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Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s crisis of accountability

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By MICHAEL MCKENNA

11:00PM JANUARY 28, 2022

If Annastacia Palaszczuk has stood for anything, it has been her stony-eyed insistence she would keep Queensland from returning to the dark days of the Moonlight state.

Since becoming Labor leader a decade ago, Palaszczuk has invoked memories of the corruption and cronyism of Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s conservative government in the 1970s and ’80s against her Liberal National Party rivals.

It was an effective political weapon against the many excesses of the Newman government which, despite winning a record majority in 2012, was out of office just three years later.

Now, into her third term as Queensland Premier, Palaszczuk faces serious integrity questions about how her government operates and the kind of unaccountability she usually levels at her political opponents.

After seven years in power, there has been a string of ministerial scandals and growing evidence of the near-dictatorial influence of unions over policy, easy access for Labor-aligned lobbyists and politicisation of the public service.

With a weakened opposition, the biggest ever government media unit and, in the past two years, the cover of the pandemic, Palaszczuk’s hold on office has seemed unassailable. Until now.

After a series of explosive events in the past week, Palaszczuk is facing the toughest crisis of her government.

The heads of two of Queensland’s integrity watchdogs quit within days of each other, followed on Friday by a scathing attack from the state’s former archivist who accused the government of a culture of cover-up and interference in his statutory role.

It came to a head on Monday after The Australian detailed the sinister lead-up to the resignation of Integrity Commissioner Nikola Stepanov – who regulates lobbyists and advises MPs and public servants on integrity issues.

Stepanov’s shock decision to quit midway through her second term came after she filed a complaint that senior public servants ordered a laptop in her office be seized and its contents wiped last year without her knowledge as she probed unlawful lobbying allegations and claims of high-level bullying.

In October 2020, she suspected a leak in her office and that highly sensitive material had been transferred without authorisation on to the laptop. At the time, the state election was in full swing. In the campaign, Palaszczuk was dogged by revelations in The Australian that two lobbyists – Evan Moorhead and Cameron Milner – were running Labor’s campaign from the Premier’s riverfront city office. Both former ALP state secretaries, they are now Queensland’s most popular lobbyists, securing daily access to minister’s offices and favourable treatment for their clients.

It prompted the Crime and Corruption Commission to issue a written warning ahead of the election of the “blurring lines” between government and lobbyists that was shrugged off by Palaszczuk.

This week, it was revealed that some of the material on the laptop related to complaint about former Brisbane Labor lord mayor Jim Soorley. He was accused of unlawful lobbying after accepting $2500 in cash in a carpark in 2018 from a restaurant owner, purportedly to convince then deputy premier Jackie Trad and minister Mark Bailey to extend the government lease on his premises. Soorley, who is not a registered lobbyist, said he did nothing wrong and only got to speak to Bailey to gauge the “views of the government” on the lease, which was not extended.

Stepanov said the laptop was seized in March last year and its contents wiped by the Public Service Commission after she sought financial approval from the PSC for an independent forensic examination of the device because of her suspicions of a leak. Her request was rejected by the PSC, which has budgetary oversight of the office of the Integrity Commissioner, and later the premier’s department.

Soon after, the Integrity Commissioner – who had been stripped of key staff over the previous year – was told to stay home as PSC staff entered her office, without her knowledge, and seized the laptop. The allegations are now being investigated by the CCC.

Stepanpov is now calling for a public inquiry into what happened, saying it is critical that “the Integrity Commissioner is able to discharge their functions without undue interference by any person or entity”.

Two days after her resignation became public, Crime and Corruption Commission chairman Alan MacSporran QC announced he was departing. Head for six years of the watchdog, set up on the recommendation of the Fitzgerald Inquiry into corruption during the Bjelke-Petersen era, he had been under pressure for months.

Last December, the bipartisan parliamentary crime and corruption committee that oversights the CCC, slammed the organisation, its culture and MacSporran in a report over an investigation and later-aborted prosecution of local government councillors in 2018.

The committee report found MacSporran “did not ensure the CCC acted independently and impartially” over the laying of fraud charges against seven councillors in Logan, south of Brisbane, when they sacked their CEO, Sharon Kelsey, after she turned whistleblower against the then mayor.

MacSporran and the CCC denied the revenge allegation, saying the charges, which forced the disbandment of the council but which were later withdrawn, were legitimate. Some believe the attacks on the CCC are an attempt to quash its pursuit of wrongdoing in local government.

But the case for MacSporran to resign was helped along this month when misconduct charges against veteran Moreton Bay mayor Allan Sutherland were dropped.

It brought the tally to 21 of failed prosecutions initiated by the state’s corruption watchdog in the past three years.

Among the committee’s recommendations was to establish an inquiry into the CCC’s powers to both investigate and prosecute alleged crimes and for a “reform of culture” to “enhance public confidence in the organisation”. Despite the findings being released in early December, Palaszczuk last week said she hadn’t finished reading the report.

In contrast in 2017, when the CCC released a report on its “Belcarra” hearings into local government, Palaszczuk had read and had a government response within hours.

Then, the recommendation she then focused on, as she neared her second election, was for a ban on donations from developers to council candidates.

Palaszczuk embraced the recommendation and then, without any mention of the need by the CCC in its report, extended the ban on developer donations to state politics. It effectively introduced a financial gerrymander in state campaigns with developers blocked from their traditional support of the LNP as unions continued to pour millions into Labor’s coffers.

The events of this week follow a series of probity scandals with the government, including Trad, who lost her seat at the 2020 election, Bailey and Palaszczuk’s former chief of staff David Barbagallo.

The government was forced by the CCC to ban ministers from using back channel email accounts and messaging services after Bailey was caught in 2016 taking instructions over the state-owned energy companies from his union patrons.

In 2019, laws were passed, carrying the threat of prison, after it was discovered Trad failed to declare an investment property her family trust bought near the planned route of the government’s Cross River rail project.

And what has largely been forgotten is the whereabouts of a report from a year-long CCC investigation into political interference in the appointment of top public servants.

The report is understood to have been highly critical of the selection process.

It led to an extraordinary directive being issued by the PSC last June that “merit assessment must occur” in recruitment of top public servants.

For legal reasons, The Australian cannot detail the reasons for the report not being released.

The allegations of a politicisation of the public service were fuelled by former state archivist Mike Summerell. In a statement, Summerell, who served in his role for five years, said his contract was not renewed last year because of his stance on integrity issues.

“For many senior public servants in Queensland the concept of an impartial, apolitical and professional public service is career suicide,” he wrote.

“If the public good is in conflict with the political good of the government of the day, acting against the political interest of the government for many would be a step they could not afford to take given their own responsibilities or ambitions as individuals.

“The more senior they become the more challenging it becomes.”

On Friday, Palaszczuk refused the calls for a wide-ranging inquiry but said cabinet would on Monday consider the recommended inquiry into the CCC and its powers.

At a press conference, Palaszczuk returned to form when asked about Opposition Leader David Crisafulli’s calls for a wide-ranging inquiry.

“I am not going to be lectured to by the LNP, at all,’’ she said.

“David Crisfafulli (in the Newman government) sat around the cabinet table and made decisions to the detriment of the public and the institutions of this democracy and this state that we hold dear.

“They attacked the judges, they attacked the doctors, they sacked the PCCC committee, they hand-appointed their own chair of the Crime and Corruption Commission.

“I expect a very high standard from my ministers, from my assistant ministers and every single member of my government.

“That is what I stand for and the people of Queensland know that.”