Incendiary Jackie Trad’s secret rearguard action

True to form Queensland’s pugnacious ex deputy premier and treasurer has been doing whatever it takes to protect her reputation from further damage.

Former Queensland deputy Labor premier and treasurer Jackie Trad. Picture: Peter Wallis

It is the last of the unfinished business from the smoking ruins of the incendiary career of Jackie Trad.

And true to form, Queensland’s pugnacious former deputy Labor premier and treasurer has been doing whatever it takes to protect her reputation from any further damage.

This week, it was revealed in parliament by the opposition that Trad has launched secret legal ­action in the Supreme Court to stop public release of a Crime and Corruption Commission report.

It stemmed from an investi­gation of allegations she improperly interfered in the appointment of a senior public servant that widened into a probe of recruitment across the ­bureaucracy since Annas­tacia Palaszczuk came to power in 2015.

The CCC investigation, which also looked into the actions of the state’s former top public servant Dave Stewart, has already forced new rules dictating how senior bureaucrats are recruited in Queensland.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

Completed early last year, the report is purported to be scathing about the politicisation of the public service by the Palaszczuk government, now reeling from revelations of interference in the offices of the Integrity Commissioner and State Archivist.

The legal action blows yet another hole in Palaszczuk’s professed platform of transparency in government.

Trad, who lost her once safe Labor seat to the seemingly indomitable creep of the Greens across Brisbane’s inner city, had already been through the CCC wringer before suffering the rejection of voters at the October 31, 2020, election.

The Left faction leader was the subject of two investigations by the watchdog over allegations relating to an undeclared investment property and interference in the recruitment of a local school principal.

She had been spared findings of corruption by the CCC, which delivered critical reports raising questions about the independence of senior bureaucrats and the need to make it a criminal offence for MPs who failed to properly detail financial interests.

After Palaszczuk was returned, there was still one CCC probe into Trad to be completed.

It related to a state opposition complaint in July 2020 of alle­gations that Trad had shoe-horned veteran public servant Frankie Carroll in as her under-treasurer the previous year.

LNP frontbencher Tim Mander told parliament a whistleblower of “considerable standing” had information that another candidate, bank executive Leon Allen, had been selected as under-treasurer by an independent panel chaired by Stewart, then the director-general of the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

Allen has since been appointed to the job.

In 2015, one of Palaszczuk’s pledges as opposition leader was to set up “merit” panels to select senior bureaucrats, accusing then LNP premier Campbell Newman of hand-picking mates for public service jobs.

Director-general of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet Dave Stewart. Picture: Supplied

Last year, The Australian learned the CCC probe had been widened and had involved “star chamber” hearings in which witnesses are compelled with the threat of jail to answer questions.

Sources said the CCC had final­ised its probe and report in the first quarter of last year and while it had not recommended any charges, the findings were “explosive”.

In March, Stewart was named by Palaszczuk as Queensland’s trade commissioner in the UK, a role he was expected to take up late last year.

But in April, Stewart suddenly left the public service and didn’t take up the post until this year.

In June, speculation about the report heated up when Public Service Commissioner Rob Setter quietly issued a directive in the Queensland Government Gazette that “merit assessment must occur” in “chief executive” recruitment.

The directive also insisted that documents be provided “for the Premier to identify and record any actual, or reasonably perceived, conflicts of interest between Premier and the recommended applicants for the role, and if identified, how the actual or reasonably perceived conflicts of interest were resolved”.

Setter is now at the centre of ­allegations of interference in the office of Integrity Commissioner Nikola Stepanov.

“This directive has been issued in response to matters considered by the CCC regarding the appointment of chief executives under the Public Service Act 2008,’’ the PSC said at the time.

There was a wall of silence from the office of the Premier and the CCC, its then head, Alan MacSporran, telling an estimates hearing in August he was “not at liberty to discuss” the status of the probe.

Shadow Minister for Finance Jarrod Bleijie. Picture: NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

It wasn’t until October that The Australian discovered Trad had launched a legal bid to keep the report being made public.

A month earlier, it had emerged that the former head of the Public Trustee of Queensland, Peter Carne, had lost a Supreme Court bid to suppress a CCC report into alleged wrongdoing. That decision is being ­appealed

In the tight-knit legal community in Brisbane’s CBD, an extraordinary court action from someone as high-profile as Trad doesn’t stay secret for long, even if the Supreme Court made sure it didn’t appear on its publicly ­assessable register of civil cases.

Political sources claimed senior ranks of the Labor cabinet were aware of the legal action.

Trad wouldn’t take calls to discuss the CCC probe.

When told in an October 28 text that The Australian had heard things about the status of the probe and the CCC wasn’t answering questions, she refused a request to talk: “Only if I want to go jail (with a pondering emoji).”

The Australian then put the rumours of the application to Trad. It took until the following day for her to reply with a text in which she put The Australian on notice that there was a “blanket” non-publication order over the application. “Absolutely nothing can be published, including any reference to the matter and proceedings,’’ she said.

When the Supreme Court was contacted about the ­application and non-publication order, there was more secrecy. “I cannot confirm if such a matter is before the court and I can’t provide any information,’’ a spokeswoman said, ignoring the argument that it was difficult to comply to a gag order that the court refuses to say exists.

Through his lawyers, Stewart said he had fully co-operated with the CCC probe and had previously been put on notice by it not to make public comment. “His resignation was totally unrelated to this matter,’’ the lawyers said.

Trad has denied any wrong-doing about the Carroll appointment. On November 17, an article was published that set out what had been learned about the investigation and PSC directive.