Campbell Newman targets PM’s ‘failure’ in Senate tilt

The former Queensland premier claims he has the private support of senior Liberal National Party figures over his decision to return to politics.

Campbell Newman, with his wife Lisa, announces his Senate bid for the Liberal Democrats in Brisbane on Sunday. Picture: Steve Pohlner

Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman claims he has the private support of senior Liberal National Party figures over his decision to return to politics, running for a senate spot for the Liberal Democrats at the next ­federal election.

Just weeks after quitting the LNP, Mr Newman on Sunday announced he would be leading the Queensland senate campaign ticket for the Liberal Democrats.

Mr Newman will likely be vying for either the fifth or sixth Senate spot in Queensland against the Morrison government’s Assistant Minister for Women Amanda Stoker, One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and Greens candidate Penny Allman-Payne.

He told The Australian that the Liberal Democrats had asked him to contest the federal election and that he was also approached to be a candidate for Clive Palmer’s party and One ­Nation.

Despite being ousted from government and his seat in 2015 after just a single term in state politics, Mr Newman said he felt compelled to return to politics, accusing the Morrison government of an abject failure with its vaccination rollout.

He accused Mr Morrison of “not standing up for anything”.

Mr Newman also criticised the Palaszczuk government’s mounting debt and the burden on business of Covid-related restrictions over the past 18 months, while conceding the latest lockdown was necessary because of the threat of the Delta variant and low vaccination rates.

“Six years ago, I declared my political career over. But I simply cannot sit by and watch Australia being so poorly led and this crisis being so poorly managed by our major political parties,’’ he said.

In a statement, Mr Newman accused Prime Minister Scott Morrison of running a “very illiberal big government” during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Scott Morrison has, sadly, let us down with very illiberal big government overreach,” he said.

“Anthony Albanese represents outdated socialism that will saddle our kids with huge deb and destroy our culture with woke nonsense and red tape.”

Mr Newman said senior members and officials of the LNP in Queensland – which has been riven by division in the past two years – had privately voiced their support for him after he quit the party two weeks ago. “I can assure you I have had in the last two weeks at least three former presidents of the party calling me, backing me up, saying they’ll be supporting me, (and) former treasurers of the party, current office-bearers.

“The Liberal Democrats has already seen a … trickle of extra memberships.

“And I will be predicting that we’ll see some real defections from the LNP to the Lib Dems. And that’s because the politicians have let us down.”

He refused to identify his LNP supporters.

Labor senator Anthony Chisholm, who ran the state campaign that defeated the one-term Newman government, said he doubted voters would support Mr Newman.

“Campbell Newman ran one of the most authoritarian and loathed governments in the history of our state,’’ Senator Chisholm, who is seeking election at the next poll, told The Australian.

”Queenslanders haven’t forgotten.’’

At the last election, the LNP secured three of Queensland’s Senate seats up for election, with Labor winning one seat alongside One Nation and the Greens. The Liberal Democrats have never held a Queensland state or federal seat.

Polls indicate that Labor will improve on its disastrous Queensland result in the 2019 election, when it secured just 22 per cent of the statewide Senate vote.

A vote of 14.3 per cent is needed to secure a Senate spot.