Dr Chris Davis, who attacks former colleagues in a pre-election TV ad, warns voters to ‘be wary of sociopaths’

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A former Newman government assistant minister has urged Queensland voters to beware the ambitions of sociopaths as he gave an extraordinary indictment against his former party in power.



Dr Chris Davis, who quit parliament in protest at his government’s “betrayal” of Queenslanders last year, features in a new TV advertisement for the Wilderness Society in which he recommends voters put the Liberal National party last on ballots in the upcoming election.

Davis said on Saturday he would not “be standing here today if the trust that people gave the Newman government in 2012 had not been broken”.

“We’re talking about betrayal of thousands of public servants, the winding back of political scrutiny and donor influence, contempt for the professionalism of doctors and judges, jeopardising our environment and sustainable farming and deception on vital issues such as employment and cost of living,” he said.

Davis said that citizens needed to have trust in leaders to “serve us rather than themselves or their powerbrokers”.

He took aim at the LNP’s key platform of privatising government utilities, saying “disposing of our assets to pork barrel the Newman government into power is certainly not in our long-term interest”.

Davis also said voters needed to “be particularly wary of sociopaths”. Asked if the character of the Newman government had been sociopathic, Davis said he left it to voters to “make up their own minds”.

Davis was sacked by Newman from his post as assistant health minister when he publicly disagreed with government policy around contract negotiations with doctors and its treatment of the parliamentary committee overseeing the corruption watchdog.

He said the sacking of that committee’s chairperson, independent MP Liz Cunningham for “simply wanting some accountability” was “one of the defining moments of alarm” about the Newman government.

“For me, that was the death of accountability in Queensland,” he said.

Davis quit parliament in protest and his LNP replacement in the Stafford byelection lost in a massive swing to Labor.

Davis, who had flagged running for Labor in Ashgrove against Newman but was rebuffed, said he was now “happy being a citizen”.

Revelations of the LNP’s $18m plan to ensure premier Campbell Newman is re-elected in the seat of Ashgrove mean voters “have a challenging moral issue ahead of them”, he said.

“What we have seen has been a real pork barrelling of that electorate,” he said.

“Ashgrove is certainly not an economically deprived electorate and all of that money going into Ashgrove ... there are areas that arguably have far greater need or difficulty raising money, really don’t get that money.

“So (voters) really need to consider whether in fact they are being bribed or not, and whether they want to be bribed.”

Davis said he had been approached by the Wilderness Society to “assist with articulating what the people of Stafford have taught me”.

“I have been to the best of my ability faithful to the oath that I took as a politician to faithfully serve the people of Queensland… and was reassured when I handed the voice back to the people of Stafford at the by-election, that a poll done showed that I had 85% support for the particular approach that I had taken,” he said.

He said he agreed to appear in the advertisement “as a concerned Queenslander rather than there being anything in it for me”.

Davis said Queensland had under Newman “suffered some losses” in all three pillars of its democracy – parliament, public service and judiciary.