Amanda Stoker’s political comeback; Labor’s sex and drugs chatter hidden behind closed doors
G’day readers and welcome to Feeding the Chooks, your weekly behind-the-scenes insight into what really goes on in Queensland politics, reported by Michael McKenna, Lydia Lynch, and Sarah Elks.
STOKER STAKES HER CLAIM
Could former Liberal National Party Senator Amanda Stoker be considering a run at Queensland state parliament, in a bayside seat held by one of her factional comrades?
Property records confirm Stoker and her family have sold their Bardon pile and bought in Wellington Point, in the electorate of Oodgeroo, held by fellow member of the Christian Right, Mark Robinson.
Eagle-eyed Chooks spies have also clocked Sky presenter Stoker popping up at charity events in the electorate recently, including the not-for-profit Cage Youth Foundation’s annual fundraiser, and Redland City Council’s Diner en Rouge, held to support a new domestic violence awareness program.
There has been plenty of speculation about where Stoker would revive her political career, snuffed out when she lost her senate spot at last year’s federal election, after the LNP put James McGrath ahead of her on the ticket.
She definitively ruled out a tilt at Stuart Robert’s seat of Fadden (the LNP preselected local councillor Cameron Caldwell on Saturday). But Stoker has been coy about whether she’d consider a run at McPherson on the Gold Coast, where former home affairs minister Karen Andrews is retiring at the next election.
The fight for Oodgeroo could be a hot one. Chooks understands former LNP federal MP Andrew Laming is still interested in running for the electorate, and there are question marks about whether sitting member Robinson wants to go around again next year.
It’s a return to the bayside for Stoker, who in 2009 lost preselection to Robinson for the state seat, then called Cleveland.
In April, Laming lost a vote to take over the Oodgeroo branch chairmanship, a result interpreted as a blow to his chances in a preselection contest.
Chooks asked Stoker whether she was considering a run in Oodgeroo given her recent move, and the former senator chose her words carefully in response.
“We’ve headed back here for a whole lot of reasons,” she said. “Great lifestyle, the right school for our children. Oodgeroo is being well served by its sitting member, Mark Robinson.”
Asked what would happen if Robinson decided not to recontest, Stoker said: “There’s no sign of that, he’s got plenty of go left in him!”
As for Robinson, the longtime MP stayed studiously quiet when Chooks asked him whether he planned to run again at the next election.
SEX, DRUGS AND BACKROOM DEALS
To the untrained eye, Labor’s state conference in Mackay at the weekend was an all-round snoozefest, until a theatrical factional bust-up over the AUKUS alliance exploded at the eleventh hour.
But Chooks can reveal the real drama was unfolding behind closed doors on Saturday.
It began with Right faction plans to put forward an amendment, explicitly stating that 16- and 17-year-olds should not be included in planned Palaszczuk government reforms to decriminalise sex work.
In April, the government announced it “broadly supported” 47 recommendations from the Law Reform Commission to decriminalise sex work in line with other jurisdictions.
Right sources say backbencher Linus Power was prepped and ready to talk on the amendment (and speak out generally about decriminalising sex work for adults) until they got wind that the omnipotent Left planned to oppose it.
“In our caucus meeting on Saturday, people got up and said, ‘Do we really want (Attorney-General) Yvette (D’Ath) to have to handle the media shitstorm that will come of this’. So we decided to pull the amendment and let cabinet deal with it,” a Right source told Chooks.
The QLRC did not recommend sex work be decriminalised for under-18s and hell would freeze over before cabinet supported something that radical before an election.
The Left caucus meeting on Saturday afternoon got “fiery” when delegates found out they wouldn’t be able to talk about drug decriminalisation.
“There was a deal done that Linus wouldn’t get up and speak against sex work legislation but in return we weren’t allowed to do our legalise weed resolution,” a Left source says.
“We were mad because we have the numbers, we could have voted their stuff down and gotten our stuff up.”
Spies have informed Chooks that Left ministers warned their staff not to speak out about it at the caucus meeting. But Health Minister Shannon Fentiman was said to have gone into bat for those who wanted to speak on drug decriminalisation.
As one Labor insider said: “Why would people want to get involved in the Labor Party if they aren’t allowed to speak about the things they care about?”
Annastacia Palaszczuk is notoriously conflict averse – a very different style to her predecessors, Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh, who were happy to let rank and file thrash it out on the conference floor.
COAL FIGHT FIZZLE
So what happened to the motion pressing the Palaszczuk state government to declare metallurgical or steelmaking coal a “critical mineral”?
As revealed by Chooks last week, the last-minute motion was put up by the CFMEU’s mining division at Labor’s state conference in Mackay, and threatened to ruffle the feathers of the Left’s Labor Environment Action Network.
But a public showdown on the floor of conference was avoided after the Left agreed to support the CFMEU’s motion if the language was watered down to state that coal was important, but removed reference to an official “critical mineral” declaration.
THE DELEGATES
The Labor love-in also settled on the Queensland branch and union delegates for the party’s national conference in Brisbane in August.
The outcome of the vote for 36 branch and 36 union delegates (Annastacia Palaszczuk is also assured a delegate vote) showed, as has become the norm in recent years, the dominance of the Left faction in the Queensland ALP.
Of the branch delegates, the Left got 18, the Old Guard (the once mighty faction, now subservient ally of the Left) secured five, and the formerly all-powerful AWU Right faction took the remaining 13 delegate positions.
On the union front, the Left got 18, the Right 12 and the unaligned outliers of the CFMEU and services’ union securing three each.
The numbers will prove important in the debate at national conference and the formation of the ALP’s federal governing body, the National Executive.
But it should also serve as a reminder to any Labor hopeful seeking preselection ahead of the next federal election, that it is probably wiser to be in the Left and not the Right.
And Chooks couldn’t help notice a few interesting names among the elected delegates for national conference, including former state minister Kate Jones.
Another notable delegate was Star Casino’s in-house lobbyist in Queensland, Corinne Mulholland, who was bragging about topping the vote in Brisbane North.
Chooks has repeatedly exposed and explored the close links between Queensland Labor and Star Entertainment, that model corporate citizen being flayed over allegations of money laundering and organised crime in its casinos.
Mulholland’s election as a delegate follows her return recently to ALP’s federal policy body – for a second term as the nominee for the premier’s AWU-Right faction.
PITT-STOP OVER
Speaker Curtis Pitt will be back in parliament next week for budget week, after taking some time off to look after his mental health.
Pitt turned up late to parliament’s regional sitting in his hometown of Cairns last month, and was under the weather, appearing to slur his words.
The MP for Mulgrave insisted to Chooks it was the effects of the flu, and not going out for late-night drinks the previous evening, that led to police having to wake him up for work.
Hopefully Pitt gets an early night on Monday, ahead of his return to the Speaker’s chair.
GOLD COAST OVERSHARE
Liberal National Party MP John-Paul Langbroek is obsessed with social media.
The Surfers Paradise rep and former leader of the LNP in parliament bloody loves an Instagram selfie and sharing everything he can about what he calls #thefabulousgoldie to his just-under 5000 followers.
And look, Chooks is all for openness and transparency, but one of JPL’s recent posts had us gobsmacked.
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in late May, Langbroek and his mates were having lunch at one of their houses on one of Queensland’s most expensive streets, the oceanfront Hedges Ave, known as Millionaire’s Row, at Mermaid Beach.
Behind some bushes, Langbroek filmed a video of a naked man using the public beach showers at Peerless Ave.
“Look at you filming! What are you going to do with it?” one of Langbroek’s lunching companions can be heard asking.
Post it on Instagram for all to see, was Langbroek’s apparent answer, where the video (and another photo of police apprehending thieves who took keys and a wallet from Langbroek’s unlocked car) has garnered 186 likes.
Langbroek’s sister, comedian Kate Langbroek, requested a clarification: “Can you make it clear it’s not you in the shower???!”
Her brother responded: “It’s not me having the shower.”
Langbroek told Chooks: “These things seem to happen to me a lot.”
When the unidentified man finished having a wash and re-robed, Langbroek, a dentist by trade, noticed he may not have had all his teeth.
Chooks has decided not to republish the video, which was taken without the bloke’s consent.
WYNNUM MANLY BIFFO
Back on Brisbane’s bayside, not far from where Amanda Stoker has put down roots, a messy internal brawl has been fought on the Labor side of politics over the Brisbane City Council ward of Wynnum Manly.
Veteran Labor councillor Peter Cumming called it quits after nearly three decades in council, after being charged with drink-driving following a Christmas party last year. He’d been found by police asleep at the wheel of his car, engine running, a stone’s throw from his home.
As Chooks revealed last month, Cumming had to deliver two farewell speeches in City Hall as the ALP struggled to find a candidate to replace him.
But it turns out there was a willing local nominee, Wynnum accountant Brenda Ryan, who had the strong backing of state Labor MP for Lytton, Joan Pease. Ryan told supporters she was confident she’d win a preselection vote, but that ambition was thwarted by Labor HQ’s powerful admin committee.
Chooks hears the committee took an expression of interest for a neighbouring ward, Doboy, from United Workers Union employee and former real estate agent Sara Whitmee, and installed her as Cumming’s replacement in Wynnum Manly.
There was no preselection vote.
As Cumming’s resignation came within 12 months of the next council election, Whitmee also did not need to face a by-election for the position.
“Sara was (UWU boss and Left faction powerbroker) Gary Bullock’s captain’s pick, she was absolutely plucked from obscurity,” a Labor source told Chooks.
“Joan Pease has gone postal.”
Pease was so incensed she threatened to resign and appealed to Labor’s national executive and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to intervene.
The state MP declined to comment, as did Ryan, while Whitmee – through a spokeswoman – handballed questions to state secretary Kate Flanders.
FUND OF FORTITUDE
Chooks hears president of Labor’s Fortitude Valley branch, Georgia Stafford, will shortly be officially announced as the new chair of the government’s Gambling Community Benefit Fund.
Stafford has been a member of the fund’s committee since 2018 and also works at the Local Government Association of Queensland as the intergovernmental relations lead.
As the state’s largest one-off community grants program, the fund is basically a big bucket of money and distributes about $60m each year to not-for-profit community groups. The cash is from consolidated revenue, though historically had been funded directly from gaming machine taxes.
The committee reviews thousands of grant applications and then makes recommendations to the Attorney-General as to which ones should receive a taxpayer-funded windfall.
At an April meeting of Labor’s Inner Brisbane North local policy conference, Stafford and her Fortitude Valley branch VP Casey Rogers were photographed with “the magnificent minister” for Industrial Relations Grace Grace and backbencher Jonty Bush.
“Brisbane’s inner suburbs are well represented under the Palaszczuk Labor government,” a Facebook post commemorating the occasion reads.
Outgoing GCBF chair Alan Sparks – the chief executive officer of East Coast Apprenticeships – told Chooks he was delighted Stafford had been chosen as his successor and said he had no idea of her political connections.
“In the five years of my term that I worked with Georgia, there was never any discussion about political persuasions; I would describe her as a woman of integrity, who is very committed to the community and the fund,” Sparks said.
Chooks asked the state government whether there was any conflict between Stafford’s new job as chair and her side hustle as the president of a Labor branch.
A spokeswoman for the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Fair Training said Stafford had undertaken “comprehensive governance and conflict of interest training when initially appointed to the committee as a member in 2018 and will also undertake updated training prior to beginning her role as chairperson”.
“Ms Stafford brings with her valuable experience in working with rural and remote communities in Queensland through her work with the Local Government Association of Queensland,” the spokeswoman said.
HIGH COURT CARNAGE
It was more than the vibe when former Queensland Public Trustee Peter Carne’s precedent-setting fight to keep secret a corruption watchdog report went all the way to the High Court this week.
Carne – a former law partner of the late Labor premier Wayne Goss – is battling the state’s Crime and Corruption Commission, which received an anonymous complaint against him way back on June 25, 2018.
The CCC started investigating in September 2018, Carne was suspended from office in June 2019, resigned in July 2020, and in October 2020, the CCC sent a copy of its draft report to the chair of the Parliamentary Crime and Corruption Commission and requested it be given to the Speaker of parliament.
What’s acknowledged is that the CCC’s report did not make any findings of corrupt conduct against Carne.
Two days later, Carne leapt into legal action, asking the courts to declare the report should not be made public.
In August last year, the Queensland Court of Appeal backed Carne’s position, but the CCC in December was granted special leave to take the matter all the way to the highest court in the land, where it was heard on Tuesday and Wednesday.
A cacophony of bigwigs assembled for the occasion, including Peter Dunning KC for the CCC, Jonathan Horton KC for Carne, Bret Walker SC intervened on behalf of the Speaker of Queensland parliament Curtis Pitt, and Tim Begbie KC appeared for federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.
The court will have to decide whether the CCC should only be able to report on corruption investigations where there’s a positive finding of “corrupt conduct,” and whether reports prepared for parliamentary committees are covered by parliamentary privilege.
The Carne case has implications for another high-profile matter: former deputy premier Jackie Trad’s own battle to suppress a CCC report probing her appointment of her then-under treasurer Frankie Carroll.
It’s in the hands of five judges now: Chief Justice Susan Kiefel, Stephen Gageler, Michelle Gordon, James Edelman, and Jayne Jagot.
Their judgment has been reserved, watch this space.
SPOTTED
Has Labor finally found a candidate to run for Brisbane lord mayor? Former LNP mayor and premier Campbell Newman sure seems to think so, tweeting a link to a new personal website for a Labor member called Tracey Price.
Price describes herself as an “accomplished lawyer, mediator, corporate professional and successful small business owner” and someone who values democracy. She also has a list of “community commitments” including building a “strong active travel network and a safe and wide linked bicycle network,” working to ensure everyone in Brisbane has a roof over their heads, focusing on onshore processing of materials collected for recycling, supporting workers organising in unions, and women’s reproductive rights.
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