Queensland unions’ $15m war chest for shadow campaign while Young LNP prepare to hit phones
G’day readers. Welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your peek behind the scenes of Queensland politics as we edge ever-closer to the October 26 state election.
Union advantage
Queensland’s union movement is readying a potential war chest of up to $15m in a bid to secure an unlikely victory for Labor Premier Steven Miles on October 26, dwarfing the third-parties backing the Liberal National Party opposition.
As politicians prepare for the last parliamentary sitting week of this term and the unofficial campaign kick-off on September 16, a Chooks analysis of the official third-party register reveals the uneven playing field.
This will be the first election fought under strict new donation laws capping major parties’ total campaign spending at $8.92 million, or $95,964.09 for each electorate.
The caps began in July 2022, restricting people from donating more than $4000 to a political party or $6000 to candidates of the same party.
When the caps began, Annastacia Palaszczuk declared it would “end the days of big money fundraising” – but there is a loophole.
Registered third parties – such as unions and lobby groups – are allowed to spend up to $1m during an election period, a rule the LNP claims is a “financial gerrymander,”
because the party does not have an organised supporter base like Labor’s union movement.
There are now 29 third parties registered, including 15 Labor-aligned unions. (The recently sacked QLD CFMEU boss Michael Ravbar registered his union as a third-party back in May, but given it’s now in administration and its former bosses are furious at the ALP, the CFMEU is unlikely to play a part.)
On the other side of the ledger, there are eight third parties likely to campaign against Labor, and most have nowhere near as deep pockets as the labour movement, backed by their members’ dues.
Those likely to advertise in an attempt to tear down the Labor government include Energy Resources Qld, the Queensland Resources Council, Australian Christian Lobby, Queensland Master Builders Association, the Shooters Union, Australian Institute for Progress, Cherish Life and the Red Unions.
Miles has privately told confidants that the QRC’s television ads attacking Labor for raising coal royalties are actually good for the government.
In terms of the parties’ own coffers, the LNP continues to drastically out-fundraise Labor, raking in $4.12m in 1,372 donations this year, compared to the ALP’s 636 “gifts” totalling $1.43m.
This week, commuters got a taste of the union-funded third-party campaign, with flyers handed out at Brisbane train stations, calling to “Keep fares 50c on Queensland public transport” highlighting one of Labor’s key pre-election policies.
“50 cent fares on Queensland’s public transport, introduced by the Miles Labor Government, have provided much-needed temporary relief for many Queenslanders managing rising cost of living – now it’s time to make 50 cent fares permanent!”
And in tiny letters at the bottom of the card: “Authorised by J.King, 16 Peel St, South Brisbane 4101.”
There’s no indication from the flyer that J. King is Queensland Council of Unions boss Jacqueline King, nor that the flyer is paid for by a union affiliated with Labor.
But according to the QCU, the authorisation follows the electoral commission of Queensland rules, and the QR code leads to an online petition that is union-branded.
“The Queensland Unions petition has been run by Queensland Unions in the media and the public, with over 16,000 signatures as at today,” the QCU tells Chooks.
Expect to see more in the lead up to October 26.
Men of the people
Are the hard heads of the CFMEU really just high-flying champagne socialists?
Ousted CFMEU state secretary Michael Ravbar and his offsider Jade Ingham were spotted at the Brisbane Airport’s on Wednesday morning hobnobbing in Qantas’s exclusive platinum lounge.
Ravbar and Ingham both lost their jobs last month when the construction union was plunged into administration by federal and state Labor governments.
At a rally in Brisbane last week Ravbar said Labor had “deserted” the working class while Ingham accused the ALP of the “the greatest act of treachery against the working class in this country’s history”.
Our spy wondered whether the average construction worker would be happy to see their CFMEU fees paying the way for these two champions of the blue collar worker to get into the Qantas sanctuary and away from the hoipoloi waiting for their flight at the gate.
Wage blowout
Taxpayers have funded a 13.5 per cent increase in wages for ministerial staffers employed by Steven Miles and his frontbench in the past year, about four times the rate of Brisbane’s inflation.
Chooks had a trawl through the latest public report into ministerial office expenses and discovered the wage bill for political staffers had grown by a whopping $4.93m in the past year taking total cost to $41.53m.
It comes as no real surprise given state Labor government’s addiction to staff has been spiralling out of control throughout its three terms in government.
Since Labor came to power in 2015, the total number of ministerial staff has jumped from 175 to 264.
The wages bill for the state opposition office, which has 23 staff, had a 12.4 per cent increase in the past year to $3.33m.
Lobbyists for lunch
As Queensland Treasurer, Cameron Dick knows the value of a dollar. And it turns out he also knows how to extract valuable dollars out of lobbyists to help fund his campaign for the state’s safest seat, Woodridge (which he holds by a Story Bridge-sized margin of 26.25 per cent).
Chooks hears Dick hosted a cosy boardroom lunch for lobbyist-turned-donors about 25km away from his outer-suburban Brisbane electorate, in the Queen Street CBD boardroom of Holding Redlich, alongside former Labor Deputy Premier Paul Lucas, who is now a consultant for the Labor law firm.
Among those who shelled out for access to one of the Queensland’s most powerful decision-makers was banned lobbyist Cameron Milner, who was blacklisted from lobbying the Labor government after The Australian revealed he’d helped secretly run Annastacia Palaszczuk’s 2020 election campaign while shilling for his paid clients.
Milner Strategic Services paid $4000 for the “Woodridge lunch,” while former Howard government staffer turned lobbyist Brenden Brien’s BB Win Win Outcomes paid $2000.
Crisis & Comms’ Paul Bini got out of it relatively cheaply, spending $875 for the Woodridge knees-up. Records show he had attempted to lobby the Treasurer in July, looking for the opportunity to “provide a briefing” about an investment for his paid client AustralianSuper.
Chooks presumes at least one non-lobbyist showed up to feather Dick’s nest, but that’s not clear from the donation records.
The Treasurer’s people insist no lobbying took place at the boardroom lunch.
But wait, there’re more … lobbyists
While we’re on lobbyists, it’s not only Cameron Dick raking in the cash from professional influence-peddlers recently. Brenden Brien paid $5500 to join the LNP’s cash-for-access program, while lobby firm Northstar Public Affairs spent $2500 for a lunch in aid of Labor’s revived cash-for-access Queensland Labor Business Roundtable program.
Annastacia Palaszczuk’s former deputy chief of staff Kirby Anderson – who now has his own lobby shop called PolicyWonks and represents clients including big miners and arms dealer NIOA – swapped codes and has spent $990 for a seat at an upcoming lunch with the LNP’s environment spokesman Sam O’Connor.
Anacta Strategies – founded by now-banned lobbyists Evan Moorhead and David Nelson (blacklisted for the same reason as the aforementioned Cameron Milner) – spent $1619.92 catering for a lunch for Inala MP Margie Nightingale, who was elected at the March by-election to replace the retiring Palaszczuk.
In the wake of The Australian’s exposure of campaigner-lobbyists, lobbyists are now prohibited from playing a substantial role in election campaigns.
Cash for calls
Some of the youngsters in the Queensland LNP, who also work as taxpayer-funded electorate officers, have been busy doing some extra-curricular campaign organising for their frontbencher overlords.
Tim Nicholls’ electorate officer Karsten Duvel recently put the call out for his fellow Young LNPers to help the former Newman government treasurer campaign in the blue-ribbon seat of Clayfield, where the Greens are a hovering threat.
Duvel put the word out that party acolytes would be paid to make calls to voters for Nicholls, and the days and hours would be “flexible”.
Does this signal Nicholls is a little worried about Greens candidate Jaimyn Mayer, who describes himself on his official party website as proudly queer and neurodiverse, a computer science graduate, and a young renter?
Nicholls tells Chooks it’s “perfectly standard” to pay for phone canvassing, and says Duvell is doing the campaign organising “in his own time”.
Meanwhile, Jarrod Bleijie has his young electorate officer Aydan Rusev working hard off-the-clock setting up his seemingly endless number of political fundraisers.
After organising Bleijie’s annual “dinner and a show” fundraiser last month- with special guests The Kitty Kats – Rusev is now the designated contact person for the deputy LNP leader’s Monarchists League dinner on September 20.
Tickets for the “exclusive” event at the Queensland Club are going for $750-a-pop.
Electorate staff are forbidden from doing the political bidding of their MPs. They are employed by the parliament and hired to liaise with constituents, write community newsletters, and run the diary of the pollie.
Chooks called Rusev to ask if he was organising on the taxpayer’s time or his own, and he told us he was “at the airport,” couldn’t talk, and to contact the Opposition media team, who later confirmed Rusev was campaigning in his spare time.
And for all the other YLNP folk out there looking to make their start, it’s time to rough-up your RM Williams, don your taupe chinos and iron your checkered blue shirt because there are three jobs going as assistant electorate officers in Stephen Bennett, Pat Weir and Bryson Head’s electorate offices in Burnett, Condamine and Callide.
And a salary up to $108,698-a-year ain’t too shabby.
Regional spree
Steven Miles kicked off a fresh round of pork barrelling during the fortnight before the final parliamentary sitting week before the election, speeding out of Brisbane to sandbag seats with satellite “hospitals”.
His two-week regional dash – which included visits to Hervey Bay, Bundaberg, Rockhampton, the Sunshine Coast, Mackay, Cairns and Logan – is part of a pre-election push to staunch expected losses in Townsville and outer-Brisbane seats.
Announcing five new satellite hospitals at Mackay, Beenleigh, Hervey Bay, Rockhampton and Yarrabilba, costing $78.3m each, Miles will be hoping to use the announcements during the upcoming campaign to stave off attacks over the third-term government’s record on administering public hospitals.
Just as they did with police helicopters, backbenchers launched faux campaigns with petitions pleading for Miles to build a satellite hospital in their community.
Pretending to fight for something that has already been approved – but yet to be announced – is a classic tactic of Queensland government MPs to win the adoration of their electorates.
If only it wasn’t so transparent.
Anyone keen?
The major parties are busy trying to finalise their candidates for next month’s election, but there are a few seats still struggling to attract talent.
The LNP still has no candidates for Woodridge, Gladstone, Jordan, Ipswich or Stretton but state director Ben Riley says a few more are expected to be finalised in the next week.
The party recently locked in Lytton candidate Chad Gardiner (though branch sources say he had been pre-vetted and ready to go before Easter), former Cairns mayor Terry James has been endorsed to contest Mulgrave, and Marita Parkinson has been preselected for the Greens-held seat of South Brisbane.
Over in Labor-land, there are still a whopping 17 seats to go: Mulgrave, Glass House, Whitsunday, Buderim, Toowoomba North, Mirani, Kawana, Burnett, Lockyer, Nanango, Southern Downs, Callide, Gregory, Condamine, Warrego, Hinchinbrook and Traeger.
ALP state secretary Kate Flanders says the party has candidates selected but not yet announced for some of these seats. The party’s next admin meeting is on Monday, but Chooks hears Flanders was sent on a candidate-scouting mission to Mount Isa on Thursday, and has finally found someone willing to take on the Katter’s Australian Party’s Robbie Katter in Traeger (24.72 per cent).
In Mulgrave, outgoing Labor MP and Speaker Curtis Pitt publicly threw his support behind Indigenous actor and producer Aaron Fa’Aoso – currently a Screen Queensland and SBS board member – to step into his shoes in the seat. But Steven Miles raised eyebrows in FNQ when he failed to publicly endorse Fa’Aoso when given the chance by The Cairns Post.
(And a quick update on LNP preselection for the federal seat of Leichhardt. Paramedic and former Cairns councillor Jeremy Neal was backed by branch members on Saturday to replace veteran MP Warren Entsch as the party’s candidate, beating Entsch’s choice, aviation industry leader Alana McKenna. Chooks hears Entsch is displeased.)
Great debate
That mainstay of every Queensland election campaign – the leaders’ debate – has been locked and loaded.
Steven Miles and David Crisafulli will face off on Wednesday October 16, just ten days before polling day, for the Queensland Media Club debate in the Plaza Ballroom at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre.
Chooks hears the tickets – which cost $229-a-pop – have already been flying out the door, with about 240 sold in the first 24 hours.
According to those in the know, based on previous years’ events, the rapid sale is a sign politics-watchers and the business community are anticipating there could be a change at the top come election day.
In terms of audience numbers, the current record-holder is the 2012 debate between Anna Bligh and Campbell Newman, which attracted a crowd of about 800.
As for the rules, they’re still being worked out, but usually each leader will deliver their pitch to the crowd, ask questions of each other, and then be quizzed by members of the parliamentary media gallery (including the Chooks).
And unlike Republican candidate Donald Trump’s push for microphones to be temporarily muted in his upcoming presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Queensland debate embraces interruptions.
Spotted #1
Annastacia Palaszczuk has emerged reborn onto the worldwide web to spruik her post-politics services, with a slick, pared-back new personal website: annastaciapalaszczuk.com.
The former Premier – presumably guided by her celebrity agent Max Markson – is now available to advise businesses, facilitate trade, do a bit of public speaking and develop leadership – as well as being a brand ambassador.
So which corporate powerhouses might leap at the chance to have Palaszczuk as their influencer-of-choice? Chooks reckons Italy’s tourism board, Inala’s Blue Fin Fishing Club (the location of the 2020 post-election party), and (Red) Carpet Call will be banging down the former Premier’s door.
Spotted #2
Former federal Liberal Senator Amanda Stoker will temporarily dip out of the first week of the state campaign to appear onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at a Brisbane hotel. The pro-nuclear conference is using Stoker’s appearance last year to sell tickets to this year’s event – including $7000-a-pop platinum passes billed as an “a unique experience like no other in Australia” – featuring Stoker’s views on what she calls the “hot button” issue of “gender fluidity”.
“There’s a deeper offensiveness to it, and it’s asking sensible people to say that two plus two equals six and it’s asking people to say white is black, and purple is green,” Stoker told the CPAC crowd last year.
The former barrister is contesting the state seat of Oodgeroo for the LNP after sitting MP Mark Robinson announced his retirement.
From the archives
In this week’s election flashback we take a look at some of the more fun campaign picture opportunities.
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