Inside story: How Steven Miles became Queensland’s new Premier
From a billionaire’s ship in Dubai to the union war rooms in Brisbane, this is the mind-blowing inside story of how Steven Miles became Premier.
QLD Politics
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Just last Friday, Steven Miles was in Dubai aboard Australian billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s green ammonia-fuelled ship the Green Pioneer for a star-studded gathering headlined by US climate envoy John Kerry.
As the state’s now-incoming premier mingled and sipped on red wine, he was completely unaware that 14,000km away his boss Annastacia Palaszczuk was preparing to resign.
Mr Miles knew her leadership was under pressure.
He had, after all, been neck-deep over recent weeks in a campaign orchestrated by union heavyweight Gary “Blocker” Bullock to bring to an end Ms Palaszczuk’s near-11-year leadership of the Queensland Labor Party.
He also knew that Mr Bullock and state Labor president John Battams had told Ms Palaszczuk earlier in the week that she should consider her future for the sake of the party, with “Blocker” at least indicating he no longer backed her leadership.
But even the most optimistic among the plotters did not imagine the notoriously stubborn Ms Palaszczuk would be so quick to accept the inevitable.
Less than 24 hours later Mr Miles was back in Brisbane, his Emirates flight having landed three minutes late on Saturday night, at 10.43pm.
The next morning he was up early for his usual gym session – where despite the jet lag he set a personal best on the weights bench.
He was heading home to cook scrambled eggs for wife Kim when at 9.45am his phone rang. It was the Premier.
Mr Miles pulled over to listen as she told him she had decided to pull the pin on her almost-nine years as premier, and would be announcing it at a press conference at 11am.
Ms Palaszczuk also told her deputy that she would be endorsing him as her successor, despite the pair being from different factions.
But perhaps the famously canny Ms Palaszczuk was just backing the right horse, because she knew Mr Miles had the unwavering backing of Mr Bullock, the powerful boss of the United Workers Union – a man so significant to her own government that The Courier-Mail had last year named him Queensland’s most powerful person.
But Mr Miles is naturally cautious. He also understood the ambition of his good friend Health Minister Shannon Fentiman. And so Mr Miles knew it was unlikely to be a straightforward handover.
The cooked breakfast would have to wait. Mr Miles began working the phones, testing his support among his own Left MPs first, then the nine Old Guarders, and eventually those from the Right faction.
It quickly became clear to him that Ms Fentiman’s supporters were indeed mobilising – even if she was yet to show her hand personally.
By Sunday evening three candidates were in the race, with the Right’s Cameron Dick indicating he was also keen to have a crack.
The jockeying had well and truly started, but the overwhelming emotion throughout Labor ranks was still one of total surprise at the way Ms Palaszczuk had blindsided everyone.
“We’re shell-shocked, we need to sleep on it,” one senior Labor MP said late on Sunday.
Monday began with Mr Miles taking the Premier’s reins at the morning’s disaster management meeting.
Well presented in a dark suit and power-blue tie, he relished the chance to appear in command as he reassured far north Queenslanders the government was doing all it could to keep them safe.
Mr Dick meanwhile told reporters when he departed the Kedron emergency services centre that he was still “sounding out” colleagues. He stopped short of saying if he was actually a leadership contender.
But at 2pm Ms Fentiman put any speculation to rest as she fronted the cameras at Parliament House in a canary yellow shift dress and white blazer to declare she would be nominating – citing “significant support” from her parliamentary colleagues.
It was a move that angered those in the Miles camp, who remained confident they had the numbers and that the distraction of another formal candidacy was bad for the party.
But Ms Fentiman forged on unapologetically, posting to Instagram about the same time a pledge for “renewal” and saying a “government with fresh ideas and energy” was needed.
She even listed what her priorities would be as premier – housing, cost of living and “a more inclusive and transparent approach” to the infrastructure requirements for the 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Among the 800 or so people who “liked” the post was former Palaszczuk deputy premier Jackie Trad, who lost her seat at the 2020 election after a series of scandals.
That was the first public tell the polarising Ms Trad was backing Ms Fentiman’s candidacy. But soon, Labor MPs were openly sharing the news that Ms Trad had called them asking for their support.
Also making calls on behalf of the Health Minister was controversial Transport Minister Mark Bailey and Ms Fentiman’s husband Matt Collins, Ms Trad’s former chief of staff and now the chief executive of the Planning Institute of Australia.
As those around Mr Miles fumed, he remained genuine in his determination to convince Ms Fentiman, a long-time close friend, to reconsider.
According to one source from the Miles camp, she was offered the deputy’s job as late as 4.30pm on Monday. Those from Fentiman’s camp assert this was not the case.
For Minister Bailey, meanwhile, this was also all a matter of personal political life or death.
After a series of very public ministerial failures – including being caught deliberately hiding from taxpayers cost blowouts worth billions of dollars – his head would likely be first on the new premier’s chopping block.
And so he took the only option open to him – to back Ms Fentiman to the hilt in the hope she would reward him by keeping him in the ministry should she somehow emerge as leader.
Meanwhile Mr Bailey’s partner and Labor rising star Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon stuck with her UWU colleagues in backing Mr Miles’s candidacy.
She would be rewarded for that loyalty on Tuesday with a speaking slot at the incoming premier’s first press conference, alongside Treasurer and new deputy premier Cameron Dick and Education Minister Grace Grace – who was there representing the Old Guard faction that she leads in the caucus, and that Mr Miles now owes his ascendancy to.
It was Old Guard warrior and former Beattie government Minister Robert Schwarten who bravely threw the first grenade to kick-off the putsch that ended with Ms Palaszczuk’s unexpected resignation on Sunday.
Mr Schwarten’s protégé is former Palaszczuk Government minister Kate Jones, who started her political career working in his ministerial office as a media adviser two decades ago.
The pair were spotted drinking with the UWU’s Mr Bullock at the Queensland Hotels Association Christmas party two nights before The Courier-Mail published the opinion piece from Mr Schwarten two weeks ago that demanded a new Labor leader.
Mr Bullock knew he had his 12 Left-faction UWU MPs locked in behind Mr Miles (including the candidate himself), plus Ms Palaszczuk's vote.
The Old Guard is traditionally a swing-vote faction, but recently allied itself with Mr Bullock – and all of its nine members are now card-carrying UWU members.
The certainty of those nine extra votes meant Mr Miles had 21 in the 52-member Labor caucus – leaving him five short of the majority required for the contest to be over.
The remainder of the Left is made up of five AMWU members, including Ms Fentiman, and eight others who are members of four different unions and so who do not vote as a bloc.
On the Right, there are 10 AWU members – including Ms Palaszczuk – and eight who are members of five different unions, and so again who do not necessarily vote together. That meant the only pathway to ensure victory for the Miles camp was to lock-in the 10 AWU votes – meaning he could guarantee 30 votes in a secret ballot, an outcome that would ensure a vote would not be required.
Ms Fentiman’s team also knew that wooing the AWU was critical, even though the remainder of her task was almost impossible – as the key was to avoid a vote being needed at Friday’s caucus meeting, and she was relying on individual promises rather than the support of voting blocs.
If a vote was necessary at the caucus meeting, party rules meant the wider membership and the unions needed to also have their say.
This would lead to an extensive weeks-long process that would run well into the new year – an ugly public contest that would spell almost certain political death for Labor.
The deal, then, needed to be done and locked in before the caucus gathered. There had to only be one candidate. And so it all came down to who the AWU MPs would support.
Recognising its rare opportunity to be the kingmaker in a caucus dominated by the Left, the AWU’s state branch secretary Stacey Schinnerl organised two separate meetings: one with Mr Bullock himself and another which was attended by the leader of Ms Fentiman’s union, the AMWU’s Rohan Webb.
According to sources within the Right faction, the union’s demands consisted of securing an extra spot for their members in the 18-person Cabinet.
The AWU also wanted to ensure Right faction leader Cameron Dick would remain Treasurer while being promoted to Deputy Premier.
But some sources say the negotiations went further.
“It was a complicated process where Stacey and Blocker were discussing stuff, leaving the MPs out of it,” one source said. “It’s a bit of a shemozzle.”
Left faction sources aligned with Ms Fentiman were adamant the deal to secure the AWU’s support involved a shopping list of major industrial changes they wanted to make happen, and which Mr Bullock agreed could be delivered in exchange for their backing of Mr Miles.
The AWU have been ceding members in recent years to other blue-collar unions, most notably the militant CFMEU – which has been openly stealing members and muscling control over more civil construction worksites.
The Left faction sources claimed promises were also made by Mr Bullock around the government’s controversial Best Practice Industry Conditions – the “CFMEU tax” which increases costs and cuts productivity on government worksites.
The BPICs are loathed by the civil construction sector but have been championed by Energy Minister Mick de Brenni, the caucus’s second most-senior UWU member.
A Right-aligned Labor source confirmed the BPIC negotiations centred around watering down the policy, as the AWU was concerned it was giving the militant CFMEU too much power on civil construction and road projects.
But another Right faction source was adamant no BPIC reforms or industrial changes for the civil construction sector were part of the deal struck with the UWU to back Mr Miles.
“Those things did not form part of the conversation at all,” the source said.
“This is just the Left lashing out. We are not bargaining about the civil construction sector. If there were discussions around industrial changes it was about making sure what was already happening would continue under a new government.”
According to the Right faction, the eventual decision to back Mr Miles was about nothing more than which of the two candidates was best placed to win the next election.
The source pointed to the fact that the bulk of Ms Fentiman’s support came from “rogue blue collar unions”.
“If we are going to win the next election we are going to need to get together,” the Right faction insider said.
“How can you look at those rogue elements and think we will get together to win the next election? To work together and move on from this?
“Shannon is obviously a very good political operator but the rogues were supporting her, and it’s not tenable to side with them.”
And so the deal was done.
The AWU would back Mr Miles. He had his majority.
At 8.30pm, Right faction MPs gathered to discuss who to support – and everyone had a chance to speak. Sometime just after 10.30pm it was over.
The Right coalesced behind the AWU, which had won the changes it wanted. This included the deal for Mr Dick – who has never hidden his personal ambitions to be premier – to be made the deputy.
For Mr Miles – a naturally shy person who had been nervous right up until the deal was struck – it had happened.
He would become only the 40th Queenslander to lead the state as premier.
Always polite, Mr Miles hit the phones again – and well after 11pm was still thanking those who had helped him pull off the extraordinary coup.
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