He was appointed as a replacement Liberal Party Councillor for Chandler Ward of the Brisbane City Council in 1996. Caltabiano replaced Liberal Graeme McDougall, who was elected to the Commonwealth seat of Griffith and had to resign his Council seat. Caltabiano subsequently won the 1997, 2000 and 2004 elections. Caltabiano served as Leader of the Opposition in Brisbane City Council from 2000 until 2002, when he was ousted during a factional deal involving a dispute over representation on the State Liberal Council. He was replaced by Margaret De Wit in 2002, who was in turn replaced by Graham Quirk in 2003. He was responsible for writing many of the policies for Lord Mayoral candidate Campbell Newman and was directly responsible for writing the 2004-05 Budget as presented to Council. He was also actively involved in party politics, serving as Queensland state president of the Liberal Party from 2003 to 2006. In mid-2005, LaborDeputy PremierTerry Mackenroth resigned from politics, sparking a by-election in the seat of Chatsworth, which included Caltabiano's council ward. Caltabiano was preselected as the Liberal candidate, and faced Labor candidate Chris Forrester, who he had defeated in the previous council election. The Labor government was struggling in the polls at the time, and Caltabiano won the seat with 52.35% of the vote. Caltabiano was appointed to the shadow ministry upon his election, taking on the role of Shadow Minister for Transport. He was widely viewed as a rising star in the party, and had been tipped as a future Liberal leader. In August 2006, following the accession of Bruce Flegg to the Liberal leadership, Caltabiano was promoted to Shadow Treasurer. Premier Peter Beattie called an election for 9 September 2006 and Labor preselected Chris Bombolas, a high-profile sports presenter, as its candidate. The Liberals struggled with a series of early gaffes. After a close race, Bombolas succeeded in taking the seat by several hundred votes. His wife Andrea was defeated as the Liberal National Party candidate in Chatsworth for the 2009 state election. Following the landslide Liberal National Party win in the 2012 state election, newly elected Premier Campbell Newman announced that Caltabiano would be appointed as Director-General of the Department of Transport and Main Roads.
Investigation
On 25 October 2012, Caltabiano was stood down as Director-General of the Department of Transport and Main Roads pending the result of an investigation into allegations of lying to parliament in budget estimate hearings
Industrial career
Caltabiano was involved with a political consultancy firm, Entree Vous. From June 2008 until he took over as Director-General of the Department of Transport and Main Roads, he was managing director of Infrastructure Delivery Pty Ltd. Following his being stood down he became CEO of the Australian Asphalt Pavement Association in January 2014. In October 2016, the ARRB Group announced that Caltabiano would be its next CEO, even though he had only been a board member since June of that year. He replaced retiring managing director, Gerald Waldron, in November 2016.
