MP's bid for back-door deal with Woolies

Member for Redcliffe Scott Driscoll was yesterday suspended from the Liberal National Party. Picture: Darren England Source: The Courier-Mail

SUSPENDED MP Scott Driscoll made a secret back-door approach to Woolworths last year for cash to prop up the retailers' lobby group where his wife had a $350,000-a-year contract to provide management services.

The Courier-Mail's latest revelations against the Redcliffe MP come as Premier Campbell Newman yesterday suspended Mr Driscoll's LNP membership pending the outcome of several investigations into his conduct.

The newspaper also can reveal a new email from the embattled MP showing the extent of Mr Driscoll's personal financial involvement with his wife's business Norsefire.

Previously, Mr Driscoll has insisted he had nothing to do with the company.

When Mr Driscoll made the approach to Woolworths on behalf of the Queensland Retail Traders and Shopkeepers Association, he was serving as an MP but secretly directing the lobby group.

And the lobby group was then representing small retailers against a bid by Woolworths and Coles to extend trading hours.

Woolworths rebuffed the offer and instead is understood to have raised concerns with LNP bosses about Mr Driscoll's behaviour.

The Courier-Mail has obtained a letter drafted by Mr Driscoll and later sent to senior managers at Woolworths in November last year in which the QRTSA said it was "open to exploring a review of our stance on opposing in principle all trading hours extensions that may be sought by yourselves".

The letter calls for discussion of "what options may exist for Woolworths to support our organisation financially ... so that we are able to take a more pragmatic view on trading hours matters overall".

"We received the correspondence and declined the offer," a Woolworths spokesperson said yesterday.

The QRTSA later stunned members by siding with the big retailers.

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The policy backflip came just six months after Mr Driscoll told State Parliament Woolworths and Coles were "the bullyboys" of the retail sector who "have sent out their bought and paid for front organisations to fire off some shots at the new Queensland government".

At the time of the attempted double-deal, IGA store owners, the main financial backers of the QRTSA, were in a still-unresolved dispute over $100,000 they gave the body to fight trading hours cases.

The Courier-Mail has since established the money was paid to Norsefire, Mr Driscoll's wife's company.

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Mr Driscoll has consistently denied he had any "operational involvement" with the QRTSA after becoming an MP and that Norsefire is "100 per cent my wife's company".

But when QRTSA managers in September proposed spending money on outside legal advice, Mr Driscoll sent an email from his scott@norsefire.com.au address complaining it would cost him personally.

"This could bleed me for serious dollars ... I am now shitting myself what this is going to hit me for," he wrote.

The Courier-Mail this month showed he secretly ran the QRTSA from his electorate office, installing dedicated phone lines last year so staff on Parliamentary salaries could help him manage its affairs.

Mr Newman said yesterday he made the decision to suspend Mr Driscoll from the LNP because it was proving an ongoing distraction for the Government.

Mr Driscoll released a statement yesterday that "no billing or commercial benefit has been derived via such an alleged contract to benefit Mr Driscoll's wife's company since Mr Driscoll was sworn in as the Member for Redcliffe in May 2012".

However, documents obtained by The Courier-Mail show nearly $15,000 being paid to Norsefire in June as part of a regular fortnightly billing cycle that built up a debt of more than $250,000 by the middle of last month.

Then, at an "extraordinary general meeting" on February 24, a day before Mr Driscoll resigned as sole director of Norsefire in favour of his wife Emma, the QRTSA transferred a Land Rover Discovery, mobile phones and fuel cards to Mrs Driscoll "in lieu of" $336,000 said to be owed under the contract with Norsefire, which was terminated at the same meeting.

As part of a "tidy up" noted in the minutes, Mr Driscoll and Ben Scott, his campaign director and later an electorate office staffer, had their signatory powers over the QRTSA bank accounts, which they held since April 2011, removed.

Mr Driscoll has declared a "personal loan" of more than $10,000 from Norsefire in his list of MP's interests but has refused to answer questions about it.

Mr Driscoll did not return calls yesterday.

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