Secret review recommends new Olympic stadium for Brisbane 2032
Crisafulli has 99 problems and the 100-day Olympics review is one
David Crisafulli has an Olympics-sized problem.
His hand-picked panel of experts – appointed to deliver a 100-day review of Brisbane 2032 infrastructure – has sent over their secret draft report with an uncomfortable recommendation for the new Liberal National Party Premier.
The top bit of advice? Hurry up and build a new stadium at Victoria Park, for goodness’ sake. Awkwardly for Crisafulli he told Queensland voters – over and over again – that an LNP government would not build a new stadium, under any circumstances.
But what does he expect? Brisbane’s initial 11-year runway to 2032 Olympics has been whittled down to just seven short years. As most people in this town now accept, the time’s run out on rebuilding the ageing Gabba, and we can’t kick out our Premiership-winning Lions for the interminable construction time.
And Crisafulli and his deputy, Jarrod Bleijie, purposefully picked a panel of people with property development in their blood. The chair is Stephen Conry, a good mate of former LNP Premier Campbell Newman, an LNP donor, and the ex-chief executive officer of commercial real estate group Jones Lang LaSalle Australia.
In fact, Bleijie boasted to a Property Council Christmas lunch in December that he’d headhunted three of the seven-member board straight out of the property industry, telling the industry he’d picked a board that knew how to build things.
“Let me tell you exactly how the panel was chosen to get this job done and build the infrastructure of the future,” Bleijie said at the time.
“The government headhunted the best of the best to get the job done.”
It’s surely not surprising then that the panel that’s expert in building things is recommending the government build a really big new Olympics stadium.
Chooks hears Crisafulli and Co were positively furious after receiving the draft last Saturday afternoon, and have been scrambling ever since, trying to work out how to respect the recommendations of the panel, and somehow keep their no-stadium election promise to voters.
We’ve got more details of the secret report in the pages of The Weekend Australian – you’ll never guess where the Brisbane Arena’s Olympic swimming could be moved to – but Crisafulli is staying mum on the government’s plans until March 25.
“I know there’s a lot of excitement, but March 25 isn’t that far away. And on March 25, after over 1000 days of missed opportunities and no clarity, Queenslanders are going to have a way forward,” he said on the Gold Coast.
Trouble in power
The newly elected Crisafulli government is churning through ministerial chiefs of staff.
Fiona Simpson – the government’s minister for women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander partnerships, and multiculturalism – is the latest minister to part ways with their top political adviser.
Chooks hears former journalist and RACQ media manager Nicky Haydon is departing as the ministerial songstress’s chief of staff after less than four months in the gig, and Simpson is on the hunt for a replacement.
Haydon’s exit follows Youth Justice Minister Laura Gerber losing her chief of staff, veteran Coalition adviser David Fraser – whose first job was in 1978 as a 23-year-old for Queensland Liberal Senator David McGibbon, and then in the Prime Minister’s office in the early 1980s for Malcolm Fraser. Chooks suspects we could do an entire series on the life and times of Fraser, who went on to serve as QLD Liberal Party director in the tumultuous year of 1989, but for now, he’s in the office of Police Minister Dan Purdie. Former Redlands MP Matt McEachan has been shuffled in to serve in the top job in Gerber’s office.
As Chooks has already canvassed, Attorney-General Deb Frecklington’s first chief of staff, former registered lobbyist Karly Abbott, has been replaced by former television journalist Ben Murphy.
Some say the turnover is due to most ministers being assigned their chiefs of staff without their input, in the haste to staff a new government. But given Campbell Newman lost Police Minister David Gibson in his government’s first month, and Annastacia Palaszczuk had to sack backbencher Billy Gordon from the ALP two months after winning government, the Crisafulli administration’s upheaval is relatively tame.
Gag reflex
It’s always interesting to see politicians wilt under the glare of scrutiny.
The move by councillors in Ipswich to “gag” the mayor, Teresa Harding with a suite of ‘don’t worry yourselves about the fine print’ policy changes has been formally taken dumped.
You may recall we revealed last month that veteran councillor Paul Tully and several of his allies were banding together to push through a motion that would have restricted Harding from speaking to the media or issue press releases on major issues of the city council.
Tully later played it down as a media beat-up.
But then why did he fold like a $2 camp chair after the push was subsequently put under the microscope by most of Queensland’s media, eliciting outrage and complaints by the public?
When we first aired is plans, Tully huffed and puffed and then backed down on putting it to a vote before this week permanently taking the motion “off the table” after a unanimous vote of all nine councillors.
Chooks has also learned that separately a complaint had been made to the local government watchdog, the Office of the Independent Assessor, about Harding’s description of the changes.
Apparently, the councillors behind proposal didn’t like it being called a “gag”. We think that could best be described as a poor gag reflex.
The OIA saw through it and dismissed the complaint.
Spotted
Former Newman government MP for Bundaberg David Batt beat Bundaberg Fruit and Vegetable Growers chief executive Bree Watson in Sunday’s preselection to be the Nationals candidate for the federal seat of Hinkler.
Batt replaces Keith Pitt, who is off to Rome to represent the Albanese government as Ambassador to the Holy See. Watson, who unsuccessfully contested the October state election for the LNP in Bundaberg, lost to Batt in the final round of voting 53 to 72.
Chooks hears Watson donned a red Trump-esque MAGA hat during the meeting. While some thought it was a Make America Great Again red cap, others insisted it actually stood for Make Albo Go Away. Watson didn’t return calls from Chooks.
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G’day readers and welcome to the latest edition of Feeding the Chooks, your regular insight into the marvellous and murky world of Queensland politics.