REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Saturday, March 29, 2003

PUT an end to poaching of business? You’re kidding, said Premier Peter Beattie.

Mr Beattie rejected a plan to end poaching of business from other states because Queensland had succeeded in luring companies such as Virgin Blue and Australian Airlines here in recent years.

“If I was in Victoria, of course, I would want to get it signed up because businesses are all coming here,” he said.

Under the plan, governments would be banned from using taxpayer funds to poach businesses from other states and territories.

Queensland is the only state not to have given in-principle support to the idea and Gold Coast businesses have applauded the decision.

Combined Chamber of Commerce chairman John Witheriff said the GC was one of the most aggressive poachers of businesses in Australia.

Mr Beattie’s pitch came on the same day the Queensland National Party had signed a legal document locking it into a new coalition.

Speaking before a meeting of the Central Council in southwestern Queensland, party president Terry Bolger said he and state Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg had signed a formal agreement for a new coalition between the National and the Liberal parties.

The coalition split after the February 2001 state election, which Labor won in a landslide.

The document was signed by the Liberals in April 2003.

The Coalition’s relationship remains turbulent through the defeats of the 2004 and ’06 elections before the National and Liberal parties merged in 2008 to become the LNP.