvillecrime.com, stopbarronrivercrime.com, stopfernygrovecrime.com
The party has most recently registered the domain www.werenotlaughing.com, though the site is still empty.
Chooks suspects the new website will be home to fresh attack ads on Steven “Giggles” Miles.
It’s in the mail
Labor HQ has had to pull down paid Facebook ads telling voters to apply for a postal vote, because they featured pictures of Australia Post’s red postboxes.
Apparently AusPost has rules against its boxes being used in political advertising. We presume newly minted Australia Post director Annastacia Palaszczuk wasn’t the one to dob in QLD Labor for the misdemeanour. (Chooks notes a Liberal candidate – Jack Abadee – for the recent NSW local government elections used a similar image and wasn’t pinged.)
At the same time, the LNP is doing mass-mailouts in Brisbane electorates to send postal vote applications to voters. This old trick sees the party supply official Electoral Commission of Queensland forms but includes a reply paid envelope that directs the voter information straight back to LNP HQ in Spring Hill. And there’s a page of LNP propaganda slipped into the package as well.
One suburban spy tells Chooks that the LNP’s Everton MP Tim Mander needs to take another look at his electoral boundaries after he accidentally mailed postal vote applications and a flyer plastered with his face to voters in the neighbouring electorate of Ferny Grove.
Olympic-sized problem
Speculation is growing in business circles that David Crisafulli will go back to the future and revive the Gabba as Brisbane’s marquee Olympic stadium.
While the LNP leader has been as guarded in his private conversations with Brisbane’s bizoids as he is with Chooks and the rest of the media, the sentiment is there are only two realistic options now that he has savaged Labor’s QSAC plan.
Those options are a) a brand new stadium at Victoria Park or b) the Gabba rebuild that Annastacia Palaszczuk wanted but failed to sell to voters which was immediately dumped when Steven Miles stepped into her shoes last December.
As Jamie Walker will report in The Australian’s Inquirer section on Saturday, one knowledgeable business figure who has shot the breeze with Crisafulli over Olympic venues found him surprisingly conducive to revisiting the Gabba.
The business figure rates the prospects of the Gabba getting the nod from Crisafulli’s 100-day Olympic venue review as 55-45 per cent.
SOS for SAS
It’s election eve and the lobbyists are on the prowl.
Chooks spotted a slick new promo video by SAS Group, in which head spinner Malcolm Cole (who has finally registered himself as a lobbyist) seriously intones: “A new era of opportunity is about to commence in Queensland, are you ready to make the most of it?”
SAS Group tells businesses the team will “bridge the gap to government for your business”.
Nothing says unrivalled access to power than watching your lobbyists walk around the outside of the Queensland parliamentary fence, as Cole and his colleagues – including former Nationals party president and MP Larry Anthony and ex-Labor MP Bernie Ripoll – are filmed doing.
Contact logs show that so far this month SAS Group has lobbied Labor government and LNP Opposition officials ten times – five emails, one phone call, and four meetings – for six clients, including lobbyist Peter Costantini ringing Tim Lindley, one of Steven Miles’s advisers, for a “commercial in confidence” chat on behalf of client Bowen Coking Coal.
After The Australian revealed Labor lobbyists Evan Moorhead, David Nelson (co-founders of Anacta) and Cameron Milner secretly ran Annastacia Palaszczuk’s successful 2020 election campaign the laws have tightened and this kind of dual-hatting is banned.
That same year, Cole (then the co-owner of SAS Group and not a registered lobbyist) orchestrated Brisbane LNP Lord-Mayor Adrian Schrinner’s re-election campaign while working for him in a ratepayer-funded role.
Teal for Dutton’s Dickson?
Sydney-based Teal MP Zali Steggall is in southeast Queensland this week, kicking off a recruitment drive for an independent candidate to take on Opposition leader Peter Dutton in his ultra-marginal seat of Dickson (1.7 per cent) at the next federal election.
The invite to Steggall’s event urged the community to come along to learn about “the power an independent MP can wield in parliament” and to hear about her two private members’ bills, “which exemplify how independents can shape policy and hold the government accountable”.
A newly formed Dickson Decides group – part of the Community Independents Project – has launched its search for a candidate, and Steggall’s roadshow is also visiting the Sunshine Coast (Fisher, held by LNP MP Andrew Wallace on 8.7 per cent) and a combined Gold Coast event on Friday night for the LNP-held seats of McPherson (retiring MP Karen Andrews, 9.3 per cent), Moncrieff (Angie Bell, 11.2 per cent) and Fadden (won by the LNP’s Cameron Caldwell at last year’s by-election by a margin of 10.6 per cent).
Dickson Decides reckons it had 200 locals come along to Steggall’s show, and an extra 50 volunteers signed up to the cause, while spokeswoman Ellie Smith says the group is looking “for the best candidate money can’t buy”.
The Teals talk a big game about making their mark in Queensland, and often draw big crowds to these events, but we’ve yet to see a candidate emerge in any of these seats.
Meet the Chooks
The Queensland state election is right around the corner and an expanded Feeding the Chooks team will be trailing both leaders for the entire four week campaign. Keep those tips coming during the campaign, because we know how much the Labor and the LNP machines enjoy leaks!
‘Tis the season
There’s always something a little voyeuristic about peering into the annual present that is the ministerial gifts register.
All wrapped up in a bow, this humble document reveals who is giving what to Queensland’s ministers – and Opposition leader – and senior staff and, importantly, what’s being kept, and what’s being shunted into the back of the cupboard (aka Ministerial Services Storage).
Annastacia Palaszczuk, for instance, kept a scarf ($190) and white china tea set ($280) she was gifted on her trade mission to China in November last year, but she relegated a necklace with a white jade pendant from Shanghai artists Zivgrey ($900) to gather dust in storage.
New Transport Minister Bart Mellish was given a model train by Hitachi ($404.80) – banished to the cupboard – but Agriculture Minister Mark Furner kept his two scale models of John Deere tractors from RDO Equipment in Toowoomba ($195).
Treasurer Cameron Dick in August last year received the priciest present: a print from Cape York artist Naomi Hobson’s Warrior Without a Weapon photographic collection (worth $3000) which Chooks is relieved to report he has on display. Dick is ministerial champion for Hobson’s home town of Coen (and tells Chooks there was $6.7 million in this year’s budget to build an art centre in Coen, thanks in part to Hobson’s advocacy).
The most oft-gifted item? Boxing gloves signed by Jeff Horn, who gave the $280-a-pop collector’s items to Police Minister Mark Ryan and two of his staffers (Erin Quinn and Daniel Varvosso) in October last year, when the minister announced $11.5m for not-for-profit BullyProof Australia, co-founded by the athlete.
Horn will be relieved to discover everyone kept his prized sporting memorabilia, including Energy Minister Mick de Brenni, who received a glove a couple of months earlier.
Spotted
Went to the release of the state budget today - balanced, fair, the budget we need to take us forward - well done Tim and Campbell
— Raewyn Bailey (@raewynbailey6) June 4, 2013
The LNP finally announced its candidate for Cooper (held by Labor’s Jonty Bush on 10.5 per cent) on Thursday: Raewyn Bailey, chief executive of the suicide-prevention organisation the Mental Awareness Foundation. As happens after every candidate announcement, there’s a deep dive into the archives of vintage social media posts. In June 2013, Bailey posted on the cursed app then known as Twitter: “Went to the release of the state budget today – balanced, fair, the budget we need to take us forward – well done Tim and Campbell”.
As a Labor insider whispered, praising Campbell Newman and Tim Nicholls’ second budget – which followed thousands of public service job cuts – is unlikely to be viewed fondly by the bureaucrat-heavy Cooper demographic.
From the archives
This week we head back to the 1990s.
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