Axed Labor MP to release more secret tapes

Dumped former Labor MP Rick Williams says he plans to release more tapes which will exonerate him, after he was let go on the eve of the election being called.

Queensland Labor MP Rick Williams

Dumped Qld Labor MP Rick Williams says he'd been told he was doing a 'good job' before his sacking. (AAP)

Dumped Labor MP Rick Williams has flagged the release of more secret recordings he says will exonerate him and further plague the party which axed him on the eve of the Queensland election campaign.

The scandal-plagued Mr Williams released recordings online on Friday, recorded in September, which show Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk telling him he was "doing a good job."

In an unsavoury end to Labor's first week on the campaign trail, Ms Palaszczuk said his decision to record a private conversation they shared spoke volumes about the disendorsed MP.

"I think it speaks for itself doesn't it. This is the type of man who tapes conversations with everybody it appears," the premier told reporters on Friday.

"He was told that he had to have a high standard and he was told not to pick anymore fights and that's exactly what he went and did."

Mr Williams, who's confident of holding his seat of Pumicestone as an independent, has accused her of accepting his vote for years to cling to power, only to dump him and use him as an excuse for an early poll.

He intends releasing a different recording on Sunday of his conversation with local newspaper editor Belinda Ferguson, which prompted her complaint and led to Ms Palaszczuk sacking him last Friday.

"And that will show that I wasn't as in the wrong as the premier has made out," Mr Williams told AAP.

He said during the meeting with the premier in the recording, he sensed his head was on the chopping block.

"I think that's why I took a tape recording to that meeting, because I thought she was going to turf me then and there," he said.

"It was as much a surprise to me as to anyone when they didn't."

Ms Palaszczuk can be heard reassuring him: "The feedback I'm getting - I'll be honest with you - is that you're doing a great job."

She's then heard telling him: "I'll have a chat to her ... But you're doing a good job. I'm hearing positive reports".

LNP frontbencher Scott Emerson labelled the recordings as the "smoking gun" which showed the premier "endorsing and enabling" the Pumicestone MP who had faced numerous calls to stand down.

The premier has categorically denied she only kept Mr Williams in the party to shore up her minority government.


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Source: AAP


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