LNP to favour Greens to unseat Jackie Trad

Queensland’s Liberal National Party hierarchy has backed a preferences strategy to gift Jackie Trad’s seat to the Greens.

Under her deputy premiership Jackie Trad’s faction has secured a crackdown on tree-clearing by farmers, decriminalised abortion and a shifted attitudes towards thermal coalmining. Picture: AAP

Queensland’s Liberal National Party hierarchy, including state leader Deb Frecklington and former Senate leader Ron Boswell, has backed a preferences strategy to gift Labor deputy premier Jackie Trad’s seat to the Greens.

In the controversial move to destabilise the Palaszczuk government and oust Ms Trad at the 2020 election, the LNP’s state executive will today vote to direct preferences to the Greens ahead of Labor in the Treasurer’s vulnerable inner-city electorate of South Brisbane.

There was speculation last night that Ms Trad would transfer to a safer seat, despite the Deputy Premier having repeatedly promised to re-contest South Brisbane.

The speculation centred on the seat of Toohey — held by fellow Left member Peter Russo, 63, by 10 per cent — as a seat where Ms Trad could cement her place in parliament and ultimately succeed Annastacia Palaszczuk as premier.

Ms Trad won the seat on the back of LNP preferences at the 2017 election, after then state leader Tim Nicholls blocked a similar preference strategy amid internal divisions about helping the Greens to secure a foothold in ­parliament.

But the strategy, resurrected by newly appointed acting LNP president David Hutchinson, has won widespread support amid anger over Ms Trad’s role in obstructing the Adani coalmine and championing of abortion reform.       Despite the LNP grassroots reviling the Greens’ policies — including a ban on new coalmines and 100 per cent state-owned renewable energy — senior party figures say Ms Trad is a bigger threat because she can harness the power of the ALP to advance her left-wing agenda.

Ms Frecklington said Ms Trad’s disputed claim last week that miners needed to “re-skill” amid an international backlash against coal demonstrated she was “worse than the Greens”.

“Queensland has one of the worst unemployment rates in the nation and Jackie Trad has proven by her statements in the parliament last week that she is anti-jobs,” Ms Frecklington said.

CFMEU Mining and Energy Queensland president Steven Smyth also lashed Ms Trad’s comments as “reckless, inappropriate and out of line”.

Ron Boswell, a former Nationals Senate leader, said Ms Trad “should be punished” for her left-wing agenda. “She has been against coal, she is against jobs in the bush, and she should be punished for opposition to Adani and support for (decriminalising) abortion,” Mr Boswell said.

Former premier Campbell Newman said Ms Trad was Labor’s “best political weapon” and predicted her departure would shift the political debate away from left-wing social and ­environmental causes.

“She is the best they’ve got and that’s why the LNP must, as a matter of political tactics, do what they can to … see her ejected from the parliament,” Mr Newman said.

Ms Trad won South Brisbane by only 3.6 per cent in 2017 after LNP preferences split 62-38 in her favour. If the LNP’s preferences had split 52-48 against Ms Trad, she would have lost the seat.

Some in the party were critical of the strategy. One senior figure said it would expose the party to claims of putting politics before policy.

“The Labor Party is bad, but the Greens are so much worse … They are the antithesis of everything the LNP fight for and stand for across the state,” they said.

Concerns were also raised about whether the tactic would work and, if it did, whether Labor would bring Ms Trad back by ­forcing a by-election in a safer seat.

Griffith University political scientist Paul Williams said the plan would make Ms Trad’s defeat “pretty much a fait accompli” since the LNP and the Greens were likely to see their primary support rise at the election in ­October next year. “Trad’s future is in the LNP’s hands.

“If they preference the Greens above Labor, she can’t win,” Dr Williams said. “If it’s on their how-to-vote card, about 80 per cent of the LNP voters would follow it, and Trad can’t survive that.”

Ms Trad, who has repeatedly ruled out switching to a safer seat, declined to comment.

Labor minister Kate Jones said the LNP’s “nasty, spiteful” tactic was based on politics, not policy.

Townsville-based retired MP Peter Lindsay, a frontbencher in the Howard government, said Ms Trad was deeply unpopular in north Queensland for her “continuing efforts to sink the Adani coalmine” and the jobs it promises.