That smouldering heap you see to
the north of Australia is the Queensland coalition. The smaller clump
of ashes nearby is the career of Liberal leader Bob Quinn.

Why,
you might ask, would the Liberal Party want to sign up a former One
Nation MP? Probably because she is to the left of the Santo
Santoro/Michael Caltabiano mob, our sources say. Trouble is is that
it’s all gone horribly wrong. The Courier Mail sorta says it all this morning:

The Liberal Party’s pursuit of a former One Nation
candidate yesterday sparked calls within the Nationals for Liberal
leader and Coalition partner Bob Quinn to stand down.

As a new
wedge was driven into the fragile conservative Coalition, a furious
Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg confronted Mr Quinn in his
Parliament House office last night.

It is understood he urged Mr Quinn to step down from the joint Coalition front bench.

The Courier-Mail
revealed yesterday that Mr Quinn was the person who had held secret
recruitment talks with Gympie Independent and former One Nation MP
Elisa Roberts.

Mr Quinn yesterday denied Ms Roberts’s claim that he had offered her a $50,000 campaign fund.

However, he conceded he had held a series of talks aimed at recruiting her to the Liberal Party.

He
had told her she would receive assistance with “materials such as
how-to-vote cards and other promotional materials” but said he could
not recall putting a dollar value on the offer.

“I absolutely
repudiate any suggestion that I was involved in offering $50,000 – or
any other amount, or anything at all – for the Member for Gympie to
join the Liberal Party,” he said.

The Springborg-Quinn meeting
followed early morning joint party talks in which Liberal MPs attacked
Nationals deputy leader Jeff Seeney for referring the matter to police…

Senior
Nationals were outraged Mr Quinn had continued talks with Ms Roberts
after signing a Coalition agreement in which the Nationals, not the
Liberals, would run for Gympie.

They also accused Mr Quinn of
hypocrisy after he had previously demanded a guarantee no former One
Nation members would be recruited as Coalition candidates for the
Nationals.

Premier Peter Beattie moved in parliament to refer
the matter to the police, the Crime and Misconduct Commission, the
Electoral Commission and the ethics and privileges committee.

Readers will be relieved to know, however, that idiots are well represented on all sides of Queensland politics. This performance by the Member for Barron River, Lesley Clark, deserves to be seen by the widest possible audience.