The Clivening: Clive Harder

Last week, the conservative love affair of the century ended. The ultimately futile attractions of the LNP to Clive's millions and Clive to the benefits of an LNP Government has failed. Clive has dumped the LNP; the LNP has counter-dumped Clive. There's no happy ending in sight.

Surprisingly, it is crazy Clive F Palmer, with his soccer addiction, his Titanic replica, his Jurassic Park-themed golf resort (formerly the Hyatt Regency Coolum), and another mega-resort and international airport planned for the Sunshine Coast who has the most support. Politically, Clive has (or had) that pesky life membership of the LNP, plus his seven-digit donation to the party, a conspiracy theory linking the CIA to the Greens, threats to run for federal parliament against Wayne Swan, a stoush with Tony Abbott and a rare talent for media conferences that would make him political dynamite.

So what is Clive Palmer up to? He is speaking out against the reign of King Campbell, in a manner that most voters to the left of Genghis Khan will appreciate. King Campbell's popularity within Newmania has dropped from a high in the 60s, before he started his Campbell Scissorhands routine, to somewhere in the 40s in around six months. Wonks are claiming that this is the fastest fall in post-election leadership approval and popularity ever seen in Australia.

Voters have been protesting against King Campbell's Slash & Burn tactics for months now; Opposition Leader Annastacia Palasczcuk has tried to lead an effective opposition and has been entirely ineffectual; the media, including the Murdochian Courier Mail has has been appropriately critical, too. Nothing has broken through the way Clive's criticism has.

Clive Palmer has a decades-long relationship with the LNP and it's predecessor. Even without his business successes, he's impossible to ignore, particularly when he compares King Campbell's first eight months with the Bjelke Petersen government, and claims the Newman regime is worse. Clive believes in the goodness of conservative politics, and largely bankrolled the amalgamation of the Queensland Liberals and Nationals, creating the party he just dumped. The LNP is, in part, his creation, and through that, he enabled Labor's defeat.

Clive Palmer carries a lot of conservative political clout - dare I suggest he has even more clout without he LNP? Imagine a Clive who wasn't wedded to LNP mantras; a Clive who could apply his business expertise to running the state while still being true to his values. This is the man who donated substantial funds to the Queensland Labor movement to assist public servants who'd been sacked. He doesn't hesitate to put his money where his mouth is.

When Clive parted ways with the LNP after that unforgettable media conference where he referred to King Campbell as Caesar, he asked us to expect something big. Someone should probably tell Clive that when he calls a presser, "big" is usually an understatement.

Clive also likes the visual, and for that media conference he stood in front of a yellow and black backdrop covered in the words "Together we achieve the extraordinary". I wondered if that was significant. It's a slogan adopted by organisations ranging from fitness clubs to the Jefferson Baptist Church to various construction companies, metalwork businesses, corporate consultants and...Clive Palmer himself, who had the words included on the billboard he erected in Wayne Swan's suburban Brisbane seat of Lilley. There was no party branding, just the slogan and Clive's name and easily recognisable face.

The LNP must be curious and more. They have weathered the Flegg resignation, but still have to deal with Michael Caltabiano and Ros Bates. Ray Hopper's defection to Katter's Australia Party might not have shaken a government with a majority the size of Jupiter, but today, the last sitting week of the year, Gold Coast LNP member Alex Douglas is stirring the party pot over his removal from the Ethics Committee, and Carl Judge, yet another LNP member, will in all likelihood be disendorsed by the party. Bob Katter thinks there are more LNP members ready to jump ship, but which way?

The million dollar question: What about a Clive Party?

Would Clive Party throw his money behind another political venture? If he did, would he run for office as it's leader? Would other, disgruntled LNP MPs dump the LNP to play in Clive's sandpit? If they did, where does that leave Katter's Party? Could Clive summon seven or more LNP members to 'be extraordinary' with him, allowing his party to replace the ALP as the party in Opposition?

With Clive, anything is possible. He loves being the ringmaster, revealing his latest and greatest thought-bubbles to the world. When a man like that ends a press conference with a promise of something bigger, he could well be gearing up to announce the formation of his own political party, or a plan to challenge King Campbell head-on in Ashgrove, or release some hitherto unknown documentation implicating half the LNP in dirty deeds, or a plan to save Queensland by building replica Titanics and cloning dinosaurs...or he could be announcing that he's had enough enough of the whole shebang and he's going to colonise the moon.

It's Clive, after all. Nothing is too far out there.

Newmania: Existential Politics

Sshhh. Don’t ask – it’s Secret Squirrel Government Business!


The thing about keeping just about anything in the dark is that eventually, it’ll develop an old, cold, mildewy smell, like damp ugg boots left in the cupboard during a humid summer.

If it smells rotten, it probably is. It’s a whole series of things that are rotten, and this time it’s not policy, jobs being cut, programmes slashed and facilities closed, although that continues to provide a unique stench. This time the brutality of bringing the state “back on track” is drowned out by a series of internal events effecting the Government, the Public Service and the LNP itself.

This morning, Graeme Hallett spoke to the media, starting with some flattering words for his former boss. Those words were ineptitude and arrogance. Mr Hallett should be good with words; he was Minister Flegg’s media advisor, and long time Liberal Party staffer who had also worked with the Howard Government, and with Dr Flegg when he was campaigning in 2006. Mr Hallett has some credibility, and contacts in the media. He’s promised documentary evidence to prove that his former boss is unfit for high public office.

The allegation is that Mr Flegg’s son Johnathon, who is a lobbyist, has made over 50 calls to the Minister’s office. These activities need to be logged in a register, which according to Mr Hallett, shows only a couple of instances. To further confuse matters, Minister Flegg stated during the budget estimates process that there had been a handful of occasions of contact.

So is it a couple of times? Half a dozen times? Fifty times? And seriously, who cares?

We all should care. Lobbyists, by definition have an agenda, and when one lobbyist makes multiple visits to a Minister’s office, the agenda will make its way into the conversation.

Does it matter that the Minister and lobbyist in question are father and son? I believe it does. Do you pop in to see your father and his cronies at his workplace four or five times a week? Does your Mum call in regularly to discuss her work with you and your staff? In the case of Minister and lobbyist, you’d think both parties would be making a singular effort to ensure that everything is correct, and is seen to be correct, particularly in a new government from the party who brought us the most corrupt government Australia has ever…er…caught.

Consider the surface of Doctor Flegg’s little Ministry well and truly scratched. It may be Mr Hallett who is speaking out this morning; Flegg also sacked his Chief of Staff last Thursday, and just yesterday, Education Minister John Paul Langbroek sacked his assistant, who had previously worked for Flegg. Three staffers from the one Minister’s office sacked in under a week is not coincidence, and one of them is pissed off enough to gather documents on his way out the door and distribute them to media. What do the other two know?

Then there are the rumours about Right To Information documentation. King Campbell has issued a royal decree that ministerial staff are not to be issuing documents requested under Right To Information laws. In fact, King Campbell stated that such requests were to be referred to the relevant Department for assessment and action. Daniel Hurst reported in the Brisbane Times that Minister’s Flegg’s media staff had made some RTI decisions in contradiction to King Campbell’s orders.
Even more intriguing is the suggestion that the RTI requests in question were made by Opposition Leader Annastasia Palasczcuk, and that the information she had requested related to the register lobby – and that the register was factually incorrect.

It doesn’t stop there. Mr Hallett has stated that Dr Flegg continued to practice as a medical doctor while being paid to work as a full-time Minister, a choice which Mr Hallett says he begged Minister Flegg to reconsider. I doubt that’s illegal; it’s just bad form.


Minister Flegg has addressed Mr Hallett's accusations in Parliament today. According to Minister Flegg, it’s just a disgruntled former employee who’s taking his bitterness out on his former boss, and his documentary evidence is inconclusive. It’s a predictable response, but at least it’s not violent. These days, disgruntled ex-employees are usually associated with mass shootings in the USA.

It’s unlikely we’ll get to see any footage of Minister Flegg’s speech though; Speaker Fiona Simpson has banned television cameras from the Chamber.

…and now Henry Palasczcuk, former Labor Minister and father of the Leader of the Opposition, is paraphrasing songs from Evita and tweeting whole verses. Can this day get any stranger?

You bet it can, ‘cause today, Minister Ros Bates is in Da House. Minister Bates has been off work, recovering from shoulder surgery and providing emotional support to her hapless son, 25 year old Ben Gommers. Ben lucked into a parliamentary liaison role on a six figure salary, but has recently been off work, suffering from depression. Mr Gommers works for the Department of Transport and Main Roads. Their Director-General, Michael Caltabiano, is still suspended on full pay while the Crime and Misconduct Commission investigate his involvement in lobbying firm Entrez Vous where Minister Bates and Mr Gommers were co-directors.

Aaah yes, Newmania’s infamous Crime and Misconduct Commission is investigating the conduct of two Ministers, a Director General, and a minister’s son, and the relationships between them. I suppose they will be well practised when Minister Flegg, his lobbyist son and his unhappy staff come before the CMC, as they most probably will. If there’s a CMC left.

What’s that you say? King Campbell is slowly, quietly, dismantling the CMC?

Welcome to Newmania, where there is no Upper House to temper the excesses of the Newmanian government (or any other government). In this parliament, there’s almost no Opposition either (and they’ve been evicted from their offices in Parliament House and relocated down the road). Mercifully, the media is still welcome, but not with their cameras pointed at the chamber, and not in their former tea room. There are cutbacks everywhere.

The people of Newmania need the CMC more than ever. Since July, there has been a headcount reduction of at least 44 through voluntary redundancy, plus 13 forced redundancies last week. That’s about 15% of their workforce gone, at a time when they already had cases queuing for investigation, and when the CMC itself is being investigated by a panel appointed by King Campbell. So now we have the CMC, an “impartial” government agency, being investigated by the Government, while simultaneously investigating
the government. I can't see that ending well.

And Mr Hallett couldn’t take his concerns to the CMC, because the CMC is under instruction to dismiss complaints which are politically driven.

Thank god there’s a Committee of the Legislative Assembly Ethics Committee to oversee the ethical conduct of members. LNP members outnumber Labor members 5-2 on the Ethics Committee, but that’s less unbalanced than the ratio of LNP to Labor in the actual parliament, so we shouldn’t complain, right? It’s not like the LNP is running Queensland entirely without opposition or oversight.


BREAKING: Minister Bates has confirmed that her son’s flatmate is working as an advisor in her office. I’m tempted to add “der”.