Coalition MP Luke Howarth is refusing to concede
Patient in Petrie
Luke Howarth is not going down without a fight.
While Labor’s Emma Comer has claimed victory in the seat of Petrie, and has been down in Canberra for factional and caucus meetings, there has been no concession from sitting LNP MP Howarth, who won the seat from Labor’s Yvette D’Ath in 2013.
Chooks hears Howarth is holding out hope for a miracle win, despite trailing by a hefty 2,158 votes after preferences have been distributed.
Still, he’s whittled down the gap from about 2850 at the start of the week, and there are still an estimated 11,000 votes to count.
It’s too close to call in Longman, where the sitting MP Terry Young is just 231 votes ahead of Labor’s Rhiannyn Douglas (Left), and Ryan, where the Greens are battling to hold onto their last lower house seat in the country for Elizabeth Watson-Brown against Labor’s Rebecca Hack (Left).
Leaked letter hints at budget cuts
As Treasurer David Janetzki’s first Queensland budget fast approaches, he and his Under Treasurer have issued public service department heads with a frank warning: tighten the purse strings.
Chooks has been leaked the missive from Paul Williams to directors-general, politely thanking them for their budget submissions to date and then (equally politely) telling them to rip them up and start again, because there’s barely any money to go around.
Williams told the DGs that there’s “limited scope for new funding” in the LNP’s first budget, due to be delivered by Janetzki on June 24, and he’s asked them to explain how each department can keep delivering essential services “within an indicative services funding envelope” across the next four years.
To make matters trickier, they’ve got to keep election promises and guarantee “employment security across the public service” (read: no Campbell Newman-style public service mass redundancies) all inside that “envelope”.
Well-placed sources have grumbled to Chooks that the envelope doesn’t actually cover the current annual cost of running departments.
So does this mean cuts to services?
Williams seems to be hinting so.
“I appreciate this may mean you need to revisit the proposals previously submitted to the Cabinet Budget Review Committee,” he wrote.
“When you identify opportunities to moderate/withdraw or reprioritise from within recurrent expenditure, please ensure these and any associated implications are clearly outlined for CBRC consideration.”
Clear as mud, but the underlying message to ministers and their DGs is clear: the budget is coming, and it’s not going to be pretty.
The Old Guard rises
Labor’s sweeping victory in the Sunshine State at last Saturday’s federal election has not only prematurely ended the political careers of Peter Dutton and a gaggle of his conservative MPs.
It also resurrected a uniquely Queensland force: Kevin Rudd’s Old Guard faction.
Not since former PM Rudd quit parliament in November 2013 has there been a sitting federal Old Guarder.
But after Saturday’s bloodbath, there’s three: Kara Cook in Bonner, Madonna Jarrett in Brisbane, and Renee Coffey in Rudd’s old seat of Griffith.
Before the election, Labor held a dismal five out of 30 Queensland seats; four of those MPs hailed from the party’s once-dominant, now-submissive Right faction (Jim Chalmers, Anika Wells, Shayne Neumann and Milton Dick).
Moreton MP Graham Perrett (the now retired backbencher and occasional writer of mildly saucy novels) was the sole Left faction representative in the House pre-Saturday.
And now, the Left is dominant on the federal Labor benches for Queensland, just as it is in the state parliament.
New Left MPs include Julie-Ann Campbell (who replaced Perrett), Ali France (who beat Dutton in Dickson), Rowan Holzberger (who scored a surprise win in Forde) and Matt Smith (who beat Jeremy Neal in Leichhardt).
The Old Guard sides with the Left (a sore point for the Right, which used to count on the small faction’s backing) and the Right added two extra reps: Emma Comer in Petrie and Corinne Mulholland in the Senate.
Taking into consideration the two Left and one Right sitting Senators, the numbers are now nine for the Left (including the three Old Guarders) and seven for the Right.
Turns out reports of the Old Guard’s death were greatly exaggerated.
Revolving door
To misquote Oscar Wilde, to lose one chief of staff might be seen as misfortune, but to lose two looks like carelessness.
But that is exactly what Youth Justice Minister Laura Gerber has done, after just six months in the job.
As Chooks reported during the federal campaign, her second CoS Matt McEachan decamped to LNP headquarters in Albion to help run the Queensland arm of Peter Dutton’s quest for the Lodge. And look how well that worked out.
And as forecasted in this august journal, McEachan was destined not to return to Gerber’s office. Where he’ll end up, we don’t think even the Crisafulli government knows.
In any case, Gerber’s fresh new chief of staff is Valeria Cheglov, who worked for former Morrison government Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews before taking a rubbish job with waste company Veolia, as the international company’s head of communications and public policy.
Chooks hears Gerber is not the easiest minister to work for, and her office has experienced quite the churn since the LNP won government in October. It’s not just chiefs of staff (veteran conservative government staffer David Fraser was Gerber’s first), but senior policy advisers who have made swift exits.
The Coolangatta MP has got a demanding, high-pressure portfolio, and Premier David Crisafulli has made it clear he expects victims of crime numbers to go down, not up.
Predict the election, and make it snappy
Here at Chooks we’re deeply committed to holding every democratic institution to account.
And this week, as recriminations fly about how the Liberal Party’s pollsters and pundits could have got the Saturday night’s result so badly wrong, we’ve decided to take a deep dive into a different kind of election forecaster.
Yep, we’re talking about the psychic crocs.
On the eve of the federal election last week, up in the Northern Territory, saltwater crocodile and political soothsayer Speckles made his prophesy.
A focus group of one, Speckles lunged at the dangling hunk of meat that represented Peter Dutton, and cast his vote. Well, sucks to be Speckles because he got that dead wrong.
In happier news for reptiles of the clairvoyant variety, 4.5-metre-long crocodile Agro at far north Queensland’s Rainforestation Wildlife Sanctuary in Kuranda snapped up the snack standing in for Labor’s Matt Smith, vying for the LNP-held seat of Leichhardt.
As Agro clearly knew, Smith was destined to beat the LNP’s Jeremy Neal who suffered a 10 per cent two-party preferred swing against him.
But then again, maybe retiring LNP MP for Leichhardt Warren Entsch had been in Agro’s ear. Entsch lodged a formal complaint after Neal won LNP preselection for the seat last year, when the veteran MP’s preferred candidate didn’t get up.
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G’day readers and welcome back to Feeding the Chooks, your behind-the-scenes peek at the wild and wonderful world of Queensland politics.