Axed ALP candidate Tracey Cameron backs Katter rival over Annastacia Palaszczuk’s pick

The Whitsunday Labor candidate dumped for Annastacia Palaszczuk’s nominee has quit the party and thrown her support behind a former rival.

Former Labor candidate for Whitsunday Tracey Cameron. Picture: Facebook

The Whitsunday Labor candidate dumped to make way for Annastacia Palaszczuk’s nominee has quit the party and thrown her support behind a former rival.

Tracey Cameron told The Australian she was furious at being forced to rescind her nomination 10 months after she was preselected by branch members in the north Queensland electorate.

The Premier’s call to replace her with Angie Kelly months out from the October 31 election — a move influenced by factional infighting — has led to the Whitsunday/Proserpine branch closing after members’ mass resignation.

Ms Cameron, who initially said her decision to resign was because of a family illness, told The Australian she would support Katter’s Australian Party candidate Ciaron Paterson in his campaign.

“I’ve been a member of the Labor Party for my entire voting life, so it wasn’t an easy decision,” she said. “But the foundations of the Labor Party have been eroded to just about non-existent and that is really tragic because all the people who still support the party still believe in the values it was based on. The general public don’t have a clue that that doesn’t exist any more. Today’s Labor Party is not what the Labor Party was established for.”

Ms Cameron, a small-business owner and daughter of a coal­miner, said Labor had moved away from its working-class base and was made up of mostly “doctors, teachers and lawyers”.

The seat is held with a slim 0.7 per cent margin by Jason Costigan, who won it for the Liberal National Party before he was expelled from the party.

The protest resignation of the party’s active branch members has left Ms Kelly without the support of seasoned volunteers to back her campaign.

It also influenced the decision of Labor stalwart Bronwyn Taha to quit her job as a staff member for Mackay MP Julieanne Gilbert.

Ms Taha was Labor’s candidate for Whitsunday in the 2015 and 2017 state elections and previously ran for the federal seat of Dawson.

A similar move by Ms Palaszczuk to endorse her own candidate, surfer Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew, in the Gold Coast seat of Burleigh has angered many within the party, including former Burleigh MP Christine Smith. Ms Smith resigned as a member last weekend, saying she was “disgusted at the way a candidate was thrust upon the Burleigh branch without even a personal explanation or discussion”.

Mr Bartholomew and Ms Kelly were signed up as Labor members shortly before their endorsement was announced.

A local Labor source said the party was making the same mistakes it made ahead of last year‘s federal election in which the party suffered a huge swing against it in Queensland’s regional areas.