Queensland treasurer, former banker, musician, cricket tragic and devoted family man still carries the raw pain of his best friend’s death almost 30 years ago.

Itiovie Jegede was the bright light alongside David Janetzki and Melinda van der Meulen – a trio of inseparable Toowoomba friends emerging from high school with the world at their feet.

The flash of a camera at their school formal in 1995 captures three smiling teenagers – David in an oversized magician’s top hat, thick red tie and glasses, Mel holding his left arm and a beaming Itiovie, who was preparing for a trip home over summer.

Days later, as they approached their final minutes at high school, David walked Itiovie outside for a quick goodbye.

“I gave her the biggest hug and I was crying and she looked at me and said what are you crying for?” he says.

“That’s the last time we ever spoke.”

Six weeks later on January 26, 1996, during a holiday back home, Itiovie was dead – the victim of a car accident that also claimed her mother and grandmother.

They had stopped in Nigeria on their way to London, where Itiovie was considering going to university. Such is the fragility of life.

Janetzki drove his dad’s ute through tears to Mel’s home – the day of her 18th birthday – where they’d spend hours mourning.

“I fell in love with you that day,” Mel tells her husband three decades later.

“Grief and loss bring out such a vulnerability and we were able just to be truly authentic and ourselves and it just bonded us.”

Janetzki adds: “We were grieving together and then falling in love.”

For the life and loss of their mutual best friend, the Janetzkis named their first daughter Elizabeth Itiovie Janetzki.

Elizabeth, now 19, would be joined by siblings Charlotte, 17, and Samuel, 8.

Behind the calm persona of the state’s treasurer is a journey shaped by loss and love.

David Carl Janetzki is the descendant of Prussians who landed in the Darling Downs in the mid-to-late 1800s carrying few material possessions but enough knowledge to fill dozens more of the wooden boats in which they’d crossed the high seas.

During the birth of modern Australia these European farmers gifted their craftsmanship and cuisine – cured meats, salted potatoes and baked goods unlike anything the colony had seen.

Generations of the Polish-named Janetzki clan worked the land, attended church, joined the Country Women’s Association and agricultural shows.

David Janetzki arrived at St Vincent’s Hospital Toowoomba at 8.27am on June 28, 1978, the second son of Denis and Leone.

He was exposed to hardship almost from the moment he was born.

His brother Jon had leukaemia.

“I grew up expecting my one and only sibling to not make it,” Janetzki recalls.

Normal brotherly adventures and activities, such as cricket in the backyard, were punctured by frequent trips to Brisbane for chemo and radium therapy.

Jon was in a group of children from across the Toowoomba district subjected to experimental treatment for the then little-known cancer. Some children received too little treatment and died but others, like Jon, received too strong a dosage. He developed bowel
cancer, but survived and lives with a colostomy bag today.

In those tough days Janetzki spent weeks with his grandparents at Acland, 50km north-west of Toowoomba, while his father desperately tried to keep their family dairy farm near Jondaryan afloat and his mother focused on keeping his brother alive.

Janetzki’s first job was milking cows on the family farm – the baptism of hard work familiar to so many country kids.

At Concordia Lutheran College in Toowoomba, where he became school captain and First XI cricket captain, he was a nerdy kid whose thick, black-framed goggle glasses made him a conspicuous target for bullies.

In the back row of the grade 8.2 class sat a 13-year-old Melinda, who held no feelings of lust towards her slightly younger classmate.

“This nerd would always sit right at the front,” she declares.

“He was bullied in grade 8, unfortunately, because he wore very, very thick goggles with a strap on the back, and with this strap around the back … it was unfortunate.

“He was sort of in the firing line of bullies, unfortunately, but I just thought he was a nice guy.”

It wasn’t love at first sight, but the death of Itiovie would set them on a path to July 20, 1997, when they’d profess their love before marrying on December 29, 2001.

In Janetzki’s new chapter as Queensland treasurer – in a political world full of ruthless ambition and self-interest – he remains centred on the privilege of life and family.

“It starts with those early beginnings at home with how tenuous my brother’s grip on life was … and so I don’t want to miss a minute,” he says.

“(In) the hard times … it’s that perspective, the perspective family and community bring.

“Don’t spend time doing something, being somewhere that doesn’t make you happy, doesn’t leave you fulfilled.”

He’s a handy former Brisbane grade cricketer and who still relishes the opportunity to wield willow.

While pulling his son Samuel’s half-tracker deliveries over cow corner might help alleviate the frustration of politics, music is where Janetzki finds true peace.

He’s a qualified piano player and former songwriter.

The morning after a massive week handing down his first budget, Janetzki was accompanying his wife’s opera singing for a group of residents at an aged-care home in Toowoomba.

Mel, 47, is a professional opera singer, a past winner of the Australian Singing Competition who performed alongside Kate Miller-Heidke.

While she was studying singing in Toowoomba, Janetzki had scraped into Griffith University’s Politics and Law faculty studying a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Politics.

He was immediately immersed in a hotbed of left-wing politics led by classmates Anthony Chisholm, Andrew Fraser and Jim Chalmers – the latter two who’d go on to become treasurers in Labor governments.

A desire to follow his housemate across the city and immerse himself more in economics led to Janetzki switching to the University of Queensland, avoiding any chance of becoming a true believer.

He graduated with degrees in economics and law and remains a student of political history and has sat quietly to soak up knowledge from Fraser, John Howard, Sir Leo Hielscher and Mike Baird.

Janetzki worked for national law firms in Brisbane specialising in commercial law and litigation, before three years in London in legal and corporate roles (while Mel pursued
her opera career in Europe) before returning to Toowoomba where he worked at Heritage Bank.

Now, how he navigates the deterioration of the western world order, Queensland’s energy transition and dwindling resources revenue will help determine if his boss, Premier David Crisafulli, gets a second term.

The LNP’s first budget in a decade, handed down in June, didn’t deliver the Newman-era job losses and program cuts Labor claimed it would, but instead it predicted a steady path over the horizon to surplus.

It’s tenuous and exposed to global disruption, but Janetzki insists it will allow the government to focus on critical service delivery.

“The reason why I was attracted to state politics, having crossed the Rubicon to give it a crack, was it does relate to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs … to be safe, to have a roof over your head, to have care when you need it, and that’s what state governments are tasked with delivering,” he says.

“When I think that 82 per cent of the state budget goes towards a social services-related department to deliver those basic needs, that helps sharpen the mind for the challenges ahead. To have the budget in the right shape to deliver all those things is fundamental.

“Of course we’ve got the infrastructure and we’ve got the Games and we’ve got all these state-defining moments ahead of us but the focus always remains on the delivery of core services that Queenslanders rely on.”

In February 2022 Janetzki stood down as the LNP’s deputy leader as physical and mental health challenges faced his family.

At the time he said the family “need more of me”.

He won’t offer too many more details about that personal anguish, other than to say Mel and the family required him to be not only physically, but mentally with them.

Janetzki also refuses to be drawn on whether he ponders life as deputy premier.

“Stepping back was the right thing for the family and I make no apologies for that,” he says. “Life does move on. It was the right decision for our family at the time.”

Janetzki is stronger now than he was in 2022, both physically and mentally.

As Crisafulli crept closer to the Premiership, Janetzki focused on getting his body into shape – fit for governing.

“I took it really seriously,” he says.

“I wanted to be prepared, body and mind, if we were given that great privilege. I feel sharper having that discipline.”

That discipline of cutting down meals and being more active was complemented by the brutality of two teenage daughters who told Janetzki: “You can’t be old, bald and overweight”.

Amid the banter, the family is in a happy place now.

Lizzie has moved out, replaced with three chickens: Gaz, Chicky Minaj and Name.

They, along with a border collie Abbey, live in a modest, single-storey suburban home in an affluent part of Toowoomba.

One wall is dedicated to honouring the central role family plays in Janetzki’s busy life.

There are seven pictures of the complete clan and countless other individual portraits depicting sport, musical and educational achievements.

A whiteboard in the hallway details everyone’s movements during the week.

Sunday night’s entry says: “Dad, Brisbane”.

After dark, like clockwork, Janetzki squeezes every moment with his young son Sam, turns out the lights and says he’ll be back in a week.

Janetzki’s regular absence – often five nights of the week – brings Mel to a brief tear.

“Really hard,” she says.

“In our heart we know that Dave would prefer to be with us.

“When we have time together, it is quality … we have learnt to make the time special.”

This is the sacrifice our politicians make, no matter how overpaid and underworked Queenslanders might think they are.

He is a man of faith, perhaps erring towards spirituality, for the focus it brings.

“Family and faith are significant because they bring perspective and remind me that the sun’s coming up tomorrow,” he says.

In the trappings of high office Janetzki insists he’s just a dairy farmer’s son from Acland given a chance to make a difference.

He gazes around the state cabinet at his “country kids” colleagues: Crisafulli from Canossa Primary School near Ingham and Attorney-General Deb Frecklington from Guluguba State School, north of Miles.

This opportunity Queensland has given them, Janetzki wants to seize for the whole state – especially as the world turns its eyes on us towards 2032.

“We should be a big and bold Queensland … it’s a pretty extraordinary opportunity Queensland has to the Games and beyond,” he says.

Like the state’s brief chance to seize this opportunity, Janetzki hints he’s of a similar thinking. He entered politics late, aged 38, and isn’t eyeing a long career.

“I’m quietly determined to make a contribution,” he says.

“That’s probably as direct as … there’s just so much to do and I’ve been given this extraordinary privilege to have a chance to do it and that’s why I don’t want to waste a minute.”