‘Anna Kardashian’: Labor backbenchers seethe at rise of Celebrity Premier
The stoush between Annastacia Palaszczuk and Australia’s Paralympians is a stranger-than-fiction saga with far-reaching implications for Queensland.
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Kurt Fearnley won his first Paralympic gold medal by driving himself to semi-delirium in the baking Athens heat, Monique Murphy was a superstar athlete just two years after a freak accident almost claimed her life, and Karni Liddell broke her first world record at 14 – defying doctors who claimed she wouldn’t live beyond her teens.
Describing Fearnley as tough is a bit like saying Don Bradman was a handy batsmen. This is a man who pushed an impossibly broken wheelchair to the finish of a New York marathon using his bloodied ribs to steer and tore his body to shreds while crawling 96km of the Kokoda Track.
Murphy meanwhile woke up in a hospital in March 2014 after a week-long coma without her right foot after falling from a fifth-floor balcony and won silver in Rio in 2016.
Liddell was just 12 months old when her parents were told she would never crawl or walk due to the absent muscles in her legs.
But somehow even the personal lobbying of Fearnley, Murphy and Liddell – three of Australia’s most respected people – was unable to convince Queensland Premier and Olympics Minister Annastacia Palaszczuk that she should add the Paralympics to her title.
The stoush between Palaszczuk and Australia’s Paralympians is a stranger-than-fiction saga with far-reaching implications for Queensland because of what it might suggest of the judgment of Palaszczuk and the people around her as she nears eight years in power.
The episode has also sparked deep intrigue in political circles about what was said – or not said – on a video conference involving Fearnley and Palaszczuk.
If you listen to several senior figures across politics and sport, Fearnley left the conversation deeply unhappy.
However, it is certainly not a feeling he still holds. In fact, when asked about it by The Courier-Mail his response was: “Not sure what ya (sic) talking about.”
But first, the facts which aren’t in dispute. Fearnley was involved in lobbying Palaszczuk as the nation’s esteemed Paralympians quietly grew frustrated that the Premier hadn’t included Paralympics in her title.
Murphy wrote an emotional letter to the Premier in December 2021, because the exclusion of the Paralympics had contributed to the “invisibility” of the entire Australian disability community. Liddell even offered a warning to Palaszczuk’s office that a campaign was brewing. Most people involved in early-stage preparations for Brisbane 2032 believed that including the Paralympics in her title was a no-brainer, as the events will run parallel to each other.
Come September this year, several members of the board of the 2032 Games organising committee – the OCOG – were aghast that Palaszczuk was still refusing to make the inclusion. Some significant figures in Queensland even privately wondered aloud what game the Premier was playing.
Publicly, Palaszczuk, a former disabilities minister in the Bligh government, declared the 2032 Paralympics would “drive conversations and inspire action towards a more inclusive, diverse, and accessible landscape for people living with disability”. But behind closed doors her resistance was driving conversations which some say were becoming increasingly tense.
Multiple sources have told The Courier-Mail that after Fearnley broached the subject on a call, the Premier resisted his plea, and the three-time Paralympic gold medallist was left deeply disappointed after the phone call. The Premier denies there was anything said to upset the champion athlete.
But when Fearnley’s direct lobbying didn’t succeed, a plan was hatched, involving Paralympics Australia boss Jock O’Callaghan, to send an open letter to the Premier to publicly pressure her into action.
“That forced our hand,’’ a source close to the Paralympics movement said.
“We’d had numerous disabled athletes personally lobby the Premier and we kept getting the line that John Coates said it was OK not to have Paralympics in her title,’’ the Paralympics source said.
“This was despite every other Olympics minister in the world having it in their title. So they went public with the letter.”
The Paralympics Australia Athletes Commission missive, published to its website, was a Wednesday afternoon bomb in George St.
The language was polite but explosive, asking the Premier for “respectful consideration for a change in the title of your portfolio”.
Mr O’Callaghan was more blunt, saying that “everything else had been tried” and he felt sorry for the athletes who felt like they had “no other choice” but to go public after being “ignored”.
The Premier’s staffers initially indicated she would dig in when contacted by The Courier-Mail for a response.
But her resistance lasted 37 minutes after the story was published by The Courier-Mail on our website later that afternoon, with Palaszczuk tweeting she would make the change after all.
“I’m happy to do that,’’ she said.
But it can be revealed that behind the scenes she was anything but happy.
“She was outfoxed and she took it badly,’’ one source said.
Insiders say that a full week later the Premier demanded an audience with Mr O’Callaghan on the sidelines of a meeting of the OCOG on the Sunshine Coast and told him she had been personally offended by the public nature of the dispute.
POWER AND PALASZCZUK
Despite the protracted saga, the Paralympics movement have achieved their aim and everyone involved would prefer it now go away.
Fearnley on Friday said he “loved that the Premier heard the voice of the athletes”.
It’s an episode that has played out as history beckons Palaszczuk. On May 10, 2024, the woman once known as the “Accidental Premier” will overtake Peter Beattie to become Labor’s longest-serving post-war premier.
If she stands in and wins the next election she will become the state’s second-longest serving premier behind only Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen midway through the first year of her next term.
People who have worked closely with the Premier – whose popularity has largely been based on her homespun and folksy appeal, the likes of which Queensland hasn’t seen since the days of Sir Joh – note two things: that she is risk averse, but that she stays calm in a crisis.
The fight over whether she should adopt the Paralympics ministerial title was significant because it suggests a leader who has shied away from all manner of risk so far in her reign is now actively taking the biggest gamble of her career: shedding her down-to-earth-image. The leader who represents working class Inala and who on the eve of her first election victory famously laughed off forgetting that the GST rate was 10 per cent by saying she’d missed her morning coffee is radically reshaping herself.
The Accidental Premier is now the Celebrity Premier, a leader who unashamedly loves red carpets, who requests her boyfriend has a seat at the table at an official meeting with the International Olympic Committee, and who cancels cabinet while they have a weekend luxury yacht getaway on Hamilton Island.
She is a premier who parties at the home of fashion doyen Keri Craig-Lee and who is ring bearer at the wedding of a socialite; the Celebrity Premier who prefers not to field questions from anyone outside of Labor’s union puppetmasters, not even from Paralympians whose questions deserve answers.
“She portrays herself as the girl from Inala, yet she doesn’t even live in the electorate,’’ one Labor insider says.
“The backbenchers are calling her Anna Kardashian. It isn’t sitting well with the rank and file anymore. There’s a lot of anger out there.’’
Palaszczuk is already a Labor legend.
Whether the people of Queensland have the same warmth for the Celebrity Premier as the Accidental Premier when it comes time to vote again in two years will determine how significant her legacy will be.
“The issue in voterland is that people will cut her slack on the red carpet stuff if they (the government) are doing a good job,’’ another Labor figure says.
“But it’s crisis management every day now. It’s health, the DNA scandal, juvenile justice, (taxpayer money) wastage, integrity … it just goes on and on.
“When you’re getting swamped like that, all the good press dries up. They’ve got two years to sort it out.
“She needs to have a cabinet reshuffle big time and get rid of the dead wood in her office. Even then I’m not sure that will save her.’’
Another significant Labor figure is even more scathing: “It’s a terrible government, but one thing I will say is that the only thing – and I mean the only thing – it’s got going for it is Annastacia.”
And this Labor luminary says Palaszczuk is “sleep walking to certain defeat unless she shows Queensland who is actually running the show’’.
“She has a choice over the next two years: she can either lead or die on her knees.”
Still, you don’t win three elections against the odds without an X factor.
Labor Inc is formidable. The party machine is ruthless, staffed by experienced and tenacious campaigners who play to win. Achieving the impossible at election time has become a staple of the Palaszczuk playbook. And the message from her supporters is blunt: Underestimate the Premier at your own peril.
A VERY IMPORTANT CALL
It’s a typical Monday morning in 2015 for freshly minted Environment Minister Steven Miles as his closest aides gather as they prepare to set the weekly policy framework.
But in what is becoming a regular occurrence, the silence is punctuated by an incoming mobile phone call to Miles from United Workers Union boss Gary “Blocker” Bullock.
It is the first year of the Palaszczuk government, and those at the meeting march out as Miles motions for them to leave. This is a call he wants to take in private.
“It seemed like nothing was more important than taking that call,” an insider recalls.
“A lot has been said, and quite rightly, about the influence of lobbyists with this government, but what about the senior union officials who have had unfettered access since 2015? There’s no doubt that powerful figures within the union movement – who openly brag about how they’ve helped win elections and control the dominant Left wing faction – have enormous power and dictate the industrial and political play in this state.”
And it’s a truth known to all insiders. When The Courier-Mail blew the whistle on the fact that still no decisions are made by cabinet without asking “what does Blocker think?” – and naming him the state’s most powerful person (with the Premier at No.2) – not a single denial was forthcoming. The state’s worst-kept secret had been revealed.
In fact, on January 31, 2015, when the single-term Newman government was politically burned to the ground, there were two big winners.
One was Annastacia Palaszczuk. The other was Bullock. To understand how Queensland has operated in the eight years since is to understand how the two have been intertwined in running the state.
A BLOCKER ON EVEREST’S TOP
Palaszczuk’s ascension from being a junior minister in the Bligh government who wasn’t considered leadership material to Queensland premier was so unlikely that even as she was moved within sight of victory on election night 2015, her dad Henry articulated the long odds.
“I don’t think that even in her wildest dreams she’d imagine being Leader of the Opposition,” he said.
“But she became that … and now she’s on the cusp of achieving something special.”
It was a remarkable and unlikely ascension that did not only surprise the Palaszczuk family. In a television interview after Labor had been routed in 2012, party leviathan Beattie had struggled to recall her name when asked who was likely to be the party’s new state leader.
“The lass from Inala,’’ was the best Beattie could do on the spot.
That slight was seared in the minds of people close to Palaszczuk for years.
To this day, Palaszczuk is something of an enigma.
While being naturally risk averse, she has thrived in a cutthroat world which usually rewards high-energy opportunists.
She’s a child of Labor factional politics and a member of a political dynasty, however her main appeal to voters is that she seems relatable and trustworthy; certainly anything but a scheming politician.
She’s not known for a particular cerebral depth on policy, but has a brilliant compass for the mindset of everyday Queenslanders and a photographic memory; she reads a speech once and remembers it.
She’s also “as cunning as a shithouse rat’’, says a former staffer.
Plenty of senior business and political figures say she can be awkward in private and is not a natural conversationalist, but she’s charmed global heavyweights like IOC president Thomas Bach.
She’s known among some colleagues for her warmth – they say she remembers the birthdays of staff in her office and pays for birthday cakes from her own pocket.
But others relate a story about how she has supposedly received multiple disconnection notices after forgetting to pay her home electricity bills.
Those who have been on the wrong side of her tell of how quick Palaszczuk is to put “on ice” anybody she feels has unnecessarily challenged her, or if she thinks they have been disloyal.
Palaszczuk has meanwhile been incredibly public with current boyfriend, surgeon Reza Adib, but for the first three years of her premiership rarely acknowledged in public her relationship with then-boyfriend Shaun Drabsch.
And for seven years her personal popularity has been crucial to keeping the government afloat and taking down a conga line of LNP leaders, but she doesn’t weaponise it to neuter her union puppet masters inside Labor.
In 2012, when Palaszczuk took control of a seven-person caucus that would famously fit in a Tarago, the fresh face of Queensland Labor laughably declared “the time for factions is no more”.
Getting back to government was “going to be like climbing Mount Everest” and she wanted “to see doctors, nurses, railway workers nominate to become candidates for the Australian Labor Party”.
The sham pledge to kill the factions became Palaszczuk’s first broken promise within just a few weeks, when party apparatchik Jackie Trad was endorsed as the by-election candidate to succeed the exiting Bligh in the seat of South Brisbane.
Palaszczuk was supposed to be the stalking horse for Trad, who many party strategists believed would take over the leadership after the inevitable loss of the 2015 election.
But those strategists could not have dreamt of the malignance of voter hatred for Campbell Newman by polling day – combined with the impact on the election from interventions of Clive Palmer, broadcaster Alan Jones, police union boss Ian Leavers, the effectiveness of Labor’s anti-asset sales scare campaign, and Palaszczuk’s homespun appeal.
A CREATURE OF THE LEFT
Union leader Bullock is fond of three things: Fishing, camping and ruthlessly wielding political power from the shadows. Queensland Labor’s ultimate faceless man pulled off a masterstroke at the 2015 election.
As everybody wrote off Labor’s chances of winning due to the mountainous LNP majority, Bullock sniffed the opportunity and stood Left faction candidates in tough seats.
He knew Newman was on the nose and sensed that anything was possible.
It paid off, with a statewide primary vote swing of 10.81 per cent and a two-party preferred swing of 14 per cent that saw Labor pick up 37 seats and the LNP lose 36, allowing Palaszczuk to form a minority government with the help of Nicklin independent Peter Wellington.
The Left was now the dominant faction, headed in the parliamentary wing of the party by incoming deputy premier Trad.
One prescient party source at the time told The Courier-Mail then that the newly minted Premier Palaszczuk – from the Right faction – was “now pretty much a creature of the Left who’ll make all kinds of demands on her or they’ll tear her down”.
Just a few weeks after the election, The Courier-Mail ran a story about union bosses warning Palaszczuk to “honour commitments Labor made to them’’, issuing blatant reminders of how they had helped the party secure an unlikely win.
Bullock even went so far as to refer to the members and ministers as “United Voice MPs”.
The “United Voice MPs” publicly touted by Bullock included Thuringowa’s Aaron Harper, Capalaba’s Don Brown, Springwood’s Mick de Brenni, Pine Rivers’ Nikki Boyd, Barron River’s Craig Crawford, and ministers Coralee O’Rourke and Steven Miles.
At the time, Palaszczuk said she did not feel as though her government was indebted to the union movement.
When asked directly whether she believed her government owed the unions anything for the role they played in her election win, she said: “No, I believe that we should be working as one – the business community, the labour movement, and my government should be working as one to generate jobs in this state.”
They were weasel words then, and are even more so now.
The Premier said Bullock’s comments did not concern her.
Naivety or wishful thinking? Maybe both.
“I’m not worried (about) what Gary Bullock is saying to his membership, he’s standing up for the rights of his membership right across this state,” she said.
When asked whether Bullock was “overstating” his influence, Palaszczuk said: “I think people can draw their own assumptions and perhaps some people put more emphasis on those issues, but what I will say is that my members will always stand up for members.”
But one insider now reveals just how forward Bullock is in exerting his influence.
“Post-election, Blocker would check in with ministers who’d had their campaigns bankrolled by the union to see if they wanted to keep their well-paid jobs – and portfolios – as Labor’s factions jostled for positions in the new Cabinet,” the source said.
“It wasn’t only a welfare check – rather the union wanting to know whose names they’d be putting forward to continue doing their bidding in the Cabinet room.”
On April 8, 2015, United Voice posted a YouTube video that featured Bullock, the union’s secretary, opening with footage of Palaszczuk telling supporters: “Can I thank the union movement?
“United Voice members knew the state election was the most important in decades, it was about the future of Queensland ... and they put in an extraordinary effort,” Bullock tells viewers.
“Members fought like they’ve never fought before and it worked. Now they just want the Labor government to follow through on their promises. That’s the test.”
Bullock goes on to say that United Voice members “won some fantastic commitments from Labor”, adding that they now “want to see the new Palaszczuk government restore their faith, just stick to their word”.
Another video, posted by United Voice just days earlier, also celebrates the election of the seven MPs, with a presenter saying: “This means that there are people in parliament who have directly represented you as delegates or officials and now they can make sure your voice is heard in government.”
Labor insiders say Palaszczuk made a catastrophic mistake by failing to assert her authority early.
“She won in 2015 because (Campbell) Newman was on the nose and she campaigned on honesty and transparency and the public bought it,’’ one senior Labor figure said.
“Yes, the unions played a role. Unquestionably.
“But in the days after 2015, Gary Bullock let everybody know that he was in charge.
“Annastacia should have called him in and said ‘listen mate, I’m the Premier, now f--k off and let me run the show’.
“That’s what (Wayne) Goss, (Peter) Beattie and even (Anna) Bligh would have done. Instead, she’s let him (Bullock) and Miles hijack the agenda.
“It’s a symptom of poor leadership and it will bite her on the arse big time next election.
“Queensland is the most conservative state in the country. The punters won’t cop being run by socialists.
“Blocker is only powerful because she gives him the power. The unions are running this government and everybody knows it. That didn’t even happen under (former PM Bob) Hawke.’’
BEST OF FRENEMIES
Annastacia Palaszczuk had achieved the impossible.
But as The Courier-Mail front page noted the day after her February 14 2015 swearing-in, now was time for the hard part.
Having unexpectedly reached the summit of her political Everest, Palaszczuk wisely surrounded herself with savvy political operatives.
Terry Mackenroth was called in to help the transition from Opposition to government, Dave Stewart appointed Director General of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, David Barbagallo became her chief of staff in 2017, while her father’s trusted former ministerial media adviser, the impressive Kirby Anderson was a senior media adviser and became deputy chief of staff. They were no-nonsense types and they had plenty of input – and their experience would contrast some of the operatives who would eventually replace them.
Palaszczuk began her first term with great caution, ordering scores of reviews into what she saw as overreach and wastage by the Newman government.
It was a steady as she goes approach that suited a minority government.
The Premier was content to be a small target, cognisant of how Newman had made himself a big target with just about everybody who voted – doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers, bureaucrats … even bikies. While those reviews sparked a paralysis in the government that continues to this day, those at the very top of the government in that first year now recall having never worked harder than in those early months.
This was an administration that genuinely believed it was acting on the trust the people of Queensland had placed in it, they say.
There was also no doubting Palaszczuk’s popularity with the public in these early months. Women, in particular, loved her, and she was often swamped at functions by adoring fans.
Selfies were taken everywhere as older women were proud of her, younger women wanted to be like her. But while Palaszczuk was popular with the punters, the Left already held the whip in the government – both in numbers and in operating style.
In Queensland business circles during the first two terms of the Palaszczuk government there was a saying: “You invite Annastacia to your function to cut the ribbons, but if you want to get something done, you invite Jackie.”
As deputy premier, Jackie Trad was the power behind the throne in the parliamentary party, with Bullock and the Left union bosses giving orders from the outside. Trad would conduct her own separate Cabinet meetings of Left-aligned ministers – the meeting you have before the real meeting: a 7am diary slot titled simply “Coffee”.
Trad and Palaszczuk were best described as “frenemies’’. When there was mutual interest, they helped each other.
But Trad was close to former premier Anna Bligh and Palaszczuk is known to dislike Bligh, whom she served under as transport minister.
(Palaszczuk also had a frosty relationship with Beattie. Some of the Beattie enmity centred on Palaszczuk’s father Henry, who was a minister in the Beattie cabinet. They also later had issues during the 2018 Commonwealth Games after the Premier was denied a speech at the opening ceremony.)
Within Labor many – especially Cameron Dick – considered Trad a liability because of her no-nonsense, take no prisoners approach.
‘A CONFLICT OF INTEREST’
In 2017, against a lacklustre opposition leader in Tim Nicholls, Labor sailed back into government, as Queenslanders rejected the LNP’s lack of vision and went with the tried and trusted incumbent. One Nation’s popularity also hurt the LNP vote.
The campaign was run by some of the smartest political brains in the state embedded in Labor’s campaign machine, people like ALP state secretary (and later controversial lobbyist) Evan Moorhead from the Left and Jon Persley, who as assistant state secretary was behind the party’s target-seat campaign. Labor lobbyist Cameron Milner, who orchestrated two Beattie campaigns, also came back to help.
The early days of the campaign had been repeatedly derailed by anti-Adani protesters hijacking Labor campaign events, but Palaszczuk’s cauterised the wound with a dramatic press conference.
Labor, she said, would exercise its veto power to block a taxpayer-funded federal $1bn loan to help the company build a rail line to its Carmichael mine.
Palaszczuk said she had previously been unaware boyfriend Shaun Drabsch, a managing partner at firm PwC, had been working on Adani’s loan application, and as she now had a “perceived conflict of interest” she removed any doubt with the veto.
It was a deft political manoeuvre which played well by saving inner-city seats from the Greens – who broke into parliament by seizing the redrawn LNP seat of Maiwar.
A side note was the swift and spectacular way it spelled the end for her relationship with Drabsch, who she’d been dating for about three years.
The conflict of interest issue led Palaszczuk to decide Drabsch would have to go, friends said. Her decision did not shock those closest to her – her family.
Dad Henry, always a big influence, had never liked Drabsch. Drabsch believed the relationship could be salvaged, but sources said he was quickly “jettisoned” – both personally and professionally.
“It was done quickly and seamlessly,’’ said a friend.
The word inside Labor circles was that Drabsch was dumped via email – though that suggestion was categorically denied by the Premier on Friday.
“Shaun was quite upset at the time but he’s moved on and married and is now very happy,’’ one source said.
Changing tack on Adani helped in 2017 but less than two years later the party’s mixed messages on coal – encapsulated by the muted support for Adani’s Carmichael mine – cost federal Labor and Bill Shorten the 2019 federal election.
Labor pollsters quickly discovered Trad had become collateral damage – suddenly a toxic personality outside of the South East corner, as the figurehead of the inner-city elite’s views on coal that is despised in the regions.
In the wash up, and as her own integrity scandals mounted, Trad became the lightning rod for the negative focus on the government. The purchase of a $700,000 Woolloongabba investment property near the Cross River Rail project she was overseeing (that Trad said had been brokered by her husband without her knowledge) led to a Crime and Corruption Commission probe and the loss of plenty of political skin.
The end of her era as deputy premier and treasurer came in May 2020 with another CCC probe over an allegation she interfered in the selection of a school principal in her electorate.
(Both CCC probes cleared her of corruption. But the watchdog found some “very worrying and disappointing” practices in relation to the school principal selection, and while there was no “reasonable” evidence of corruption in the house purchase – and therefore no formal investigation – it recommended legislative reform to reduce corruption risks.)
It speaks volumes about her role in cabinet that it took five ministers to replace her. It also speaks volumes of the dominance of the Left over Palaszczuk that her numerical replacement in cabinet was Gladstone MP Glenn Butcher, a turncoat who switched to the faction from the Right a couple of years after the 2015 election.
Palaszczuk continued to insist the selection of cabinet ministers was hers.
“These are my decisions. I’m the Premier. I’ve made the decisions.”
Conveniently, Trad’s hand-picked under treasurer Frankie Carroll, unwanted by incoming Treasurer Cameron Dick, was given a soft landing as Butcher’s director-general.
(Trad’s selection of Carroll was later the subject of another CCC inquiry, the results of which she is still in the courts fighting to keep secret.)
Meanwhile, the power and influence of Bullock and “his MPs” had only strengthened.
In May, 2020, Bullock was said to be behind the defection of Jim Madden at Ipswich to the Left faction.
Madden said he had jumped factions to get more funding for his electorate.
The most damning assessment of Labor’s all-powerful Left has come not from the LNP opposition, or even off-the-record commentary from members of the Right, but from within the faction itself, after the militant CFMEU split out in late 2020.
The faction, CFMEU heavyweight Michael Ravbar said, had become a “self-serving echo chamber for a cabal of Peel Street elite who have totally lost touch with their working-class roots” and “little more than a creche for party hacks”.
Its leadership devoted more energy to “internal intrigues and power plays” than driving a policy platform and Trad was a “dud”, the union boss spat.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Palaszczuk sees the role of the Left differently. Her spokesman told The Courier-Mail that the Premier has a political relationship with Bullock but makes her own decisions.
NEVER WASTE A CRISIS
Labor insiders had been extremely worried about the party’s prospects of holding government at the 2020 election before the pandemic hit.
A poll early that year for The Courier-Mail found the net-negative result on the election-defining question of if Queensland was heading in the right or wrong direction was the worst it had been since the dying days of the Bligh government.
“We were gone,’’ one well-placed source said.
Despite LNP leader Deb Frecklington’s failure to capture the imagination of voters and internal infighting among the opposition, polls suggested the electorate was tiring of the Palaszczuk government.
Political lore implores that leaders should never waste a crisis and Palaszczuk certainly wasn’t about to.
With her finely-tuned radar for the public mood, the Premier ruthlessly exploited Queensland’s closed borders against an opposition that had demanded the border walls come down before the virus had escaped quarantine hotels in Melbourne and changed the game. The government’s Unite and Recover program, a taxpayer-funded ad blitz worked beautifully.
If the Premier was popular pre-pandemic, she was now a rock star. And she quickly became a rock star with a large social media following as Queenslanders tuned in daily to her channels for Covid updates. Soon, staff vacancies in other ministerial offices were being secretly seconded to the Premier’s office to fill a growing team of social media staffers and photographers whose taxpayer-funded job it is to craft her image.
At the election it was the “blue rinse’’ set – Palaszczuk’s pensioners, those who had been most at risk of a virus that was deadliest to older people – that delivered her a convincing election victory.
Days later when David Crisafulli was elected unopposed as Opposition Leader, a jubilant Palaszczuk chortled when asked if she feared her new rival by listing the LNP leaders she’d seen off.
“Let me go through, there has been Campbell Newman, Lawrence Springborg, Tim Nicholls, Deb Frecklington,’’ Palaszczuk mocked.
“They can put up whoever they want, I don’t really care.”
What Palaszczuk didn’t mention was that at the election she’d also finally seen off a couple of internal rivals.
They certainly weren’t best friends, but the political trio of Palaszczuk, Trad and Kate Jones had become Labor’s powerful Golden Girls.
All from different factions, they were by a margin the best parliamentary performers, as well as each boasting a solid mix of charisma and substance. Palaszczuk was popular. Trad polarised. And Jones was flashy.
But where Palaszczuk was cautious and risk averse, Trad and Jones got things done.
Trad was Palaszczuk’s natural successor – she had the numbers with the Left – while Palaszczuk was wary of Jones’s easy electoral appeal, an appeal Anthony Albanese wanted on his side when he repeatedly tried – but failed – to convince her through 2021 to run for the federal seat of Brisbane in the 2022 election he ended up winning (though Labor failed to take Brisbane, which was lost to the Greens).
In the months leading up to the 2020 election Jones decided she’d had enough of politics and didn’t run for her Ashgrove-based seat of Cooper that she had famously lost to and then won back from Newman in 2012 and 2015.
Trad – now relegated to the backbench – contested her seat of South Brisbane, but humiliatingly lost it to the Greens.
A government that placed so much virtue on promoting and fostering women had suddenly lost their best two.
The repercussion, insiders say, is a talent vacuum that still damages the government.
The demise of Trad left Palaszczuk both without a stalking horse threatening her leadership, but also without the only person never afraid to challenge the Premier behind closed doors.
Jones’s departure from the team left the Premier without a pragmatic minister who had developed and nurtured deep connections into, and who was trusted by, the business community.
One Labor figure said: “While Palaszczuk has proven she’s a winner, LNP leader David Crisafulli is shaping as a formidable opponent – and no one in cabinet has stepped up to fill the head-kicker role perfected by Trad.”
Another Labor source said: “Every government needs a feisty minister with a ‘take-no-prisoners’ approach who calls it as they see it.
“Peter Beattie had Terry Mackenroth; Anna Bligh had Paul Lucas, but who now sitting around the cabinet table is willing to put up their hand to cop public flak and help keep the troops in line as the government faces almost daily scandals.
“Certainly not Deputy Premier Steven Miles, who took over from his factional colleague. The loss of Trad … no doubt coincided with this government losing its way.”
REZA AND THE RED CARPET
Judgment is a political intuition that is almost intangible, and the great survivors have a sixth sense on how it’s exercised.
Former premiers Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Peter Beattie knew instinctively when to cut and run, and they also had a profound understanding of what Queenslanders expected. So too did former PMs Bob Hawke and John Howard. But one thing these political giants did extremely well was to hand-pick their closest allies and confidantes.
Without exception, the truly outstanding politicians surrounded themselves with top notch strategists and advisers. These were people who could sniff the political wind from a mile away, often running interference until the issue had been cleaned up – behind closed doors.
For the first half of Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s seven-year reign as Labor leader she benefited from sound advisers.
They may not have liked how she was being publicly portrayed on a particular issue, but they engaged and cleverly managed the premier’s folksy appeal, minimising the electoral damage. But all that has changed.
Her current chief of staff Jim Murphy is constantly reminding staffers in her office “we are here because of one person and we have to support her”.
Murphy, a hard worker but not regarded in the party as an absolute superstar, is likely to step down some time in 2023.
Insiders say deputy chief of staff Jon Persley has been promised preselection for Palaszczuk’s safe seat of Inala when she retires, and some wonder aloud whether that has affected the way he interacts with the woman who holds the keys to his ambition.
(They also warn that Labor’s affirmative action quotas may stifle Persley’s ambition.)
Her media chief, journalistic journeyman Shane Doherty, is also in the inner circle.
The biggest problem, say Labor insiders, is that Palaszczuk has surrounded herself with “yes men’’ – a cabal of insiders that have learned to resist ever telling the Premier what she doesn’t want to hear. And there has meanwhile been one other significant addition to the premier’s inner circle.
Few people in public life have become quickly and instantly recognisable by one name. Kylie. Nicole. Madonna. In Queensland politics in 2022 there’s one more: Reza.
Weight-loss surgeon and socialite Dr Reza Adib met the Premier at a 2021 race day, and their relationship quickly changed her world – and Queensland politics.
Adib is a colourful, charismatic character who loves the limelight. He bought his palatial riverfront Indooroopilly home for more than $6m a decade ago and loves luxury cars and, as it turns out, women. A source said that Reza was “known to be a shameless flirt” before meeting the Premier.
Women who had been on dates with him before he met the Premier privately relate a few colourful anecdotes – it would be fair to describe Adib as being very forward.
Another of the Premier’s associates said in the early days of the relationship it was Adib who was doing the “chasing”.
“He chased her – he came up to her at a race day and it all went from there,’’ the source said.
“People in the (Premier’s) office are happy for her because normally she would go home to an empty house.
“She has such a hectic schedule so it’s good for her to take some time out.”
The first couple was “very much in love”, another source said. Unlike Drabsch, it’s understood Adib has been given the seal of approval by Henry Palaszczuk and those close to Palaszczuk are delighted to see her so happy after two earlier marriages.
One associate recalls how at her first wedding – to journalist George Megalogenis – the bride and groom arrived at the reception to discover, to Palaszczuk’s dismay, that Megalogenis’s journo mates had already exhausted the booze tab.
The guest hasn’t forgotten the reaction of Palaszczuk.
When she married her second husband, Labor figure Simon Every, attendees recall a well-lubricated Henry Palaszczuk farewelling guests at the end of the night by saying “see you at the next one”.
The Premier’s blossoming relationship with Adib has been politically intriguing for two reasons. It has extended the premier’s social circle significantly beyond the AWU crowd that has previously been her entire life.
Palaszczuk began for the first time mixing with people outside the party, spending weekends at Burleigh where Adib has an apartment in the same beachside building as rich-listers Bevan and Jodie Slattery, Cathie Reid and Stuart Giles, and Stephen and Jody Gosling.
It has also coincided with more red carpet appearances and the unashamed emergence of the Celebrity Premier – a transformation that has awkwardly come just at the same time everyday Queenslanders started to feel the pinch of rising cost of living.
A MIDAS TOUCH
For much of the pandemic Palaszczuk was unstoppable.
There were daily press conferences, call-outs to Facebook followers, “double doughnut days” and an endless repetition of the line of “we’re keeping Queenslanders safe”.
To top it off, in July 2021 Palaszczuk also secured the 2032 Olympics for the South East corner – a massive feather in her cap.
While Palaszczuk has positioned winning the Olympics as her personal legacy as Premier, it’s a double-edged sword. There are concerns of a massive Gabba overrun on costs, and the regions are not enamoured with the South East taking most of the Olympics spoils.
Ironically, Palaszczuk was not a fan of the embryonic bid back in 2016 after it started as a proposal hatched by the South East Queensland Council of Mayors.
Former Ipswich Mayor Andrew Antonelli recalls a chat with Palaszczuk at the Brisbane International tennis tournament.
“She said: ‘Tell those other mayors, Quirk, Tate, Sutherland, Luke Smith … that we will never support the Olympics, never’,’’ Antonelli says.
“It was only after she was beguiled by (IOC president) Thomas Bach at Sport Accord on the Gold Coast (in 2019) did she back it.’’
(The Courier-Mail’s role as an advocate, and the backing of News Corporation’s Queensland regional mastheads was also a significant factor.)
Still, as she was cast on to the world stage, the Premier seemed to truly possess a Midas touch.
Politically, she’d played a blinder during the pandemic when the politics of Covid had suited her strengths: Being risk averse, politically cautious, and understanding the mood of everyday the electorate. Sure, any Queenslander locked out of the state and unable to see their family would have thought differently, as would people who lived in northern NSW, hopeful of, say, being able to get to work in Queensland or even get to their nearest hospital. Or the police officers stuck manning border checkpoints while important proactive policing or solving cold cases was shelved.
However, if there was a moment when things turned for the Premier and her government it was at 10.36am on August 26 2021, which became the first of a few seriously questionable decisions that strike at the heart of judgment from the Premier and her inner circle.
Building a Covid quarantine centre at Wellcamp Airport will go down in Queensland political history as the greatest ever waste of $200-odd million.
It was a kneejerk decision and a moment the government lost its head – and an extraordinary amount of taxpayer’s money – in an attempt to embarrass then prime minister, the Liberal Party’s Scott Morrison.
Vaccination rates were climbing and the mood was switching to an acceptance that it was finally time to start living with the virus instead of locking it out. Yet the Palaszczuk government pressed ahead Wellcamp, even though a similar facility was being built at Pinkenba by the commonwealth. All to win a single day of politics.
Predictably, by the time the centre opened it was effectively redundant.
If there’s one issue that Queenslanders dislike, it is politicians pissing their money up against the wall.
BUBBLE BURST
When the next big shock judgment call occurred, Adib was literally at the table.
It was at the first post-Covid meeting in Australia between the International Olympic Committee and key leaders of the Brisbane 2032 Games. It was a formal affair, as is any meeting chaired by IOC president Thomas Bach.
But sitting closer to the centre of the table of dignitaries than the Premier’s chief of staff was Adib, complete with a place card. It is understood he had not been invited to the meeting in Sydney on Sunday May 1, but the Premier had demanded that morning that he have a seat at the table.
The bizarre decision by the Premier to allow her boyfriend to sit in on an IOC meeting in Sydney left some of the most prominent people in Australia wondering two things: why the hell did she do it and why the hell were her advisers not brave enough to stop her?
The episode also revealed the Premier has developed a glass jaw of Kevin Rudd proportions.
The incident had been inappropriate, politically dumb and resulted in a rare apology from the Premier. It cut through and burst out of the usual closed political bubble. Labor insiders say the Premier was “really upset” by coverage – and could not understand the criticism.
Despite the fact there was a formal agenda and that most of those in attendance had flown to Sydney for the meeting that was held around a boardroom table in a hotel meeting room, Palaszczuk quickly convinced herself that the meeting had in fact been supposed to be an informal affair simply because it was held on a Sunday.
This habit of rewriting history to suit her excuse was on display again four months later after Palaszczuk’s reluctant agreement to add Paralympics to her ministerial title.
Within a day of the embarrassing backdown she became insistent that the plan had been to make the change the following week, and the open letter from the frustrated Paralympic athletes therefore did not prompt the decision.
FACTIONAL WAR-GAMES
Palaszczuk has consistently downplayed the relevance of “factional war-games’’.
“I haven’t been to a faction meeting for years … I don’t play factional games and, frankly, I don’t have time for factional games,” the Premier said recently.
Perhaps that has been the wrong approach as her own faction, the Right, has during her time in office been reduced to just 30 per cent of the Labor membership base in Queensland.
This has emasculated not only the Premier, but her support base.
The practical reality for her leadership is that it is hurting her ability to govern, and perhaps just as importantly, to take disciplinary measures against underperforming Left ministers.
The best example of how this government has become a shadow of its former self is the way the Premier has allowed Housing and Public Works Minister Mick de Brenni, to get away with poor governance.
De Brenni, a former assistant secretary of United Voice, is acknowledged by his peers as an underperformer, having presided over a dysfunctional mess at the Queensland Building and Construction Commission.
The incompetence of the authority has real impact on voters – the builders, tradies, subbies and construction workers who Labor should be looking out for. Yet De Brenni tells those around him he is untouchable as he remains part of Bullock and Miles’s Left leadership group.
Ms Palaszczuk, sources say, cannot sack him or demote him, for fear of reprisals from “Blocker’’.
The rot, insiders insist, comes back to Ms Palaszczuk’s style of leadership.
From day one, she has allowed the Left faction, through Bullock, to shape and determine policy.
And it also comes back to Ms Palaszczuk’s non-confrontational style, where she won’t make the big calls on mediocre ministers – such as we have seen in recent times with Health Minister Yvette D’Ath.
‘A LEVEL OF FRUSTRATION’
Perhaps most worrying for Palaszczuk is that there has recently been a growing distance between the Premier and her backbenchers.
At a caucus love-in a few months ago Palaszczuk’s address was hardly inspirational.
Her urgings that they do more on social media didn’t go down too well among the gathered MPs, some of who cynically joked later that they’d be able to boost their profiles if, like Ms Palaszczuk, they had a team of 30 spin doctors to do it.
(The Premier has been convinced by that team that “social media is now real media” – a bizarre strategy that led to a ridiculous call to unveil the government’s landmark renewable energy plan on social media only, meaning that it sunk without a trace as not even the usually friendly ABC radio picked up the story until hours later.)
The reality, sources say, is at least a dozen disaffected Labor backbench MPs are actively considering whether they will run again in 2024.
They believe that either through the antiquated factional system or Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s resistance to change, they have little chance of being appointed to cabinet.
It is a major issue for the Premier, who has told friends and colleagues that she will contest the October 2024 election.
However, if her polling numbers decline further, the nervous dozen or so backbench MPs will likely not seek preselection, making her task infinitely tougher.
“There’s a level of frustration among backbenchers not seen before,’’ said a Labor source.
“They will go unless there’s a circuit breaker.’’
The problem for Ms Palaszczuk, say sources, is that she hasn’t got the inclination to pick a fight with the Left faction and refresh her tired cabinet.
There was speculation that the three factions, the Left, the Right and Old Guard, would give up one ministerial slot and there would be cabinet newcomers and renewal before Christmas.
But that chatter has dissipated and now seems unlikely.
It is important to compare the way the Palaszczuk government operates on cabinet appointments and contrast it with Beattie, who was a big believer in the renewal of his cabinet team.
Beattie would often reshuffle ministerial roles and when faced with a crisis, would ruthlessly cut ministers adrift.
He sought and received the resignation of Left faction Attorney-General Matt Foley and his own factional ally, Wendy Edmond, despite both offering up early resistance.
He sacked Pat Purcell after he became involved in a physical altercation with a senior bureaucrat, while Gordon Nuttall was banished to the backbench, and then later jailed for seven years after being found guilty of corruptly receiving secret commissions.
They were different times and Mr Beattie and his no-nonsense deputy Mackenroth ran a tight ship, with the backing of AWU supremo Bill Ludwig (who had genuine influence but who Beattie would constantly remind that it was him as Premier who was in charge).
One Labor veteran said: “It’s about making tough calls and she has to cut loose those poor performing ministers.
“People like (Mick) de Brenni and (Glenn) Butcher, even Leeanne Enoch, who is a lovely person, they’re just not A-graders.
“Beattie and Mackenroth would have fired them years ago.
“She is a three-time winning Premier. Leadership is not easy. Eye-balling people and letting them go isn’t easy.”
The Labor figure said if Palaszczuk wanted to win in 2024, she needed a three to five-year plan to fix the health crisis and she needed to sack ministers who were embarrassing the government.
“The small l liberals, some of whom have voted for her in the past, don’t like this integrity stuff,’’ the source said.
“The buck stops with her. Integrity and honesty matters.
“For example, it’s glaringly obvious that the Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate needs to be on the Olympics (organising committee).
“She could make that happen in a heartbeat. Bring him into the tent. He’s been very good to Labor over the years.’’
THE BLAME GAME
At poll time, Palaszczuk and Labor have been a tour de force at concentrating on one issue and milking it for all it was worth.
In 2015, it was all about transparency and how they’d do the opposite of the Newman government, and it resonated.
In 2017, Labor emphasised that a vote for the LNP was a vote for Pauline Hanson and for Brisbane voters in particular, didn’t want to take that risk.
In 2020 it was the Covid-19 election they were never going to lose.
But there are genuine cracks appearing in this government, and the most recent YouGov poll in June showed the LNP, under firebrand leader Crisafulli, had made serious inroads since the last election.
The Courier-Mail poll showed the two parties were now at 50-50 on a two party preferred basis, which contrasts with the 53.7 to 46.3 result from 2020.
It also showed that Crisafulli, despite having his own Everest to climb, was getting traction, and the net satisfaction figure for Palaszczuk was plus 2 – her worst result since being elected in 2015.
The Premier has made plenty of hay on blaming things on the three Cs: Campbell, Canberra and Covid.
But with Labor in power federally, the pandemic in the rearview mirror and a gap of nearly a decade between Newman’s reign and the next state poll – two of the three Cs are gone, and the final one is likely to have lost its potency
And in Crisafulli she’s facing the most politically formidable of any Opposition Leader she’s faced.
Palaszczuk has privately expressed her wariness about his ability.
The LNP will push the government’s failures on health, integrity, youth justice, government waste and a perception that the Premier has checked out and spends too much time on the red carpet.
Health is the issue most likely to cost Palaszczuk the next election in 24 months.
The LNP has been hosting town hall-style meetings of residents throughout the state, and the horror stories about health and hospital inadequacies have been damning.
Labor under Palaszczuk have proven to be exceptional at employing spin doctors but not so good when it comes to real doctors.
It’s a war on many fronts.
Juvenile justice is a sleeper issue, while Labor’s backflip on a flawed land tax policy exposed deep divisions between the Premier and her Treasurer – wounds that might never heal, with Dick understood to have since stopped any interactions in the cabinet room.
Then there’s the DNA laboratory scandal, which has allowed criminals to escape justice and the government integrity issues, which resulted in the embarrassing Coaldrake review of what has become a broken system around interactions between the government’s executive branch and its public service.
Leading into the next election, Ms Palaszczuk’s issues are not limited to mounting scandals, the flawed judgment of her inner circle and backbenchers throwing in the towel.
Insiders say the impact of the ban on controversial campaign maestros Moorhead and Milner working as hired guns embedded in her campaign office, as they were in 2020, should not be underestimated.
They may still provide informal advice, but sources insist the loss of their experience and 24-7 access to key players, will hurt Labor.
THE HEIR APPARENT?
Palaszczuk may be the third-longest serving Queensland Labor Premier and the only female premier in Australia to have won three elections, but she still follows the directions of an unelected bloke. And the unelected bloke will play a huge role in deciding who succeeds her.
As of today, the Left holds all the voting aces in cabinet, caucus and state conference.
Ostensibly there is a three-person race to become premier between deputy Steven Miles, Treasurer Cameron Dick and Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman.
Dick fancies himself – though his performance as Treasurer has been underwhelming and a disappointment to some party elders who rate him highly – but being from the Right he simply doesn’t have the numbers.
Miles is the heir apparent but a tough sell with the public.
“She (Ms Palaszczuk) sent him out during the pandemic as an attack dog and it’s done nothing for his reputation among rank and file voters,’’ a source said.
Fentiman, also of the Left faction, is ambitious and wants the leadership job.
In private and public polling, she is much more popular than Miles and Dick.
Sources say Ms Fentiman, of the Left faction, has been working the caucus numbers hard. Her backers see her as the obvious successor.
“Shannon has come from the clouds,’’ said the source.
“She’s everywhere at the moment.
“They know Annastacia’s numbers are rubbery and there are plenty of nervous backbenchers right now.”
But in the sober eyes of many inside the party a power paradox exists.
The faceless men of the unions may run Palaszczuk and Queensland, but they can’t run Queensland without Palaszczuk.
When the Palaszczuk era ends, the decision will be made either by her or voters, they say.
As powerful as the union lords are, the one lever they cannot afford to pull is knifing the Premier to install one of their Left acolytes like Miles or Fentiman.
“I mean seriously, what is Blocker going to do? Kill Bambi?,’’ one Labor figure said.
“The members just wouldn’t buy it.
“The people of Queensland would be horrified.”
“He’s not elected. She is.”
The wiser heads of Labor still hope the Premier can do what she has been unable or unwilling during her seven years in office – exert the power of her position.
As one source said: “Annastacia Palaszczuk has the authority. She needs to act that way.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story included four paragraphs which were not the author’s work.
News Corporation’s Code of Conduct states that “plagiarism is theft”.
The Courier-Mail apologises for this error.
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