Teals targeting Karen Andrews’ LNP electorate
A Teal wave threatens to swamp a party stronghold, as Campbell Newman anoints candidate Amanda Stoker the LNP’s ‘great white hope’.
G’day readers, and welcome to the latest instalment of Feeding the Chooks, your weekly peek behind-the-scenes of political shenanigans and factional machinations in Queensland.
TEALS ON THE MOVE
A Teal wave is threatening to swamp one of the Liberal National Party’s Queensland strongholds: the blue-ribbon Gold Coast seat of McPherson.
The Teals took prized seats in NSW and Victoria at the last federal election and part of that success was built on their grassroots organising, especially with community forums and fundraising
As Chooks reported earlier this month, Climate 200 - which financially backs Teal independents - was gearing up to host a shindig in the electorate on November 19 titled “Politics done Independently; meet the people who have run and won campaigns!”
We can reveal things are getting real serious on the tourist strip.
A “McPherson Matters” group has been set up, complete with an ABN (that’s for the fundraising), which has already hosted 91 “kitchen table” conversations in the electorate since March.
McPherson Matters will also supply volunteers to fuel the eventual Teal campaign.
Chooks’ spies were on the ground at Sunday night’s Teal event at the Balter Brewing Company, once owned by pro-surfer Mick Fanning, in Currumbin Waters, to have a sticky beak.
Climate 200’s executive director Byron Fay, who recently moved to Burleigh on the Gold Coast, was on hand to explain the group’s successful political franchise model, and how it works, as was sitting Teal Sophie Scamps, the Independent MP for Bronwyn Bishop’s old Sydney seat of Mackellar.
The Teals’ winning formula is based on Cathy McGowan’s campaign for the Victorian electorate of Indi in 2013, and the powerful community organisation, Voices for Indi.
Chooks’ informants spotted a number of familiar faces among the 286-odd people in the crowd, including serial LNP pre-selection candidate Fran Ward - whose husband Roger Emmerson recently quit the party after serving as a regional chair of the party - and two sitting Gold Coast councillors (of the LNP persuasion), Pauline Young (who has announced her retirement next year) and William Owen-Jones.
Former Labor candidate for McPherson, Carl Ungerer, an old mate of Kevin Rudd’s, also popped in.
McPherson is vulnerable for the LNP after federal MP Karen Andrews announced her shock retirement earlier this year. Andrews suffered a nearly four per cent primary vote swing against her in 2022, and her first preference vote fell to 44 per cent.
But she easily won on preferences against Ungerer, 59 per cent to 41 per cent.
Worryingly for the LNP - and a sign that the Teals could prosper in McPherson - was the Greens vote from 2022: the minor party scored 14 per cent primary vote, up nearly five per cent on the previous poll.
The LNP is yet to preselect Andrews’ replacement.
One attendee tells Chooks: “It was a really well run event and they put a fair bit of money into it which shows they are serious”.
Another says they were seriously impressed by the professionalism of the outfit, compared to the LNP, especially their access to quality data analysis.
“The LNP would kill for the superb systems, staff, and funding that Climate 200 have,” the Chooks source says.
“If the Teals get a good community candidate, and replicate what’s worked elsewhere, they can win McPherson in a canter.”
WATCHDOG WAITS
Annastacia Palaszczuk and her Attorney General Yvette D’Ath continue to drag their heels on vital laws - requested by the state’s corruption watchdog - that would publicly release a purportedly damning report on former colleague Jackie Trad.
A recent High Court decision muzzled the Crime and Corruption Commission, preventing public reporting from most of its investigations into politicians and public servants.
Of particular interest is an investigation report the CCC wrote in 2021 about allegations Trad improperly interfered in the 2019 appointment of her under-treasurer, Frankie Carroll. Trad has denied wrongdoing, and the CCC did not charge the former Deputy Premier.
The CCC’s probe was later widened to investigate other senior public service recruitments back to when the Palaszczuk government first took power in 2015 and alleged politicisation across the state’s public service.
The report has never been released - thanks to various court actions - and it won’t see the light of day unless the government makes law changes.
Worryingly, the government is dawdling and refusing to say whether it will give the CCC the powers it has asked for.
CCC boss Bruce Barbour told a parliamentary hearing on Friday morning that the laws must be retrospective and that he wants the government to hand his organisation similar powers to watchdogs in NSW and Victoria, which are both “largely able to report on any investigation, any corruption-related matter, at any stage of the process that they wish to”.
D’Ath on Friday gave “in-principle” support for legal changes to allow CCC to continue to table reports in parliament and gave a “commitment to address this issue”.
But she has refused to say whether laws will be retrospective to allow the Trad report’s release.
Barbour also flagged that the CCC had wrapped up nine investigations “involving several officers in one public sector agency”. In one of those, investigators found the allegations could not be proven to amount to a criminal offence but “disciplinary action” was taken against someone.
Unfortunately, nothing more can be made public more because the watchdog remains muzzled.
STAY ON MESSAGE
David Crisafulli is desperate to stick to the script.
The Liberal National Party leader can smell the sweet scent of electoral victory in the air, and will do whatever it takes to stop simmering divisions within the ranks from erupting into the public domain.
As a slick political operative, Crisafulli knows all too well that his party has a habit of imploding whenever it comes close to winning an election.
So he has imposed disciplined messaging for himself and his team: health, housing, and crime, all the time. Rinse and repeat.
It has been an effective tactic that has slowly and consistently chipped away support for Labor for the past three years.
But as Queensland inches closer to next year’s state election, voters will want to know where Crisafulli, and his party, stand on a slew of other issues.
Crisafulli has refused to declare a position on renewable energy targets or proposed laws making it harder for religious schools to sack gay teachers and won’t say what he will do about cost blowouts on Gabba stadium for the 2032 Olympics. He has a tax plan, but won’t release it until closer to the election and says he wants to stabilise debt but won’t say how.
But this week, under questioning at a Queensland Media Club event, he took a risky stand on abortion that has angered some more conservatives LNP members.
Currently in Queensland it is legal to request an abortion up to 22 weeks’ gestation and there is no requirement for mandatory counselling.
There are plenty of influential figures within the LNP that want to see termination of pregnancy laws tightened up (and others that want abortion put back into the criminal code).
Prior to the 2020 election, his predecessor Deb Frecklington promised to review gestation limits and counselling arrangements.
But Crisafulli this week guaranteed abortion would remain available-on-demand up to 22 weeks if he wins government next year.
THE LNP’S ‘GREAT WHITE HOPE’
There are no illusions about who Campbell Newman would back in a potential future leadership showdown between LNP leader David Crisafulli and conservative star Amanda Stoker.
The former premier, who quit the LNP in 2021 over the party’s “failure” to stand up for its core values, joined the former Senator on a panel to talk about their recent trip to London for the inaugural Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference.
Newman told the audience at the Australian Institute of Progress event on Wednesday night that he felt let down by the country’s field of political leaders.
Pointing to Stoker, he said “present company excepted, who might be the great white hope, but I’ll just move on”.
“Apart from Peter Dutton I don’t see anyone…showing leadership and being prepared to cut a course and say ‘this is what we stand for and we will go in this direction’,” he said.
He pointedly did not praise Crisafulli - who Labor has attacked as Newman’s protegee - and instead lamented the state of leadership in the “state divisions of the Liberal Party and LNP”.
“We need people like yourselves to get back in there and start to push for our politicians to reflect those values,” Newman told the crowd.
Stoker, the LNP’s star candidate for next year’s state election in the bayside seat of Oodgeroo is already being touted as a future premier in LNP circles, but told Chooks last month she had no plans to knife Crisafulli for the leadership.
“He doesn’t have to look over his shoulder, he is doing a bloody good job,” she said.
BOZZIE’S BIO
Queensland political legend Ron Boswell, the paint brush salesman who rose to become the leader of the Nationals in the Senate, is releasing his biography next month.
“Bozzie,” as he is universally known, was a Queensland senator for 32 years and despite his congenial nature never baulked at a political fight.
He took on Pauline Hanson, at the peak of her popularity after her election in 1996, and stood up for small retailers against the supermarkets, and for fishers and farmers with each of the many challenges they faced over the years.
Now, almost a decade after his retirement, the Brisbane-born-and-bred elder statesman of the Nationals quite literally told his life story into a tape recorder and, with the help of former staffer Joanne Newbery, crafted it into a biography.
The book’s called “Ron Boswell: Not Pretty, But Pretty Effective” after his old campaign slogan. And instead of it being launched at some swanky city joint, it’ll be back where it all began, at the ports.
It’s where he first got involved in politics, handing out on polling booths for state Nationals’ candidates under his old friend Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
Bozzie was too coy to hint at what’s in the tome, saying “it’s at the printers and you can find out by buying it”.
Once a salesman, always a salesman.
But he did tell Chooks it was intended to encourage people to get into politics.
“It shows what people can do when they swim against the tide,’’ he says
“We need to encourage people to get involved in politics and to get good people into parliament because if you do that, then you are going to have a good country.”
The book will be launched by former Australia Post boss Christine Holgate in early December.
BLOWOUT BAILEY
Mark “Mangocube” Bailey is up to his old tricks again, taking aim at journalists who dared to question him about his decision to hide a multi-billion-dollar blowout on a taxpayer-funded infrastructure project.
Costs for the Gold Coast Faster Rail project have soared from an initial $2.5bn to “a bit more” than $5bn and were only discovered when the federal government released its controversial infrastructure review last week.
Bailey says he can’t remember when he learnt about the cost over-run.
On Tuesday he said: “I don’t recall the specific date or time, I don’t even remember where I was at the particular moment. It wasn’t one of those Kennedy-being-shot moments”.
Reporters gave him a day to check his diary, but on Wednesday he still couldn’t give a date.
“I get huge amounts of information every single day, it is a question from journalists who probably have got a lot more time on their hands than me”.
STARS IN THEIR EYES
Annastacia Palaszczuk insists Yvette D’Ath is “the best person” to oversee the clean up of Star Entertainment and its Brisbane and Gold Coast outfits.
If you recall, The Australian revealed that the casino giant hosted and paid for a personal political fundraiser for the Attorney-General’s 2017 re-election.
At the time, D’Ath oversaw gaming regulation in Queensland and saw no problem with enjoying the casino giant’s largesse, boldly saying the event had to be held somewhere.
All the while, Star was allowing crooks to launder money through their gaming floors, as revealed in subsequent inquiries.
Last December, Star was issued with a $100 million fine and given 12 months to get its house in order or face having its licence suspended after a public inquiry found the operator had allowed money laundering to flourish with a “one-eyed focus on profit”.
On Friday, D’Ath gave Star a crucial reprieve by deferring the threat of a 90-day suspension by another six months.
She said this was to give Star time to act on its remediation plan, which has just been approved.
Asked if D’Ath should have responsibility for overseeing the regulation of gambling in Queensland and Star’s clean-up, Palaszczuk said: “She is the best person, and as I’ve said, she’s addressed those issues”.
Chooks has previously revealed Star hosted the $125-a-head fundraiser for D’Ath in the lead-up to the 2017 state election, at a time when the operator was lobbying the Palaszczuk government not to proceed with plans to allow a rival second casino on the Gold Coast.
In 2019, D’Ath went against her own department’s recommendation to lift the caps on gaming tables for all four casinos in Queensland. She chose to lift the cap just for Star on the Gold Coast.
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