QUEENSLAND NATS LOSE DEPUTY LEADERSHIP, FAIL OUR STATE AGAIN

December 07, 2017

Regional Queensland’s LNP MPs have been humiliated again in Canberra, failing to win the Deputy Leadership of the National Party in Federal Parliament.

Today, the Nationals chose a backbench Victorian Senator as their Federal Deputy Leader, rejecting Cabinet Minister Matt Canavan, Assistant Minister Keith Pitt and every other Queensland Nationals MP.

Eight Queensland LNP MPs sit in the Nationals party room in Canberra - twice as many as Victoria and second only to New South Wales.

Despite this, they couldn’t even secure the Deputy Leadership of their party.

This is just the latest in a long list of failures for Regional Queensland’s LNP MPs.

They can’t get new infrastructure funding for our regions, they can’t get the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to fund a single Queensland project, they’ve backed every one of Malcolm Turnbull’s cuts to Regional Queensland, and now they can’t even win the Deputy Leadership of their party. 

Since the Queensland election, our regional LNP MPs have talked tough about stepping up and taking on Malcolm Turnbull. Instead:

• they voted with Mr Turnbull to support cuts to the penalty rates of 120,000 Regional Queenslanders,
• they voted with Mr Turnbull to support cuts to bulk billing for Regional Queenslanders,
• we’ve seen a humiliating backdown from Dawson MP, George Christensen, who threatened to resign from the Government, and
• they’ve lost the Deputy Leadership of their party to a group that is half their size in Canberra.

The Federal National Party has worked out what Regional Queenslanders have known for some time. Regional Queensland’s LNP MPs are failures and don’t deserve to keep their jobs.