Campbell Newman bashes protege on euthanasia

As he prepares to run for the Senate, former Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has taken aim at LNP leader David Crisafulli.

Premier Campbell Newman and David Crisafulli in happier times. Picture: Wesley Monts

Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman has criticised new Liberal National Party leader David Crisafulli for refusing to ­reveal his position on voluntary assisted dying less than a month before legislation goes to a vote.

Mr Newman, who once touted Mr Crisafulli as the state’s next LNP premier, said his former protege was being “evasive” for refusing to say whether he supported giving terminally ill people the right to die.

“The Leader of the Opposition is the alternative premier and it is beholden of him to show real leadership and put his own personal view on the table,” Mr Newman said.

“He really needs to get off the fence and say what he believes because Queenslanders deserve to know his position on this. I would hope he finds it within himself to make a call on this.”

Mr Newman quit the LNP last month and announced he would run for federal parliament’s upper house as a Liberal Democrat.

He says he regrets not introducing VAD legislation when he was premier from 2012 to 2015.

Mr Crisafulli, who has committed to leading a centre-right party, said he “had a good crack” at reading the proposed laws, ­tabled in parliament in May, but had not considered them in detail.

He conceded his “position should be clear” on the issue, but refused to say whether that would be done before he casts his vote in mid-September.

“I have said all along that I am going to give our troops a vote free from any pressure from ­myself or from the party,” Mr Crisafulli said.

“This is serious and I want to know there is no politics involved in this.”

Mr Crisafulli hopes voters like the fact he “sat down and genuinely had a look at the legislation to work out what is good and what is not”, which he is yet to do.

“I am certainly going to take a little more time to consider it,” he said.

LNP politicians were threatened with disendorsement by former party president Gary Spence, if they voted to decriminalise abortion ahead of a 2018 vote.

Mr Crisafulli said he had no doubt MPs would be supported “whatever way they vote” on ­euthanasia.

Of the state’s 34 LNP members, none have said they would vote in favour of voluntary ­assisted dying.

Mark Robinson, who represents Oodgeroo in Brisbane’s bayside, will vote no, believing that “taking of a poison that deliberately causes death, is not the best form of relief from suffering that is available”.

Labor frontbenchers, including Treasurer Cameron Dick and Education Minister Grace Grace, have not revealed how they plan to vote.