Palaszczuk defends growing team of spin doctors

As the Premier’s media staff balloons to up to 30, Annastacia Palaszczuk has justified their existence as an invaluable means to keep the community informed.

Annastacia Palaszczuk has defended her ballooning team of spin doctors while making the extraordinary admission she actually thought she had more than 30.

The Premier said everything her digital team of 11.5 full-time-equivalent staff did - in addition to her core team of 18 - was to inform the community.

Asked why a bright graphic had been uploaded to her Twitter account asking Queenslanders what their favourite childhood books were, the Premier said it was great to engage with Queenslanders on a whole range of “mechanisms”.

She said her Facebook viewers had increased dramatically - up to 294,000.

“In terms of getting our messaging out about our response to the pandemic and our economic recovery plan, we know that people turn to social media,” she said.

“It’s interesting to see that news organisations, news print organisations, business, governments, local councils, everybody is also disseminating their information through social media.

A social media post on The Premier's account

Social Media post on the Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk Instagram account done by her social media team. Picture: Instagram

Social Media post on the Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk Instagram account done by her social media team. Picture: Instagram

“It’s a great way of communicating with the public.”

The Courier-Mail today revealed there were up to 30 media staff reporting to the Premier, but her office wouldn’t provide details around a secret team of a dozen people in charge of curating her public image.

Asked why she couldn’t release the today number of staff, Ms Palaszczuk said: “I think they’ve done that and that’s whole of government.

“When I saw those numbers I actually thought there would have been more.”

It follow the Premier earlier this week dodging questions about secret public sentiment polling of her handling of the coronavirus pandemic.