Comment: Jackie Trad’s house purchase doesn’t pass the pub test

Ministers shouldn’t require rules to tell them that the public takes a dim view of politicians who appear to use their position for personal profit, writes Steven Wardill.

THE scandal that has engulfed Jackie Trad over her belated declaration of a property she purchased that is primed to profit from her pet project, Cross River Rail, shouldn’t end with a simple apology.

The issue, exposed by The Courier-Mail this week, has thrown up significant flaws in Queensland’s accountability and integrity dragnet that Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk simply cannot ignore.

The Woolloongabba house purchased by Jackie Trad.

The three-bedroom Woolloongabba home was bought from a deceased estate in a public sale for $695,500 in late March and registered with Queensland’s Land Titles Office on May 1.

No problem there.

However, the issues revolve around whether Queenslanders can trust what politicians put in State Parliament’s Register of Member’s Interest and public perception that a minister stands to profit from her own project.

Trad failed to declare the property purchase within a month as required by the Parliament of Queensland Act.

Her oversight, which has now been corrected, could attract contempt of parliament accusations which carry serious consequences as many errant MPs have found out over the years.

These revelations demonstrate that the current honesty system, where MPs declare their own interests without any independent verification, is simply not good enough.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (left) and Deputy Premier and Treasurer Jackie Trad. Picture: Darren England

The same problem was exposed in 2006 when allegations swirling around minister Gordon Nuttall engulfed the Beattie government.

Nuttall failed to declare what was described as a $300,000 “loan” from coal baron Ken Talbot.

Then premier Peter Beattie’s respond by saying he was going to introduce an “eyeball test” where he’d sit down annually with ministers and stare at them in order to elicit honest answers.

“I believe that as a leader, if you eyeball the ministers directly you are more likely to get compliance,” Beattie insisted.

It would have been laughable if the issues involving Nuttall weren’t so serious.

While Beattie might have believed his pale blue eye could prompt truth telling from his Cabinet colleagues, an annual eyeball test isn’t going to work for Palaszczuk.

Former Queensland premier Peter Beattie.

Can you imagine Palaszczuk sitting across from Trad in her 1 William Street office and asking her whether her register was right?

Now that’s laughable.

Former Coalition leader Jeff Seeney had a solution for dodgy register entries by ministers when the Nuttall saga broke.

He suggested a system of random audits by the Auditor General or the corruption watchdog.

“There needs to be some sort of mechanism to ensure that they are honest,” Seeney said.

And he was right.

Of course, that suggestion was forgotten when the LNP came to power six years later.

Maybe Campbell Newman decided eyeballing ministers was a better idea.

However, the other problem with Trad’s property purchase is the perception that she is profiting from a massive project which she is overseeing.

The home is close to the existing Park Road station as well as the Boggo Road Gaol station that will be built as part of Cross River Rail.

The Abingdon St house purchased by Jackie Trad.

It is also within the catchment of the new high school being built in Trad’s South Brisbane electorate.

The Deputy Premier is right when she says that it’s no secret that property prices around train stations will improve because of Cross River Rail and that the route has been known for many years.

However, as the minister responsible for the project she is also privy to an enormous amount of information that is not in the public domain, like estimate value improvements, the location, impact and timing of earthworks and the potential for extra services.

Trad says she will now consult with the Integrity Commissioner.

But she seems to have already decided that the purchase isn’t an integrity problem, saying “this property was purchased a long time after decisions had been made in relation to these projects”.

However, clearly she should have taken this advice before her family signed on the dotted line.

But there’s also an argument that Trad, or any minister for that matter, shouldn’t need someone to tell them about the pitfalls of perception.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (right) and Treasurer Jackie Trad are seen during a press conference. Picture: Dan Peled.

While the Register of Interests should be subjected to some form of regular independent assessment, ministers shouldn’t require rules to tell them that the public takes a dim view of politicians who appear to use their position for personal profit.

This is the real eyeball test.

And because of Trad the Palaszczuk Government is failing it.

I ESTIMATE IT’LL BE A BUNFIGHT

A QUARTER of a century ago, Queensland Parliament staged its first ever budget estimates hearings.

Spun out of inquiries conducted in the wake of the Fitzgerald Report, the 1994 hearings were an important step forward for the Sunshine State.

The austerity of the occasion was not lost on participants. Everyone spoke about the necessity of the reform and how they’d been working together to ensure the process ran smoothly.

Yet when Opposition Leader Rob Borbidge asked the first question to Speaker Jim Fouras about why country MPs with big electorates had not been provided their promised second offices, it would have become clear that the hearings would be prone to political bunfights of little concern to Queenslanders.

Then Opposition Leader Rob Borbidge in 2001.

However, the transcripts of the first hearings do show that is was a rather robust and free-flowing affair.

With Queensland’s 25th budget estimates hearings to kick off next week, the old transcripts should be essential reading for the state’s current crop of MPs.

Last year’s hearings were among the worst on record. Labor committee chairs used the rules to disrupt uncomfortable lines of Opposition questioning.

Questions by the Opposition as well as Government MPs often had little to do with the budget.

After last year’s farce, former speaker John Mickel suggested loosening the rules and putting Opposition MPs in charge of some committees.

It’s not a bad idea but it wouldn’t be needed if MPs respected the process like they did 25 years ago when it was introduced.

 

SCROO MAKES HIS MARK

GRAHAM “Scroo” Turner’s raucous gathering of 4500 Flight Centre travel consultants from around the globe is coming to Brisbane next year.

This year’s gathering was held over the weekend in Las Vegas and featured actor Mark Wahlberg and DJ Calvin Harris as special guests.

Actor Mark Wahlberg. Picture: Leon Bennett/Getty Images

Many of the poolside and after-party social media posts probably didn’t pass Instagram’s bare flesh rules.

Tourism Minister Kate Jones proudly boasted this week about how the Palaszczuk Government had secured the event.

But what we all really want to know is can Scroo attract Hollywood stars to the Sunshine State?

SURF’S UP AT COOLUM

THE World Surfing League has been sniffing around for a theme park location and apparently a site at Coolum is at the top of their list.

This would be a major coup for the Sunshine Coast and a chance to get one up on the Gold Coast, which is often seen as Australia’s home of surfing.

A sign at the Coolum Yandina roundabout. Picture: Peter Wallis

JEN ON TOP AFTER U-TURN

INTERESTING to see that Jenny Goodwin won out in the fight to be the Women’s LNP boss at the party’s weekend conference. It was apparently a close affair with Goodwin getting up by three votes. However, according to some insiders it was curious that Goodwin put her hand up at all given she had been pushing to get the group disbanded a few years ago.

PROPONENTS IN REVERSE

MORE than two years after submitting proposals, proponents for the Palaszczuk Government’s renewable energy reverse auction have been informed their plans are still being considered. The recent email came as a bit of a surprise after months of silence. Some of the proponents had assumed the process had been abandoned and shifted their cash to other projects.

TAKING IT DOWNTOWN

THE trackside clash between two Palaszczuk Government media advisers at Eagle Farm aren’t the only terse words to be shared in recent months. There’s talk that the Premier herself and a senior ministerial staffer shared some heated words in her office. While the reason behind the dispute is not known, the staffer is apparently moving to a department job on another level of 1 William Street.