‘Fish rots from the head’: Premier’s shocking act of arrogance

Annastacia Palaszczuk’s delay in fronting the media this week and her subsequent failure to be troubled by the Coaldrake Review make for a very bad look, writes Kylie Lang.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk must have undergone some incredibly serious dental surgery.

To be unable to speak and effectively out of action for almost 24 hours, she has my sympathy.

I had dental surgery two weeks ago, and as unpleasant as it was, it took less than an hour for the anaesthetic to wear off and for my face to return to its version of normal.

I didn’t need to squirrel myself away for the best part of a day. Maybe I was just lucky. We don’t know what two-hour procedure Ms Palaszczuk had on Wednesday but we’re to believe it was so severe she couldn’t front the media or take any questions from journalists over the damning Coaldrake Review released the afternoon before.

Ms Palaszczuk later said the surgery “could not be delayed”.

Could it have taken place earlier, say, on Monday? No one but the Premier and her dentist can answer that.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk at a media conference in Brisbane after the release of the Coaldrake report. Picture: NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

But it was indeed a very bad look for the person at the top of the rotting food chain known as this government and its toxic public service to be missing in action until 9am Thursday.

When the Premier finally fronted the media – at a press conference and not, for a change, on the red carpet of a celebrity-stacked gala – she said that her government would “take responsibility” for the poor culture within the public sector.

She comprehensively failed to accept that as the leader, the buck stops with her.

Instead, she issued a warning to public servants that those not focused on their jobs should leave. Nice.

What the Coaldrake Review screams – even if the Premier isn’t listening and opts to downplay her role saying “we all need to take responsibility and we will get this fixed” – is that a fish rots from the head.

Professor Peter Coaldrake said as much on Wednesday when quizzed over the Premier’s leadership, plainly stating “the tone in any organisation is significantly set at the top”.

Ms Palaszczuk has a massive amount of work to do in countering a culture she has allowed to fester.

It’s a culture that has quashed dissent, thrived on bullying, been dominated by short-term political thinking, and given inordinate power to lobbyists in highly secretive deals.

Who actually runs our state is a fact all Queenslanders deserve to know.

And let’s not forget Prof Coaldrake was given only four months to investigate a system with entrenched integrity and accountability issues.

How much deeper the probe could have been with more time and resources.

His scathing 101-page report confirms the government’s culture is broken “from the top down”, which makes the Premier’s response outstanding in its arrogance.

While she has pledged to implement its 14 recommendations – to say anything else would be political death – she attempted on Thursday to belittle the report as a simple “health check”.

When asked by a journalist if the report troubled her because it happened under her watch, Ms Palaszczuk shot back that she embraced it. “It doesn’t trouble me,” she said.

It should.

The Premier has many serious questions to answer, including how she intends to fix the Right to Information process that tries to thwart journalists exposing to Queenslanders what’s really going on.

The release of information in the community interest should not, as one report submission noted, be based on “what would ‘look bad’ if the decision was to be printed in The Courier-Mail”.

Ms Palaszczuk also needs to act now and stop lobbyists Evan Moorhead and Cameron Milner, who engineered her 2020 election campaign, working with her government.

As the review says: “If an individual plays a substantive role in the election campaign of a prospective government, they should be banned from engaging in lobbying for the next term of office.”

This and every other recommendation in the Coaldrake Review is integral to good governance.

The review goes to Cabinet on Monday, but when any reforms can be implemented will be determined by the parliament’s schedule – and, we’re to assume after this week’s trip to the dentist, the Premier’s personal appointments.

LOVE

The courage of everyday Queenslanders in the face of extreme trauma. In her findings this week into the deaths of Hannah Clarke and her three children in 2020, coroner Jane Bentley praised the passers-by who helped – Michael Zemek, Samantha Covey, Kerry Fernandez, Reece Gourlay and Sarah Tranberg – as well as Senior Constable Angus Skaines.

LOATHE

The uneducated mindset around domestic violence that considers monsters like Rowan Baxter a victim. Coroner Bentley said it was of “great concern” that even after the killings, many people told police Baxter loved his wife and children, was a great father and his actions were somehow excused by the fact he was “losing everything”. There is no excuse. Not one.