Trad slams ‘petty’ release of report into her conduct with bureaucrat

The Crime and Corruption Commission found former deputy premier and treasurer Jackie Trad bullied the state’s top bureaucrat to have a confidante appointed as under treasurer.

However, the CCC decided not to pursue criminal charges, instead preparing a damning May 2021 report that Trad took legal action, including in the High Court, to keep secret.

The LNP gave an election commitment to release the report – and restore the CCC’s reporting powers – enabling it through a vote of parliament on Wednesday night in a move Trad later described as “terrifying and petty”.

Former deputy premier and treasurer Jackie Trad has lost a long-running bid to keep a Crime and Corruption Commission report secret.Credit: Attila Csaszar

The report centres on the appointment of the under treasurer in 2019, and the failure to ensure a merit-based process as then-premier Annastacia Palaszczuk had promised for Labor’s bureaucracy.

According to the report, Trad “initiated the departure” of previous under treasurer Jim Murphy, leaving the role vacant.

Trad made it clear who she wanted in the role, however Palaszczuk gave evidence to the CCC that she had told her deputy there would need to be a transparent recruitment process.

In a lengthy social media post on Thursday morning, Trad said the release of the “unlawful” CCC report demonstrated the LNP government’s lack of respect for the court system.

Trad, who resigned from the Palaszczuk cabinet in 2020, had successfully fought in the High Court in 2023 to stop the publication of the report.

Responding to the release of the report through parliament, Trad said it set a “dangerous precedent” for government.

“[The LNP used] their numbers in parliament to set aside and disregard a well-considered, balanced and fair judgment from the highest court in our nation, without legislative amendment or scrutiny,” she said.

“... For the LNP government to now release the reports against the judgment of the High Court, and in light of the CCC’s recent track record, for the purposes of political point scoring is both terrifying and petty.”

Then director-general of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet Dave Stewart with then premier Annastacia Palaszczuk in 2018. Credit: AAP

The report reveals Trad repeatedly pressured the head of the selection panel, Dave Stewart, the then director-general of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, and told others of her intention to have her preferred under treasurer.

The CCC report does not name Trad’s preferred, and eventual, under treasurer, instead referring to him as “candidate 3”.

The panel had deemed the candidate “not appointable”, but Stewart removed that reference to keep him in contention, while one of the two other candidates withdrew after a conversation with Trad.

Stewart told the CCC he did not mislead the premier, and had earlier come to the conclusion that while the candidate was “by far the least meritorious candidate”, he would be a better organisational fit than Murphy.

The CCC found Trad and Stewart exchanged 11 phone calls and two messages in the days before the panel’s report was finalised for Palaszczuk.

“I can’t remember the exact nature of the calls, other than any phone call I had with Jackie Trad was never a pleasant occasion,” Stewart told the CCC.

“They were quite confrontational, they were aggressive and, you know, at the end of the day, what I didn’t want to happen was what happened to Murphy.”

Murphy later returned to the government as Palaszczuk’s chief of staff.

Trad told the CCC she and the candidate had “become friends over a period of time” and had “a good working relationship” in a previous portfolio.

“In that time, I found him an incredibly effective, hard-working, ah smart, ah public servant, ah who was very good at ensuring um, that information flow was um, was brought to my attention in a way where I could respond and I could do my duties on behalf of Queensland,” she told the CCC.

The commission concluded that while Trad “made no secret” that she wanted the candidate to be appointed under treasurer, and pressured Stewart to achieve her goal, there were other people on the panel who seemingly signed off on the final report.

“Mr Stewart’s amendments of the final report did not simply reflect his own change of heart, it purported to represent the unanimous conclusion of the entire panel without having ever sought to confirm with them that that was so,” the CCC found.

“Mr Stewart’s conduct in this respect falls well below that to be expected of the state’s most senior public servant, given it resulted in a materially misleading report.”

The CCC report reveals some of the evidence it gathered would not be admissible in any criminal trial as some of the “high-ranking Queensland public servants” interviewed had breached confidentiality by discussing the case with others, and legislation prevented telephone intercepts being used in such cases.

The CCC also found “some matters, such as any dishonesty on Ms Trad’s part, are unlikely to be proved beyond reasonable doubt”.

In a foreword to the report, then CCC chairman Bruce Barbour suggested that “possibly the issue of greatest concern to the community is the abrogation of responsibility by senior public servants”.

“Whatever level of influence, intervention or aggression exerted upon him, the director-general demonstrated that he was unable to act appropriately as the chair of an independent selection panel charged with the responsibility of recommending the most meritorious candidate for appointment,” Barbour wrote.

The year after the report was completed, Stewart was appointed Queensland’s agent-general for the United Kingdom and Europe, a role he held until last year.

The report was tabled in parliament on Wednesday night, along with a separate CCC report into former public guardian Peter Carne.

The LNP has yet to honour its election commitment to release the former government’s probity report on Chow Tai Fook, a partner in the Destination Brisbane Consortium behind Queen’s Wharf and its casino.

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