Senator James McGrath panned by LNP colleagues over speech to party faithful
LNP politicians have been caught badmouthing their colleague’s speech; ‘white hot rage’ spreads over new Attorney-General Deb Frecklington’s first judicial appointment.
G’day readers, Queensland parliament has returned for the first time since the October election and Feeding the Chooks is back with your insider’s guide to what’s really going on behind the scenes in state politics.
Lawyers fire up
There is “white hot rage” spreading through LNP legal circles after newly minted Attorney-General Deb Frecklington reappointed Supreme Court judge Kerri Mellifont as president of the Queensland Civil & Administration Tribunal last week.
Mellifont, the wife of Labor MP Peter Russo and a former ALP donor, was made head of the tribunal by Shannon Fentiman back in 2021 and will now remain until at least mid-2026 after Frecklington signed-off on her reappointment.
One LNP lawyer tells Chooks that “Mellifont is about as red as it gets”.
“Did Frecklington consult anyone? Did no one in Frecklington’s office bother to do any research? Did the AG just sign what was put in front of her by her lefty-riddled department?
“So much for a fresh start for LNP lawyers in Queensland.”
Another legal snitch says Mellifont’s reappointment had angered LNP-aligned lawyers who were itching to be considered for the plum gig.
And there won’t be any chances for deputy president spot either with District Court judge Geraldine Dann reappointed to the role until February 2026.
Perhaps Frecklington simply has a refreshingly bipartisan attitude to the important task of judicial appointments? After all, Mellifont was first called to the Bar in 1994, appointed silk in 2010, and had stints at the Public Defender’s Office, the office of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, and as counsel assisting the Disability Royal Commission.
When Mellifont was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2021, then LNP justice spokesman Tim Nicholls said she was “well respected and qualified”.
Our spies say the AG’s office is “adrift” after her chief of staff Karly Abbott handed in her resignation after just a few weeks into the job.
Gold Coast-based Abbott, a former lobbyist, was only ever supposed to be a temporary hire, the government insists, and is sticking around to help Frecklington with the “transition process” of finding a permanent CoS.
Funny, no one mentioned that to Chooks when we asked about the integrity implications of a recently deregistered lobbyist working in such a senior role for the AG and Minister for Integrity, the minister responsible for administering the act governing lobbying in the state.
Kathy Quinn, also a recently deregistered lobbyist and Abbott’s business partner in their lobbying firm, The Inner Circle Advisory Pty Ltd, is Frecklington’s media adviser.
Small world!
Leaked!
The rift between moderate and conservative forces inside Peter Dutton’s Queensland stronghold is widening – and we have the leaked messages to prove it.
LNP pollies have been exposed badmouthing their “moderate” colleague James McGrath in a private group chat.
While Senator McGrath was busy delivering a federal report on behalf of Dutton to a meeting of the LNP faithful in Rockhampton earlier this month, Chooks has been told a private WhatsApp group lit up with criticism that the speech did not properly sell key parts of the Opposition Leader’s policy agenda.
The group chat “State Council Rocky” was set up for some of the party’s conservative MPs, senators and members – including Queensland Nationals Senator Matt Canavan, federal LNP MP Henry Pike and newly elected state MP and former federal senator Amanda Stoker.
Members of the chat complained McGrath failed to mention inflation, immigration, Dutton’s plan to build seven nuclear reactors across the country, and the issue of a per-capita recession in his speech.
Stoker, who lost a bitter preselection battle to McGrath ahead of the last election, walked out of the room at the Rockhampton Leagues Club just before her frenemy spoke, which moderate party members have interpreted as a direct rebuke.
“She made it quite obvious,” one LNP member tells Chooks.
Another observer reckons McGrath’s speech appeared to be off the cuff and solely focused on the threat of anti-Semitism, missing an opportunity for a “big set piece” speech to members before the federal election.
Canavan tells Chooks he wasn’t “going to comment on private conversations” and Pike also declined to comment.
Stoker says she left the room before McGrath’s speech started to catch up with someone else, and doesn’t know what he spoke about.
McGrath – who also wouldn’t comment to Chooks – is seen by some in the LNP as a powerbroker who controls the dominant moderate wing of the party, including its powerful youth arm.
Canavan, Stoker and Pike are aligned with the party’s conservative flank, the so-called Christian Right.
Some in the “moderate” faction insist the division is not between moderates and conservatives, but rather between those who want to win elections and those who want to fight among themselves.
Others who align themselves with the conservatives believe members are rallying the troops to prepare to install an ally as party president should Lawrence Springborg retire from the job after the federal election, due by May.
Canavan fails to make waves
Behind closed doors at the state council meeting in Rockhampton of about 350 LNP MPs, senators, office-bearers, life members and other leading rank and file, Senator Canavan attempted to push an urgency motion calling for “the state and federal LNP to drop their commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 so that we are aligned with the policy of the incoming Trump administration”.
It was seconded by federal LNP MP Colin Boyce, but failed to get the necessary two-thirds support from the floor to be substantively debated.
Tensions between the two informal factions were further inflamed on the Friday night before the meeting, when the official Young LNP-hosted welcome drinks party at the Rockhampton Golf Club – included on the formal weekend agenda – was followed by a rebel event attended by Canavan, other Right-leaning politicians, and conservative powerbroker and suspended LNP member David Goodwin.
There’s a suspicion among the moderates that Canavan was using the event to formalise his faction, but some of those who attended insist it was merely a celebration of the party’s clean-sweep state election result in central Queensland.
Either way, it’s not all happy families in the Queensland LNP, and the federal election is just around the corner.
Greens mount defence
Max Chandler-Mather is in trouble.
The tyro MP and top strategist for the Greens is facing a tough fight to hold his seat of Griffith at the upcoming federal poll, after the minor party recorded dismal showings at this year’s Brisbane City Council and state elections.
And after suffering a ignominious defeat this week, abandoning his steadfast opposition to Labor’s housing bill, Chandler-Mather would be feeling the heat.
Our spies in Griffith say that the grandstanding king has begun to up the ante on his attendance at local events and will next week launch his re-election campaign at Easy Times Brewing Co. in Woolloongabba.
Chandler-Mather is taking a leaf out of Steven Miles’s playbook and offering free burgers at his “Keep Griffith Green” campaign kick-off party on Wednesday. (The first-term MP also points out he’s given up $50,000 of his politician’s wage to fund a free meal program in his electorate.)
As Chooks will report in The Weekend Australian’s news pages on Saturday, Labor is preparing to unleash its own offensive on Griffith in coming weeks, in an attempt to steal back the seat from the progressive minor party.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Conservative Christmas
Is suspended LNP member and conservative party powerbroker David Goodwin formalising his faction?
A bow-tied Goodwin was the MC for the Queensland Conservatives’ Christmas party held at Brisbane’s Tattersall’s Club (allowing women to be members since 2019!) and the event has sparked chatter in LNP ranks, where the oft-outspoken businessman is a thorn in the side of the party’s moderates.
While Goodwin declined to comment to Chooks, news of the event only fuelled the throbbing suspicion brewing between the LNP’s divergent wings.
More than 200 people – mostly LNP members – paid $50-a-pop to listen to guest speakers George Christensen (a former federal MP now Mackay councillor), Bernard Gaynor (who “in the past 18 months has forced 14 councils in Queensland to remove pornographic books” from shelves and launched a legal challenge against the classification of a comic called Gender Queer) and Monica Smit, a Victorian anti-lockdown activist.
The four-hour knees-up was billed as a chance to get “like-minded people” together to “meet fellow conservatives engaged in the same battles for freedom, life and family”.
One attendee says there was no mention of the state LNP and the crowd was more excited about the victory of President-elect Donald Trump, than Premier David Crisafulli.
Another LNP member – a former party office-bearer – penned a rave review that found its way to Chooks, describing the festive shindig as “warm, friendly and interesting” unlike official party events which they skewered as “expensive, amateur, unwelcoming and judgmental”.
Parliament returns
After a decade in opposition, Queensland’s LNP pollies could barely contain their smug grins as they scootched into their new chairs on the government benches this week.
Over on the other side of the chamber, Labor’s 36 MPs – none of whom have served in opposition before- were grappling with standing orders and the strategy of nailing a government during Question Time.
Labor frontbenchers tried relentlessly to use point of order relevance 118(b) – a favourite of any opposition – to force David Crisafulli to give a detailed answer during QT on Thursday.
A gleeful Deb Frecklington quipped from her new chair on the government benches: “Welcome to opposition”.
Earlier, the opposition’s new health spokesman Mark Bailey – who in 2017 was suspended from Annastacia Palaszczuk’s cabinet during a corruption investigation – was put in his place after he tried to have a chop about Ros Bates being shifted out of the LNP’s health portfolio after the election.
The LNP’s Steve Minnikin was quick to warn Bailey: “I wouldn’t go there! I wouldn’t go there!”
There was only one (very long) day of real parliament business with much of the week taken up with the traditional pomp and ceremony of the 58th parliament’s formal opening.
Some government MPs were questioned whether Governor Jeannette Young has been watching too much afternoon tellie at Fernberg after she accidentally translated Queensland’s motto Audax at Fidelis as “Bold but Beautiful” (should be Bold but Faithful) in her speech on Wednesday afternoon.
Bright-eyed
New South Brisbane MP Barbara O’Shea is already a frontrunner to be crowned the 58th’s Parliament’s Ms Congeniality after she used her maiden speech to thank her Greens predecessor Amy MacMahon “for all her hard work for the community” during the last term of government.
The Irish-Australian doctor, who has worked in emergency and mental health wards at the PA Hospital, snatched the prized inner-city seat from MacMahon at the October election in a surprise result that has sent the Greens into a panic about their federal prospects.
After giving her defeated rival a shoutout in her first speech to parliament, O’Shea went on to speak about the “pleasure of getting to know” not just her Labor colleagues, but the LNP’s 21 new MPs during their parliamentary induction over the past few weeks.
“We may be sitting on the other side of the chamber from each other now, but I have a great deal of respect for their motivations in standing for parliament,” she said.
“It is the role of the government to make decisions in the best interests of Queenslanders and it is the opposition’s role to hold them to account, but I hope that we can collaborate and negotiate with each other to get the best outcomes for our communities and for Queenslanders as a whole.”
The Chooks live in hope that O’Shea’s idealism is not snuffed out by the brutal nature of politics and the nasty business of factional warfare over the next four years.
Expansion plans
Former NSW Liberal minister, party powerbroker, and founder of lobby shop PremierNational Michael Photios tells Chooks he’s expanding operations on the back of the LNP’s October 24 victory, hiring Nelson Savanh as state director.
Photios says Savanh – who unsuccessfully ran for the LNP against Labor’s Mark Furner in the Brisbane seat of Ferny Grove, and was a staffer for the Newman government, Brisbane Lord-Mayor Adrian Schrinner, and LNP Opposition leaders – is a “gift” to the firm’s planned expansion.
“We’ve looked after Queensland clients before but this is a major and bipartisan expansion, not just a Liberal expansion in Queensland, but into ALP territory at a national level,” he says.
Chief executive officer Lachlan Crombie is a Queenslander, as is former Palaszczuk and Albanese staffer Tom Kenny, who is PremierNational’s Labor whisperer.
Photios says the firm’s already set up its Eagle Street Queensland HQ and is likely to hire more lobbyists. He says Savanh knows all of the Cabinet ministers personally and foreshadows PremierNational will be “instrumental” in government decision-making “if the case is made and it stacks up”.
Clients include Sportsbet, AUSVEG, and Jones Lang LaSalle, and according to the state’s public register of lobbying contact, the only Queensland activity this year has been Crombie phoning then-Opposition leader David Crisafulli’s policy adviser Jason Tibbets on September 27 on behalf of TKO Group Holdings (the American sports-entertainment behemoth that includes the Ultimate Fighting Championship and World Wrestling Entertainment) to discuss “policy development in relation to QLD sport”.
PremierNational donated $3000 to Queensland Labor ahead of the election, and nearly $11,000 to the LNP; expect to see lobbyists fall over themselves to join the conservatives’ cash-for-access program now the party is back in government.
Spotted
Leon Allen, under-treasurer to Cameron Dick for three budgets between 2020 and 2023, is stepping down from his job as chief executive officer of the Queensland Treasury Corporation – the government’s central financing authority – in February.
The board led by chair Damien Frawley (the former Wallaby and investment management expert) is starting the search for a new boss and Allen says now is the “right time” for a new CEO to take the reins.
50 years of Bob
He’s the maverick’s maverick, the firebrand of the north, the Akubra-wearing pollie who determinedly marches to the beat of his own drum and speaks according to the script in his own head: the Honourable Robert Carl Katter MP.
To celebrate Katter’s 50th year of parliamentary service (the Queensland state seat of Flinders 1974-1992 and the federal seat of Kennedy from 1993 onwards), Chooks has collected some of His Bobness’s most memorable moments of the past half-century from our photographic archives.
We hear PM Anthony Albanese attempted a similar feat this week in Canberra, presenting Katter with a bound five-volume collection of the MP’s parliamentary speeches at a well-attended event at parliament.
Katter’s son Robbie – the leader of the Katter’s Australian Party in Queensland parliament – and his four daughters Caroline, Olivia, Mary Jane and Eliza were there, as well as Katter’s eternally patient wife Susie, and a “who’s who of media and the parliament” according to Chooks’ spies. Speaker Milton Dick didn’t miss an opportunity to step in for Katter in a family photograph, prompting Katter’s daughter Caroline Coupland to post on Facebook: “The family recently replaced Dad with the Speaker of the House. It’s much calmer”.
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