Jackie Trad’s investment property also in catchment of new school

Proximity to a Cross River Rail station isn’t the only factor that will increase the value of Treasurer Jackie Trad’s controversial investment property, it has emerged.

TREASURER Jackie Trad’s contentious family investment property was purchased one month before the Cabinet Budget Review Committee gave the final approval to a brand new school nearby.

The news emerged during the final day of a bruising Budget Estimates for the Palaszczuk Government, dominated by integrity issues.

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Education Minister Grace Grace told yesterday’s hearings she believed the committee had approved the Inner City South Secondary College, near Ms Trad’s newly bought property, in April.

The Woolloongabba investment property dogging the Treasurer was purchased on March 27, before the committee’s final decision was made.

The house sale was settled in April.

Whether Ms Trad — a member of the committee — declared a possible conflict of over the home when discussing the school is unclear, with the Treasurer unavailable for comment due to time zone differences.

She is in New York on the final leg of a post-Budget trade mission.

But both the Treasurer’s office and Ms Grace insisted plans for the new school had been released more than two years ago.

“It was an election commitment back in 2015. Then the process is obviously to have a final sign-off and I think that would have been about April 2019,” Ms Grace said.

The catchment map for the Inner City South State Secondary College

It was also revealed yesterday another minister waited a week to tell her director-general she’d holidayed at the overseas house of a consultant used by her department.

Employment Minister Shannon Fentiman yesterday admitted her stay on the Canadian ski fields with her partner had overlapped with Ms Trad’s, and it was only after the Treasurer faced questions on it last week that she decided to declare the January trip.

Ms Fentiman stayed for six nights with Nicola Scurrah, whose company PricewaterhouseCoopers is employed as consultants for her department, and husband Paul, who heads airline Virgin Australia.

Ms Fentiman said she did not initially believe rules required her to disclose the holiday with long-term family friends, but had decided there would be no harm in being cautious and declaring it.

Director-general Mary-Anne Curtis said Ms Fentiman had told her on Wednesday of the trip, and she had already carried out a review of PwC contracts and found nothing untoward.

The conversation occurred a week after the Minister updated the register of members’ interests and the day The Courier-Mail asked questions about the trip.