CCC reveals Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk had two private email accounts

Annastacia Palaszczuk had two private email accounts – and the CCC’s boss says it could be argued an email from Mark Bailey had a “component of government business”.

ANNASTACIA Palaszczuk had two private email accounts, the state’s corruption watchdog has revealed.

And Crime and Corruption Commission chair Alan MacSporran said it could be argued that an email sent from Minister Mark Bailey’s private email to the Premier’s personal account in 2015 had a “component of government business”.

It’s today been revealed Ms Palaszczuk had a second email – ‘[e-mail]’.

The Premier did reply from one of her private accounts to an email from Mr Bailey, however it was not to his email about the appointment of a director-general in 2015.

The CCC, which was fronting a regular Parliamentary Crime and Corruption Committee hearing this morning, could not say whether the Premier’s reply was about government business.

CCC chairman Alan MacSporran. Picture: Domanii Cameron

Mr MacSporran said while the use of private emails in this instance didn’t require an investigation, “It was all just I think, frankly inappropriate though it was, it was all done for convenience.”

The use of the Premier’s private email erupted in Parliament again this week where she refused to say whether she’d used her [e-mail] account for government business.

“Let me say categorically that the emails in question have been through the RTI process and they have been retained,” she said.

A recent Right to Information application by The Courier-Mail for any potential emails between Mr Bailey’s mangocube account and the Premier’s stacia1 didn’t identify any documents to which the “RTI Act provides a right of access”.

The 2015 email has since been deemed by the RTI office at the Department of Premier and Cabinet to relate to a “party-political matter” rather than the affairs of an agency, and therefore wasn’t captured by RTI laws.

But Mr MacSporran today said, “You could argue it has a component of government business.”

Asked how it could not all be work-related, the CCC boss said, “Those appointments under the current protocol are not required to go through an independent merit based process.”

“While they relate to appointments for government positions … are not otherwise of interest to us because there is no breach of any protocol,” he said.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: Dan Peled

Transport Minister Mark Bailey. Picture: Dan Peled

Ms Palaszczuk did not reply to Mr Bailey’s 2015 email about the appointment of a director-general.

Mr MacSporran said the CCC did have the 2015 email when they were assessing Mr Bailey’s ‘mangocube’ saga but it wasn’t assessed until last December when the LNP questioned it.

Four emails sent between mangocube and stacia1 were provided to the CCC at the time of their probe, which are dated after Labor won government.

The CCC sent these four emails to the Department of Premier and Cabinet to determine if they were public records.

“I think there was one or at least one email between the Premier’s private email account and Minister Bailey’s private email account that had been assessed by the state archivist,” CCC senior executive officer Paul Alsbury said.

“But when the matter was raised again in Estimates at the end of last year, we utilised other search parameters to extract other emails.

“So emails which, whilst were in our possession, we didn’t know about them because they hadn’t been extracted under that search process.

“For the sake of completeness, there are two private email addresses that the Premier used in relation to email exchanges between herself and Minister Bailey so of the four (emails) that the chair person has referred to, three of them relate to one private email account.

“The other relates to another one.

“In effect what happened is Minister Bailey sent an email to the Premier to one personal email account and when she replied, the reply came from another personal email account.

“We don’t know why that happened.”

LNP integrity spokeswoman Fiona Simpson. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

In 2017, the Premier told Parliament she had not used a private email for work purposes.

LNP integrity spokeswoman Fiona Simpson called on Ms Palaszczuk to release the emails.

“At no point has Annastacia Palaszczuk been open and transparent with Queenslanders about this,” she said.

Ms Simpson said the second account raised “even more questions”.

“If they’re public records and she has nothing to hide, the Premier must release the emails and open her private accounts,” she said.

Originally published as CCC reveals Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk had two private email accounts