Opinion: Would Jackie Trad be treated differently if she was a man?

Jackie Trad, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants who rose to become the state’s deputy premier and treasurer, is judged differently for one reason. She is a woman, writes Madonna King.

Sunday Mail columnist Madonna King asks whether Jackie Trad would have been treated differently if she was a man. Picture: David Clark

• Timeline: Trad’s controversial past

We need to fill our parliaments with Jackie Trads, and women across Queensland should band together to do that.

After enough taxpayer money to feed dozens of Queensland families for months and months was spent investigating the former deputy premier, her heinous crime has now become clear.

Defendant Jacklyn Anne Trad has been found by the State’s Crime and Corruption Commission to have engaged in “aggressive advocacy’’.

For Mercy’s sake!

If Trad was involved in “aggressive advocacy’’ - defined in the dictionary as ‘fierce defence’ or ‘vigorous assertion’ - the fallout delivered this week is both felonious and deeply misogynist.

This has nothing to do with politics. Trad was fighting for her choice of under-treasurer, just as LNP Treasurer David Janetzki has just nabbed his choice for that role too.

Cameron Dick, as Treasurer, had a former ministerial staffer take on the job. And remember Premier Steven Miles appointing former Labor MP Mike Kaiser to Director-General of the Department of Premier and Cabinet?

Where is the investigation, public shaming and the tabling of reports targeting those male politicians?

Trad, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants who rose to become the state’s deputy premier and treasurer, is judged differently for one reason.

She is a woman. And we still, in 2025, expect our female leaders to be demure and delicate, even.

Imagine a male copping what Trad has faced this week.

I promise you Tom Tate will not be criticised for trying to take the Olympic Games from Brisbane. He’s tough. A negotiator. A leader for the times.

John Howard was never despised for vigorously asserting his gun control agenda. And Paul Keating’s legacy rests on appointments and decisions he made, and then made public.

Former deputy premier Jackie Trad. Photo Steve Pohlner

All of us should be appalled by the treatment metered out to Trad because it brings clarity to an old sexism, that’s new again.

Why isn’t Ros Bates the health minister now the LNP has won government? What is the real reason Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash’s comments are routinely attached to unflattering photographs and caricatures?

Why did the councils at Redland and Ipswich think it was okay to try and silence their female mayors?

We all know the answer. And it is wrong, wrong, wrong.

The CCC, which is funded to the tune of $65 million of your money each year, found that Trad had engaged in “aggressive advocacy’’ and the then Director-General had acceded to that advocacy.

Why is the target here the advocate - passionately fighting for her position - and not the highly-paid male public servant who simply found it difficult to say ‘no’.

For my money, if you are earning $744,000 a year and making decisions that impact our state, you should be well-practised in the word ‘no’.

But speaking of his and hers, the CCC report came down at the same time as another investigation; this one into the former (male) Public Trustee of Queensland.

Blink and you would have missed it, but it revealed sexual harassment of staff while drunk, and allegations of academic misconduct including plagiarism and blah blah blah.

But thank goodness, no aggressive advocacy - so we can move on.

Meanwhile, Steven Miles this week said: “I don’t think anyone would ever accuse me of aggressive advocacy”.

Opposition Leader Steven Miles. Picture: Nigel Hallett

Thanks for the mansplaining. But what a pity. Perhaps the former premier thought it was better to let his biceps do the talking - but even imagine a female leader, dressed in gym gear, dropping to the ground for a push-up competition on live television.

The debate would be about the appropriateness of her dress, and why she has time for gym classes while running the state.

One rule for men. And another for women, whose mothers and grandmothers wore aggressive advocacy as a badge to make the world better for our sisters and daughters, as well as our brothers and sons.

Miles’ re-election prospects might have been boosted by a touch more aggressive advocacy - for those who had their homes broken into in the dead of night, for those bedding down homeless each evening, and for the thousands of teenagers in a waiting queue to see a psychologist.

Who knows, but if Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had shown an iota of aggressive advocacy, the Voice might now be law. Or China might be firing shots in someone else’s ocean.

This isn’t a partisan view. Across the political and professional spectrum, women are sharing their misgivings about the message delivered by the Trad saga.

That message is clear: female leaders need to be nice. Demure. Not talk out of turn. Flutter their eyelids, perhaps.

But above all, camouflage any pugnacity. Aggression is only fine, when mixed with a dose of testosterone.