Dirty work at the crossroads in yet another
Queensland Liberal preselection?

The Online Opinion site has this to say
about the recent Broadwater preselection:

The reason that Jim Nicholls was vetted out
of the Broadwater preselection is supposed to have something to do with the
accuracy of his application form. Nicholls says he is a “consultant,”
the party says he is “unemployed” (well, what else does
“consultant” mean?). Nicholls claims to be an active member of some
community groups, the party says he might be a member, but he’s not active. How
would they know – do these community groups send their minutes to LP HQ?

The decision to disqualify him was
unanimous, so there must have been some cross-factional support for it, but
surely not on the basis of a couple of fig-leafs like that. If exaggeration
were a disqualification, then the pool of potential Liberal Party candidates
wouldn’t be deep enough to slake the thirst of the average back-yard mosquito…

A google search on the
successful candidate, Christopher Stear, also raises some questions about his
suitability. It looks like he might have exaggerated a profit figure by $2.764
million in the context of an equity raising in Child Care Centres Australia, a
listed public company. Or if he didn’t, he should have known that it was
exaggerated by that figure. In any case, he left the company at around the same
time the profit downgrade was announced.

There’s more here
– and a J T Campbell link, too.

Sources say that after years of loyally
supporting beleaguered Liberal Leader Bob Quinn it looks like faithful Quinn
backer Nicholls got rolled at the preselection by none other than Quinn
himself.

That left the door open for the Caltabiano-backed Christopher Steer to take up
the mantle, raising a few eyebrows on the Coast as Steer is a former federal
Democrat candidate.

It would also appear that Collins’ supporters are not yet prepared to let
things go entirely – hence the Child Care Centres Australia
goss.