Annastacia Palaszczuk celebrates her 50th birthday and reflects on her achievements
As Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk turns 50, she reflects on her seven-year journey from the political wilderness to taking the state’s top job and how life is nothing like she thought it would be. READ PART 1 OF OUR 4-PART SERIES.
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What did 50 look like to Annastacia Palaszczuk when she was a teenager?
When she was with her friends Linda, Tonya and Jacqui taking the train from Darra to St Mary’s High School in Ipswich, and talking about taking on the boys from the nearby St Edmund’s in debating? When she and Jacqui sang Manic Monday by The Bangles at the top of their voices in their white, short-sleeved shirts and maroon-skirted St Mary’s uniforms? When she hung out after school at a local cafe for iced coffees and jam and cream doughnuts?
It certainly didn’t look like this, says Palaszczuk – who turned 50 on Thursday.
This is the panoramic view from the 40th floor Office of the Premier in 1 William St, the lipstick-shaped building in Brisbane’s CBD known as “The Tower of Power”.
This is where Palaszczuk can gaze out from behind her desk and see the blue-tipped mountains of the Scenic Rim to the stark, white form of Amberley’s air base, past the open jaws of the Gabba and out to the sprawling eastern suburbs.
“No,” Palaszczuk reflects, “I think what I would have said back then would have been that at 50, I would be married with two or perhaps three children.
“I would have said I’d also have a career, but I wouldn’t have imagined this.”
Of course none of us, fortunately or unfortunately, can gaze into our future and see what it holds. In Palaszczuk’s case, she didn’t end up with the white picket fence, the husband (although there have been two) and the kids.
But look closer at the teenage Palaszczuk, known back then as “Stacia” or “Chook”.
Look at the shiny gold pin on Chook’s striped, St Mary’s school tie that says “prefect”, and her friends from high school will say they always knew she was going to be a leader of some kind, one way or the other.
As the Premier celebrates her 50th birthday, she reflects on just what it has taken to get there.
LONG ODDS
The last time we spent time with Palaszczuk, she and her Queensland state Labor colleagues were still smarting from the party’s annihilation by the Campbell Newman-led Liberal National Party.
Newman’s win, on the night of March 24, 2012, was the worst defeat of a sitting government in Queensland’s history.
Now “Snow White and her Seven Dwarfs” as they were cheekily tagged back then, were squaring up for the 2015 state election; one that few people believed Labor could win.
While Newman’s style of bombastic politics was increasingly unpopular, many believed it simply too hard a kick so far from the goalposts.
Indeed, there were whispers that Palaszczuk would be unceremoniously replaced by Cameron Dick if she didn’t gain enough seats.
Instead, on January 31, 2015, she delivered 35 new seats, retaining the seven survivors of the 2012 decimation, plus two more through by-elections, and ultimately securing 44, forming minority government with the support of Independent MP Peter Wellington.
She won again in the 2017 state election, finally shaking off the “accidental premier” moniker. Annastacia Palaszczuk was the Steven Bradbury of Queensland state politics no more.
Five years older and five years into the job, Palaszczuk now says that despite the slim odds her party was given in 2015, she “had an inkling” Labor would win.
“There were two or three of us who were quietly thinking ‘we can do this, we can actually pull this off’ because we were working really hard on the ground, and what we were hearing was that people were saying they would vote for us. So I wasn’t as surprised as others might have been,” she smiles.
In the years Palaszczuk has been Premier, there is no doubt she has grown into the role.
Her parliamentary and media performances are noticeably slicker, and at 50 she is fitter and healthier than she has been in years, thanks to good diet and regular exercise.
As a political insider notes, even her walk has become more purposeful. These days, the insider says, it’s more of a stride than her earlier shuffle.
But her party – particularly during Labor’s first term – has been plagued with the label of being a “do-nothing” government; of treading too softly; of extreme risk-averseness.
It could, however, be argued that during that first term as a minority government it was not an easy task to make bold changes, and secondly, the strategy – which the Labor Party will deny to the death was, in fact, a strategy – worked.
Voters still recoiling from Newman’s style of “slash and burn” leadership, during which he tried to do too much too soon, were happy, for a time at least, to lurch in the opposite direction.
Other negative charges against Palaszczuk’s Government include the state’s $78.7 billion- and-rising debt, and her own poor handling of the seemingly never-ending and unseemly Adani coal mine saga.
The Premier’s back flip over Adani following the Labor’s shock loss at the federal election has cost her considerable credibility.
The week after the election she was harshly criticised for releasing a tight deadline for the mine’s approvals when her own Government had contributed to the delays.
That feeds into the view by many that Jackie Trad, not Palaszczuk, holds the real power in the state. Both women have been quick to publicly dispel any rumours of a political rivalry.
Ms Trad went even further during a radio interview in May, insisting she had no plans to challenge for the top job.
As for her achievements to-date, Palaszczuk would point to the 207,000 jobs created since Labor came to power, the 2015/16 record spending on health and education, the $85 billion raised in export revenue, and the growth of Queensland’s screen industry.
And here’s one thing about Palaszczuk that has remained strong; her personal approval rating. Internal and external polls consistently show that, outside the rarefied air of William St – and certainly not in some parts of Queensland’s coal country – people like her.
“I hope I haven’t changed at all since becoming Premier. The one thing I have always thought about the role is that I don’t want it to change intrinsically who I am. And this job can change you,” Palaszcuk notes. “I need to be normal, I need to be able to speak with people and for them to feel comfortable speaking to me.”
Palaszczuk smiles.
“Last week I went out for breakfast and I didn’t tell the police I was going. They like to keep an eye on me, but sometimes you just have to slip away – I probably shouldn’t have told you that!”
Her friend from her St Mary’s debating days, Jacqui Bond, 50, now a pharmacy lecturer at the University of Queensland, says Palaszczuk essentially remains the same as she was she first welcomed a “shy, awkward and nerdy” Bond to St Mary’s in Year 10.
“I just remember arriving at the school and feeling really nervous, and Stacia just took me under her wing and got me through. The thing about Stacia as a friend is that she never forgets. She doesn’t forget birthdays, she remembers things about your parents. We debating girls still get together and when we do, it’s like it always was, four girls, thick as thieves laughing and talking together.”
But the job, in some ways, has changed Palaszczuk.
It has made her conversely both more closed and more open.
Her intimate groups of friends are all long term; from primary school, high school and university, people she has known for years and generally spends time with out of the public eye.
Milton Dick, 46, Federal Member for Oxley, who met Palaszczuk through older brother Cameron at the University of Queensland “decades ago” is part of a close-knit circle of Palaszczuk pals.
“The thing about Annastacia is that if you were her friend 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you are still her friend,” Dick says.
“She is extremely loyal. She checks in. If your parents are sick, she wants to help, if you are hurting, she wants to help. It works both ways, her friends are very loyal to her and very protective of her.
“It is really important for her, as it is for any leader, to have people she knows she can truly trust around her.”
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