Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Reza Adib: The inside story
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.
QLD Politics
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History beckons for Premier Annastacia 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.
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.
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.
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