Labor slams Greens’ campaign to smear Jackie Trad

Federal Labor MP accuses Greens of leveraging a conservative smear campaign to dislodge Jackie Trad from parliament.

Jackie Trad at the West End State High School polling booth on election day. Picture: Attila Csaszar)

Federal Labor MP Terri Butler says the Greens leveraged a conservative smear campaign against the state’s former deputy premier Jackie Trad to win the once-Labor stronghold of South Brisbane.

Ms Butler said the Greens had improved their primary vote off the back of a “frankly disgraceful smear campaign” against Ms Trad.

“The Greens are running billboards saying, ‘End corruption, vote Green’ against Jackie, in her own seat, a smear that was found to be completely untrue against Jackie Trad to try to get her out of parliament,” Ms Butler said.

Ms Trad, who had served as the state’s treasurer until she was forced to resign her ministerial duties amid a scandal earlier in the year, was booted out of Queensland’s parliament on election night.

Ms Butler said Trad had election material stolen and defaced with sexist insults.

Greens candidate Amy McMahon has won South Brisbane from Labor’s Jackie Trad. Picture: Annette Dew

Ms Butler said Ms Palaszczuk’s win could be attributed to strong health response and the fact she had stood up to bullying from the commonwealth to open the state’s borders.

“(Opposition leader) Deb Frecklington has called for the borders to be opened 64 times,” she said. “This is a premier who has stood up to the bullying, has listened to the health advice and as a consequence has kept people safe, so full credit to Annastacia Palaszczuk.”

She said the week Scott Morrison spent on the hustings in Queensland had been damaging to the Liberal campaign.

“The Prime Minister came to Queensland, spent a week here, effectively telling Queenslanders how to suck eggs and Queenslanders didn’t like that,” she said. “We don’t like people coming up here and telling us how to live our lives.”

Ms Butler said the success of Queensland Labor was a lesson to their federal counterparts that “if you get the policies right, if you get the health response right, then people will like what we are going to say.”