Palaszczuk ‘doesn’t need’ union boss Gary Bullock to remain Premier
Annastacia Palaszczuk insists she does not need union support as it is revealed she has ordered her own secret polling.
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Annastacia Palaszczuk insists she does not need the support of union powerbroker Gary Bullock to remain Premier as it is revealed she has ordered secret taxpayer-funded polling.
Ms Palaszczuk returned from a week-long trade mission to China on Monday to face questions about revelations unions started polling Queenslanders in her absence about her leadership performance.
News of the polling has raised renewed questions within the government about whether Ms Palaszczuk will lead Labor to a fourth election next October.
The Premier on Monday dismissed the renewed rumblings about her leadership and said she did not give the union poll “any credibility”.
When asked whether she needed the support of United Workers Union boss Gary Bullock to remain Premier, Ms Palaszczuk said: “No, I don’t.”
It comes as the Premier launches her own polling to shape her government’s policies and pitch to voters ahead of next year’s election.
Documents obtained by The Australian under Right to Information laws reveals the polling, which would cost taxpayers at least $393,000, would be one of the state’s biggest polling projects.
It would run for 66 weeks and be conducted by opinion polling company Ipsos Public Affairs in waves of focus group research every six weeks.
A veil of secrecy has been thrown over the polling, with the government refusing to reveal which specific topics are being canvassed with voters, or the research findings.
Meanwhile, despite Ms Palaszczuk’s insistence over the need for union support, government insiders say her ability to remain leader continues to rely heavily on the support of Mr Bullock and, to a lesser extent, Queensland Labor president John Battams.
Mr Bullock cannot remove Ms Palaszczuk, but he wields significant power as the convener of the left faction, which has a majority in the Labor caucus.
Ms Palaszczuk denied the unions were undermining her leadership by polling her performance and declared she was focused on delivering cost-of-living relief to struggling Queenslanders.
“The people of Queensland voted for me, and I do my job for the people of this state,” she said.
“People are feeling a lot of pain out there through cost of living and that is why our government is putting in place the largest cost of living relief package that this state has ever seen.”
The union polling is considered another blow to Ms Palaszczuk’s leadership and comes after likely challengers Steven Miles, Shannon Fentiman and Cameron Dick jostled for the spotlight during her European holiday absence in late August and early September.
It prompted a “refreshed” Ms Palaszczuk to pledge to improve her leadership style and communication with Labor MPs.
Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace – a former Council of Unions general secretary – on Monday said questions about whether Mr Bullock would pull his support for Ms Palaszczuk were “really hypothetical”.
“I know Gary very well and I haven’t heard him talk in that way,” she said.
Ms Grace said she was unaware of the unions’ polling and poured water on questions about how Labor would run an election campaign without their multimillion-dollar cash war chest.
“Polling is a democratic process that people can go through and obviously the campaign isn’t over yet … we haven’t really even started it and the polling that matters is the one on the day,” she said.
“Unions can spend their money in line with how they deem is the most appropriate way but they remember what happened under the previous LNP government.
“I know that the Labor Party is the number one party that they will be supported.”
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