Leaked emails show George Christensen asked an economist with links to the Liberal National party to support his call for a separate north Queensland state after the proposal was savaged by a professor he described as “an absolute leftie economist”.
Christensen, the federal MP for Dawson, suggested Colin Dwyer enter the media fray after John Quiggin from the University of Queensland questioned the viability of a northern secession in a media report last Wednesday.
The MP emailed Dwyer from his parliamentary account the same day to say: “Quiggan [sic] – an absolute leftie economist – has pooh-poohed the idea of a NQ state.”
He suggested that Dwyer, a former James Cook University academic who ran for the LNP in the state seat of Mundingburra in 2009, could “rebut some of the claims Quiggan is making”.
“I’m serious about this push rather than just sabre-rattling,” Christensen said. “I want to form a co-ordination committee and raise funds for this push.”
Dwyer said he was “also working on a committee to drive the NQ concept” and agreed to call a reporter whose number Christensen provided.
He cited in the email government statistics indicating the north’s dominance of the state’s coal, meat and metals export revenue, saying that was “a lot of money that could be spent in a new state and not Brisdrain”.
“I hear [Queensland treasurer] Curtis Pitt has come out ‘suggesting’ the north couldn’t fund itself,” Dwyer said.
A day later, Dwyer and Christensen appeared in a Townsville Bulletin story accusing Pitt of “peddling misleading information” about the true scale of mining revenue from the north to “bolster the no case” against secession.
The Murdoch tabloid’s front page depicted the shaven-headed Pitt as “Dr Evil” from the Austin Powers films. It did not refer to Dwyer’s past as an LNP candidate.
The north Queensland MP Bob Katter that day issued a press release quoting from a column by Dwyer, a “respected economist”, for the same newspaper.
Dwyer told Guardian Australia he had been approached by the Townsville Bulletin editor for comment on its story, and that he did not regard the matter of secession as a party-political argument.
“George can draw those conclusions but I’m not drawing any conclusions like that,” he said. “I know John and it seemed like it was a little bit shallow, not quite as in depth as what John would normally have to say. So I was commenting on the article.
“It doesn’t matter whether somebody else sees him as a ‘leftie’. John would look at it from a logical perspective, an economic perspective. I’m looking at it from a logical, economic perspective as well. We’ve both drawn two separate conclusions out of that.”
Christensen and Quiggin were contacted for comment.
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