David Crisafulli came out of Cyclone Alfred looking like a leader. His real danger lies within the LNP
There was something different about David Crisafulli – even if it wasn't immediately clear what had changed – as the Queensland premier addressed the state about the looming threat from Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
Leading through a natural disaster is a rite of passage for a Queensland leader. There's also little anyone can do to prepare. It's a brutal 'learn on the job' experience that requires difficult calls with imperfect information.
Handled the right way – with calm and sincerity, the right ratios of strength and compassion – the experience can define a premier. Floundering politicians have walked out of the briefing room at the emergency services complex at Kedron as beloved leaders.
Anna Bligh's popularity climbed 35 points after the 2011 Brisbane floods. Her tearful 'we are Queenslanders' address is still talked about by, as she put it then, 'the people they breed tough north of the border'.
Crisafulli appears to have a natural effect in these situations that his predecessor, Steven Miles, only found too late in last year's nothing-to-lose election state campaign. Miles's first task as premier was to lead the response to Tropical Cyclone Jasper in north Queensland. There was little to fault in that response, but the lack of emotion or animation meant there was little to remember about it either.
As Tropical Cyclone Alfred approached, Crisafulli had a few missteps. His comments that people should stock up on canned food and bottled water might have contributed to some of the panic buying in the early part of last week, when even Heinz and San Pellegrino were stripped from the shelves.
Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email
And the response itself left questions about the state's disaster management. People in Hervey Bay say they were not prepared for flooding that hit the town. Residents near Brisbane's suburban creeks were sent 'emergency alerts' by police about potential flash flooding on Monday morning, several hours after the creek heights had peaked.
While the premier's office has sought to portray his approach as a break from Covid-era edicts – a champion of devolved decision-making and personal responsibility – the reality is more nuanced. The government closed the schools on Thursday and then gave those able the green light to reopen on Monday. The idea this is radically different to past approaches is simply untrue.
Regardless, Crisafulli is a premier with an enhanced personal brand after Alfred. He has been lauded for having a rare characteristic prized by leaders – the ability to speak with authority and authenticity at the same time.
But there was also something else that contributed to the sense that Crisafulli had a strong week. Something that wasn't clear until Wednesday, when parliament resumed, and the premier's sidekick, the deputy premier, Jarrod Bleijie, returned to his hip.
Bleijie is becoming increasingly influential in the LNP's first Queensland government in a decade. He is a politician with a compulsive fighting instinct and comes across as brash. In parliament this week, Bleijie stood up and made truck honking noises.
The deputy premier also has close control over the LNP's parliamentary strategy, which has at times appeared to focus on gleefully battering political opponents rather than governing with anything resembling maturity.
Behind the scenes, moderates say the deputy premier's instincts risk running the government into unnecessary trouble.
The partnership between Crisafulli and Bleijie is central to harmony between the LNP's once-warring factions. Crisafulli's closest allies are moderates (though he stays out of much of the internal politicking). Insiders say Bleijie and his allies are instigating policy fights the government would be better advised to avoid.
Crisafulli key to re-election in 2028 is to show the public – especially Brisbane voters who have been wary of the LNP since Campbell Newman – a different sort of conservative government.
And it has not gone unnoticed, especially within LNP ranks, that Crisafulli has amplified his personal appeal this week with what is being viewed as mature management of the emergency response, with his attack dog mostly absent from his side.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
'Victory for American people' as Fauci phone and hard drives seized in Covid probe
Hard drives and a cell phone seized from Dr Anthony Fauci could shed light on key decisions during the Covid pandemic - including lockdowns and mask edicts. FBI director Kash Patel revealed Thursday the Trump administration had recovered the devices, calling it a 'great breakthrough' and a 'victory for the American people.' Fauci was chief medical adviser during the pandemic but flip-flopped on crucial Covid safety information - such as mask-wearing - and sought to silence scientists whose views, including the lab-leak theory, clashed with received wisdom. Speaking Thursday on the Joe Rogan Experience, Patel outlined the government's continuing investigation into the origins of the pandemic and the federal response. Patel said investigators had long struggled to locate the devices Fauci used while serving as White House medical adviser - records that could shed light on key decisions surrounding lockdowns, mask mandates, and ties between Fauci's former agency and the Wuhan laboratory central to the lab leak theory. During the episode - where Patel shared a cigar with Rogan and touched on topics ranging from Covid to UFOs - he revealed the FBI had recovered the phone and hard drives just days before the interview was recorded. Patel did not clarify when the phone was in use, how investigators verified its connection to Fauci, or how the devices were obtained. Nor did he disclose what the FBI's 'multiple investigations' into the pandemic's origin have uncovered so far. It is unclear exactly when the phone was used and how they verified it belonged to Fauci. He also warned against drawing premature conclusions, noting 'everything's not necessarily in there' and that potentially relevant data may have been erased. Still, Patel called the discovery 'a victory for the American people' and said his team is actively reviewing the contents of the devices. Patel said: 'We found it [the devices], and at least we can tell the American people we've been looking because it is of public importance to figure out, did that guy lie? 'Did he intentionally mislead the world and cause countless deaths? 'We owe those answers to the American people, and the best evidence ever is always the people's evidence who created it. So now we're going to go and exploit those hard drives.' 'We did find it [the cell phone], we're not done, we're still looking and we're on the case.' Patel did not specify how his team got the old phone or how they verified it was Fauci's. Generally, a warrant is required to seize a cell phone, even for a government official. There are no publicly available warrants out against Fauci. The FBI and CIA have both asserted they think Covid most likely originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, which was conducting risky experiments on coronaviruses in the years leading up to the pandemic. Some of those experiments were funded by U.S. taxpayer money through grants awarded by Fauci's old department, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Fauci, once seen as an 'adult in the room' amid a chaotic and confusing government response to the initial 2020 outbreak, has seen his sparkling public image take a hit in recent years. Leaked emails show that in early 2020 he commissioned a paper denouncing the lab-leak theory as a conspiracy, then publicized the study at a White House news conference weeks later without disclosing his involvement. He and other public health experts also publicly dismissed the lab leak - with Fauci saying in June 2021 that it was 'a very, very, very, very remote possibility.' It later emerged that, as the head of the NIAID, he presided over the allocation of taxpayer-funded grants for virus-enhancing research at the WIV years before the pandemic began. A federal watchdog found the NIH 'did not effectively monitor' those experiments or check whether they involved pathogens with pandemic risk. Fauci also privately expressed concern the virus may have been the product of a research accident. Internationally, other intelligence agencies have also supported the lab-leak theory. The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) carried out a secret investigation into the origins of Covid nicknamed Project Saaremaa during the pandemic, sharing the findings with the U.S. in December 2024. Investigators found unpublished dissertations from 2019 and 2020 that allegedly discussed the effects of coronaviruses on the human body. Additionally, uncovered materials revealed Chinese scientists had 'an unusually large amount of knowledge about the supposedly novel virus available at an unusually early stage.' Based on the materials BND agents found and analyzed, they used a 'Probability Index' to measure the reliability of information, which determined the lab-leak theory was 'probable' with an '80 to 95 per cent' certainty. Robert Redfield, former CDC director when the pandemic erupted, also accused American and British health agencies of shutting down concerns over potential lab leaks. He has previously told he is '100 per cent' convinced Covid was the result of scientists becoming infected while carrying out high-risk experiments to boost the infectivity of bat viruses amid low biosecurity in Wuhan labs. Fauci has denied all accusations of Covid being 'covered up' or originating from a lab. Last year he told a U.S. House panel that he had not suppressed lab leak theories or influenced research to discredit it. He has also called accusations that he covered it up 'preposterous.' Patel said: 'My mission has always been to put out the truth, whatever the consequences, whoever it's against. What did Fauci get wrong? From telling people not to wear masks to claiming vaccines stopped infections Don't wear masks, do wear masks As global concern for Covid was surfacing in March 2020, Fauci told Americans that there was 'no need' to wear a face mask. He said they may only help people 'feel a little better', and 'might even block a droplet' — but would not provide good protection. Less than a month later, he was forced into an embarrassing climbdown after it emerged the virus spread via droplets in the air. Fauci later insisted he advised people not to wear masks to ensure there were enough available for hospitals and healthcare centers. Covid did not come from a lab Fauci has repeatedly insisted that Covid did not leak from a lab in China. He called the theory a 'shiny object that will go away,' and brushed aside claims from other top experts as an 'opinion.' Fauci has now backpedaled, saying instead he keeps an 'open mind' although insisting it remains 'most likely' that the virus spilled over from animals to humans. Two shots will stop you catching Covid When the Covid vaccine roll-out was in full swing, Fauci said the immunity from shots made doubly-vaccinated people a 'dead end' for the virus, and even suggested they may no longer need to wear masks. Schools shutdown Schools were closed from March through to August 2020, something Fauci later expressed regret about. He has since admitted he 'should have realized' there would be 'deleterious collateral consequences'.
NBC News
2 days ago
- NBC News
How RFK Jr. is quickly changing U.S. health agencies
WASHINGTON — In just a few short months, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has begun to transform U.S. health policy: shrinking staff at health agencies, restructuring the focus of some regulators and researchers, changing Covid vaccine regulations and reshaping the mission of his department to focus more on alternative medicine. The directives are all part of the same issue set that drove a slice of health-conscious, left-leaning Americans to eventually vote for a Republican president whose favorite meal is from McDonald's, Trump and Kennedy catered to a type of voter who has grown distrustful of America's health care establishment — but possibly fomented a new type of distrust in federal health policy along the way. Bernadine Francis, a lifelong Democrat who backed Joe Biden for president in 2020 before supporting Donald Trump in 2024, told NBC News in an interview that she approves of Kennedy's efforts so far, despite his 'hands being tied' by entrenched forces in the administration and in Congress. 'From what I have seen so far with what RFK has been trying to do,' she said, 'I am really, really proud of what he's doing.' Francis is among the voters who left the Democratic Party and voted for Trump because 'nothing else mattered' apart from public health, which they — like Kennedy — felt was going in the wrong direction. Concerns about chemicals in food and toxins in the environment, long championed by Democrats, has become a galvanizing issue to a key portion of Trump's Republican Party, complete with an oversaturation of information that in some cases hasn't been proven. It's wrapped up, as well, in concerns about the Covid vaccine, which was accelerated under Trump, administered under Biden and weaponized by anti-vaccine activists like Kennedy amid lockdowns and firings in the wake of the devastating pandemic. 'We knew in order to get RFK in there so he can help with the situation that we have in the health industry, we knew we had to do this,' said Francis, a retired Washington, D.C., public school administrator, who said she left her 'beloved' career because she had refused the vaccine. 'It seemed to me, as soon as [Biden] became president, the vaccine was mandated, and that was when I lost all hope in the Democrats,' Francis told NBC News, referring to vaccination mandates put in place by the Biden administration for a large portion of the federal workforce during the height of the pandemic. There are not currently any federal Covid vaccine mandates. There have been 1,228,393 confirmed Covid deaths in the United States since the start of the pandemic, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. How RFK Jr.'s picks are changing public health agencies Dr. Marty Makary, Kennedy's hand-picked commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and a John Hopkins scientist and researcher, told NBC News in an interview that he wants to transform the agency, which he said faced 'corruption' over influence from the pharmaceutical and food industries. 'I mean, you look at the food pyramid, it was not based on what's best for you, it was based on what companies wanted you to buy,' he said, referring to the 1992 and later iterations of official government nutritional guidance. He said there would be 'entirely new nutrition guidance' released later this year, as soon as this summer. He praised the FDA's mission of research and regulation, saying the agency is 'incredibly well-oiled, and we've got the trains running on time.' He also highlighted the 75-page 'Make America Healthy Again' commission report — which focused on ultraprocessed foods and toxins in the environment — as having set 'the agenda for research' at the FDA, HHS and agencies overseeing social safety net programs such as Medicare and food stamps moving forward. (The MAHA report initially cited some studies that didn't exist, a mistake that Kennedy adviser Calley Means said was a 'great disservice' to their mission.) 'I think there's a lot we're going to learn. For example, the microbiome, which gets attention in the MAHA report, needs to be on the map. We don't even talk about it in our medical circles,' Makary said. 'The microbiome, food is medicine, the immune response that happens when chemicals that don't appear in nature go down our GI tract.' Pressed on other areas of the administration, like the Environmental Protection Agency, making decisions that run counter to the pro-regulatory ideas presented in the MAHA report, Makary said he can 'only comment on the FDA' where they are 'committed to Secretary Kennedy's vision.' But Kennedy's public health agenda goes beyond looking at the food supply and chemicals. Recently, Kennedy said in a video posted on X last month that the Covid vaccine is no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women, a change in CDC guidance that skipped the normal public review period. Days later, after critics questioned the decision and raised concerns over a lack of public data behind the move, the administration updated its guidance again, urging parents to consult with their doctors instead. Pressed about the confusion and whether Americans are now trading one side of public distrust in the health system for another, Makary defended Kennedy, who has been criticized for spreading misinformation. 'My experience with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy is that he listens. He listens to myself, he listens to Jay Bhattacharya, listens to Dr. Mehmet Oz, he listens to a host of scientists that are giving him guidance,' Makary argued, referring to the director of the National Institutes of Health and the administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, respectively. 'So he may have big questions, but the questions he's asking are the questions most Americans are asking.' The intersection of medicine and healthy lifestyle choices Dr. Dawn Mussallem, a breast cancer oncologist and integrative medicine doctor — a physician who combines conventional treatments with research-based alternative therapies — has tried to help her patients wade through medical misinformation they encounter online and in their social circles. Mussallem has an incredible story of personal survival: While in medical school, she was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer and, after conventional therapies like chemo saved her life, was diagnosed with heart failure. After undergoing a heart transplant, Mussallem ran a 26-mile marathon just one year later. 'I learned a lot in medical school, but nothing compared to what I learned being a patient,' said Mussallem, who dedicates, on average, 90 minutes each in one-on-one sessions with her patients. 'This is not about any one political choice. But we know lifestyle matters.' For example, a new study from the American Society of Clinical Oncology that finds eating food that lowers inflammation in the body may help people with advanced colon cancer survive longer. Mussallem's mission, along with her colleagues, is to elevate the modern medicine that saved her life, as well as encouraging her patients to live healthy lifestyles, including regular exercise, minimally processed foods, less screen time, more social connection and better sleep. But politics do get in the way for millions of Americans who are inundated daily with social media influencers and 'nonmedical experts,' as Mussallem puts it, who stoke fear in her patients. 'Patients come in with all these questions, fears,' she said. 'I've heard this many times from patients, that their nervous system is affected by what they're seeing happening in government.' Mussallem acknowledges that 'a lot of individuals out there' have questioned traditional medicine. For her, it isn't one or the other — it's both. 'We have to trust the conventional medicine,' she said. 'With the conventional care that marches right alongside more of an integrative modality to look at the root causes of disease, as well as to help to optimize with lifestyle, is where we need to be.'
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
FBI director Kash Patel reveals bombshell breakthrough that'll have Anthony Fauci trembling: 'We're on to him'
The Trump administration has allegedly 'found' the cell phone Dr Anthony Fauci used during the Covid pandemic, the president's intelligence head revealed. FBI director Kash Patel revealed on the latest episode of the Joe Rogan Experience that he and leaders like Senator Rand Paul have been on the hunt for any devices Fauci used while advising Americans during the pandemic. Patel said while Paul and health secretary Robert F Kennedy 'are doing a great job' finding the origins of Covid, the team had struggled for years to find Fauci's phone and other devices. But this week, the team 'had a great breakthrough.' Patel told Rogan the FBI had just found a phone Fauci used at the time, mere days before the podcast was filmed. It's unclear exactly when the phone was used and how they verified it belonged to Fauci. Patel did not specify how they seized it or what the team's 'multiple investigations' thus far on the origins of Covid have found. He also cautioned Americans 'shouldn't jump to the conclusion that everything's in there' and that incriminating data could have been deleted. However, he called the bombshell 'a victory for the American people' and said his team is immediately working to comb through any data on the device. Patel said: 'We found it, and at least we can tell the American people we've been looking because it is of public importance to figure out, did that guy lie? Did he intentionally mislead the world and cause countless deaths? 'We owe those answers to the American people, and the best evidence ever is always the people's evidence who created it. So now we're going to go and exploit those hard drives.' 'We did find it, we're not done, we're still looking and we're on the case.' Patel did not specify how his team got the old phone or how they verified it was Fauci's. Generally, a warrant is required to seize a cell phone, even for a government official. There are no publicly available warrants out against Fauci currently. Mounting evidence has suggested Covid may have originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, with some reports estimated '80 to 95 percent certainty.' The Chinese government has always denied the lab-leak theory and maintained Covid was the product of an animal spillover. American agencies like the FBI and CIA believe a lab leak is the most likely possibility. Patel did not say on the podcast what he thinks. Dr Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, previously told 'The main points are clear: All informed persons - without exception - knew by early 2020 that SARS-CoV-2 likely entered humans through a research-related incident in Wuhan. 'But most chose to lie or to stay silent.' Fauci has denied all accusations of Covid being 'covered up' or originating from a lab. Patel said: 'My mission has always been to put out the truth, whatever the consequences, whoever it's against.
