Acting Premier Steven Miles plays down integrity report’s interim findings

Acting Premier Steven Miles says Peter Coaldrake’s interim report into the Palaszczuk government’s integrity “certainly” wasn’t a “whitewash” as he suggested any recommendations made by the Professor would be accepted.

Acting Premier Steven Miles says Peter Coaldrake’s interim report into the Palaszczuk government’s integrity “certainly” wasn’t a “whitewash” as he suggested any recommendations made by the Professor would be accepted.

Mr Miles on Friday said the government was determined to “continue to do better” as he revealed staff had undergone new integrity training that focused on how executives and public servants interacted.

“We are determined to continue to do better, to continue to serve Queenslanders better and this review will help us to do that,” he said.

Prof Coaldrake handed down a number of bombshell “observations” in his interim report into the culture and accountability of the Queensland government on Thursday.

The report revealed concerns around staffers with no life experience wielding their minister’s powers while also hitting out at how lobbyists were operating in the state.

Asked whether he still held his view from late 2020 when he said voters were comfortable with the state safeguards for lobbying, the Acting Premier said “that was my view in 2020”.

“Since then, obviously, there’s been a lot of discussion including in this review, and if this review makes recommendations or findings about how we should change either regulated lobbying or unregulated lobbying, we’ll take that on board,” he said.

Mr Miles said most lobbyists had connections to a side of politics which they were entitled to have.

Professor Peter Coaldrake with Acting Premier Steven Miles.

It followed comments by Prof Coaldrake that some lobbyists had “dual roles” acting for clients and then working for political parties “to help them win elections.”

This followed revelations that powerful lobbyists Evan Moorhead and Cameron Milner worked on Labor’s 2020 election campaign.

Prof Coaldrake also revealed an example where a Director-General took steps to prevent a report from ‘reaching the Minister’s ears’ so that the Minister could plausibly deny knowledge of the matter.

Mr Miles said he hadn’t experienced this.

He said while he couldn’t commit to accepting every recommendation in the final report that’s due in two months, “Pretty much every report like this we’ve commissioned we’ve either accepted or accepted in principle, all of them.”

He said ministerial staff worked very hard but they did make mistakes and if there were ways the government could help them, then it wanted to.

“We also have a new training course that we’ve now completed, which focuses very much on the interface between the executive and administrative wings of government and we will make sure that all of our appropriate staff get that training,” he said.

Mr Miles said the government had been working on the course with Griffith University which staff had completed in recent months.

“It’s a program directly related to the interface between executive government, that is ministers and their offices, and the public service,” he said.

“It’s been trialled, and has been proven successful and we will now roll it out to all other appropriate staff.

“I think that’s an appropriate measure given what’s in the interim report.”

The Acting Premier said in his experience, he had been “very well served” by public servants who had worked for him.

He said sometimes the role of a staffer “skews” towards younger people because it was a job that was hard to do with a family.

It followed Prof Coaldrake’s observations that, “There is also the issue, inherent across jurisdictions, that significant numbers of ministerial staffers are enthusiastic young loyalists who have little other life experience aside from a university Labor or Liberal club or trade union office.”

Submissions to Prof Coaldrake’s review can be made until May 16 here.