Queensland’s Mr Fix-It, David Barbagallo, is back on the job

There could not have been a timelier arrival into the Premier’s ­office for Queensland Labor’s Mr Fix-It, David Barbagallo.

David Barbagallo has returned to government as chief of staff to Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: Mark Calleja

There could not have been a timelier arrival into the Premier’s ­office for Queensland Labor’s Mr Fix-It, David Barbagallo.

When opposing factions in ­Annastacia Palaszczuk’s minority government battled last month over Queensland’s largest and most controversial project, the $16.5 billion Adani coalmine, and the company threatened to walk away, it was her new chief of staff Barbagallo who stepped in to force a truce.

His massive physical and political presence, the latter honed as a senior adviser to Palaszczuk’s Labor hero, former premier Wayne Goss, was always ­intended to bring discipline to the Premier’s disorganised office and to spearhead her re-election campaign ahead of a looming state poll.

But nobody expected Barba­gallo’s particular skill set — a reputation as a political headkicker, a knack for figures and business nous developed during a lengthy corporate career — to be required quite so early.

In only Barbagallo’s first fortnight on the job with Palaszczuk late last month, a simmering internal factional battle over a government royalties deal for Adani ­exploded publicly, was played out in the press and then was resolved. Last week the Indian resources giant announced it would go ahead with the mega-mine planned for the Galilee Basin in central Queensland.

Insiders have told The Australian that as the war raged (with Palaszczuk’s pro-Adani right faction outnumbered by Deputy Premier Jackie Trad’s left faction), Barbagallo played a crucial role behind the scenes in calmly keeping the lines of communication open with the company. He also understood the commercial need for Adani to have certainty about coal royalties before it made the all-important final investment decision.

Public records show Barbagallo met Adani’s lobbyists, Next Level Strategic Services, twice in his first fortnight, and The Australian ­understands he was in constant phone contact with the company’s representatives. And while the fight between Palaszczuk, Trad and Treasurer Curtis Pitt over the final shape of the Adani royalties deal ultimately was sorted out ­between those three alone, senior government figures confirm Barbagallo’s “cool and calm demeanour” with Adani was key to resolving the impasse.

Queensland senator and former ALP state secretary Anthony Chisholm says Barbagallo has a unique talent for resolving issues such as Adani.

“He’s a fixer in the old-style sense; he loves to solve political problems,” Chisholm says. “Starting work (with Palaszczuk) and straight away having to solve the issue of Adani is the perfect example of that.”

Barbagallo may have been in the political wilderness for nearly a quarter of a century but it appears his skills are still sharp.

He served as Goss’s principal private secretary from 1991 to 1993 — in charge of logistics and the day-to-day running of the premier’s office — until he quit on ­November 9, 1993, to take a job in information technology.

Coincidentally, Barbagallo’s resignation came two days before events that set in motion a ­peculiarly Queensland scandal: the Cape Melville incident, also known as the Foxtail Palm affair.

Though Barbagallo eventually was cleared of any wrongdoing, for some with a long memory of Queensland politics his name remains synonymous with the bizarre episode.

Barbagallo himself, when he addressed Labor MPs and election candidates at a meeting in Brisbane on May 26, subtly joked about the scandal, saying even his brother had been in contact to congratulate him on his new gig with Palaszczuk.

It was Barbagallo’s brother, Paul, who entangled him in the long-ago affair.

On November 11, 1993, deep in remote Cape Melville National Park, on Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland, a government ranger named Pat Shears stumbled upon an unoccupied LandCruiser utility. Shears would later discover the ute belonged to an Innisfail ­banana grower named Paul Barbagallo.

The LandCruiser was parked close to a stand of foxtail palms that was known to rangers as a target for smugglers of the palms’ sought-after seeds. (The palms, endemic to Cape Melville, were hugely popular at the time as an ornamental plant in gardens and at resorts.) Shears took the ute and drove it away. Paul Barbagallo and his companions later would claim they were simply photographing the palms, not stealing the valuable seeds, while on a fishing and pig-shooting expedition.

Forty-eight hours later, Shears and Paul Barbagallo were face-to-face in the Cooktown police station, and by that time David Barbagallo was there too.

David Barbagallo and another of Goss’s senior staff, Dennis Atkins — now national affairs editor with Brisbane’s The Courier-Mail newspaper — happened to be in the area to inspect nearby Starcke Station, which the Goss government was considering buying.

Paul Barbagallo was fined $200 in 1994 over the incident.

Shears’s contract with the state’s Environment Department was terminated soon after his ­encounter with the Barbagallos.

When Queensland’s opposition got wind of what had transpired, they alleged David Barbagallo had used his political clout — and friendship with then Environment Department director-­general Craig Emerson (later a federal Labor trade minister) — to intervene on his brother’s behalf.

But the Criminal Justice Commission, which spent months holding secret hearings and interviewing witnesses, crucially found Atkins’s and David Barbagallo’s travel north was booked on November 9, 1993, two days before Paul Barbagallo’s run-in with the law. It was a just an unfortunate coincidence. “There is no evidence of any ­attempt to interfere with or frustrate any efforts by police to investigate offences committed,” the CJC found.

By the time the CJC report ­exonerated David Barbagallo in September 1994, he had long left government and embarked on a career in business. He had also been Goss’s policy adviser on information technology, and he slotted in neatly for eight years as chief executive of an IT research body.

But another scandal was around the corner. The 2001 Shepherdson inquiry — again run by the CJC — into historical electoral fraud in Queensland Labor would lead to the resignation of then deputy premier Jim Elder, MP and former ALP state secretary Mike Kaiser and backbencher Grant Musgrove.

Barbagallo admitted in the CJC witness box that he’d organised a scheme to falsely enrol people, ­including Kaiser, in the South Brisbane electorate before the 1986 Labor preselection plebiscite. Barbagallo was the secretary of the East Brisbane branch at the time and told the CJC he’d falsely ­enrolled the Australian Workers Union right-faction members with their knowledge and consent. In 2002 he was fined $1000 over the enrolment scheme.

“He obviously thinks it might have been nice if it hadn’t happened, but dogs bark, and you move on,” a friend of Barbagallo’s says of the experience.

Barbagallo moved on to be executive vice-president of software company Mincom for three years until 2005, before serving as chief executive of disability charity Endeavour Foundation between 2009 and 2016.

This year, after he won an Order of Australia for services to the IT industry, higher education, business and people with a disability, Barbagallo was summoned back to politics.

On May 8, Palaszczuk publicly announced the departure of her chief of staff, Angela MacDonagh, after MacDonagh quietly tendered her resignation early the month before. The Australian has spoken to several senior Labor sources, all of whom — on condition of anonymity — are critical of Palaszczuk’s office under Mac­Donagh, describing it as ­decentralised, disorganised and ill-disciplined.

“Annastacia’s office couldn’t organise a chook raffle,” one says.

But a senior government figure rejects the criticism, insisting MacDonagh did “an amazing job, in very difficult circumstances”.

MacDonagh had been with Palaszczuk since the 2012 election, when a rampaging Liberal National Party victory reduced Labor to a humiliated rump of just seven seats in the 89-seat parliament.

Three years later Palaszczuk led Labor to victory and the formation of a minority government, a feat nobody had expected. Everyone, including MacDonagh, was ­unprepared. The early departure of Labor MPs Billy Gordon and Rob Pyne to the crossbench — making Palaszczuk’s hold on power even more tenuous — and a somewhat inexperienced cabinet and caucus did not help.

Asked to respond to criticism of her office under MacDonagh, ­Palaszczuk says: “Angela MacDonagh was chief of staff throughout the three years of opposition and was instrumental in the ­election of the government following the devastating result at the 2012 ­election.”

When MacDonagh resigned and Barbagallo was headhunted for the top job, some privately sniped that Palaszczuk had chosen a figure from the past because she couldn’t find anyone else.

Labor senator Chisholm does not agree. When he heard of Barbagallo’s appointment, he texted Palaszczuk: “Inspired choice.”

“If you had to have someone six months out from a tough state election, he’s the perfect choice,” Chisholm tells The Australian.

Barbagallo earned a reputation as a political headkicker during his years in Goss’s office.

Former Labor treasurer Keith De Lacy ­remembers Barbagallo from that era. “David is a physically ­imposing person; he looks like he should be playing front row for the Broncos but he’s very personable, intelligent and he was very hi-tech, even in those days,” De Lacy says.

He believes Barbagallo will help Palaszczuk maintain discipline in her office and her government. “The government’s had trouble with disunity recently; he could help with that. I don’t think he would be bossing people around now. He’d try and reach a consensus. He wouldn’t go in and kick heads straight away.”

Then De Lacy laughs. “He might save that for later.”

A senior Labor source says Barbagallo is “exactly what Annastacia’s office needs”.

“He can sort out some of those dickhead ministers who leak and carry on,” the source says. “The big problem she’s had has been dis­unity. Barbagallo will bring coherence and certainty, discipline and an organisational structure.”

Former Labor premier Peter Beattie tells The Australian that Barbagallo’s headkicker reputation originated even earlier than his stint in Goss’s office.

When Beattie was Labor state secretary in the early 1980s, he sent Innisfail-born Barbagallo home to north Queensland to act as a party organiser based in Townsville.

“As a party organiser, he was hardworking, strategically very clever and tactically very smart,” Beattie says. “He reorganised the Labor Party in north Queensland, when we were trying to build it from the ashes. It was a basket case up there for us politically, and he helped us rebuild.

“We won every seat in Townsville, and that laid the foundation for a Goss victory in the seats outside Brisbane.”

The state’s north — and ­regional Queensland generally — will be life or death for Labor at the next state election, due to be called by May next year. Strategists say Labor needs to hold all of its seats in the north to retain power. The ALP expects to win back the far north Queensland electorates of Cook and Cairns (now held by the aforementioned Labor MPs turned crossbenchers Gordon and Pyne) and is hoping to pick up Whitsunday from the LNP and the new north Queensland electorate of McMaster.

But Pauline Hanson’s resur­gent One Nation is threatening Labor’s fortunes in the regional cities, where rampant unemployment and a perception that Labor is beholden to the inner-city Greens are biting.

The strategists spoken to by The Australian hope Barbagallo’s north Queensland pedigree and experience will help Palaszczuk win the battle for the region.

Another Labor insider says Barbagallo’s business acumen will be vital as some in Queensland’s corporate community are frustrated at the lack of infrastructure spending and slow pace of decision-making by the government.

“They need a more pro-business flavour over the next six months, and Barbagallo can ­deliver it,” the insider says, with a nod to Barbagallo’s early victory on Adani as proof.

But his most important job as chief of staff is to ensure his new boss, Palaszczuk, wins the next election.

After today’s state budget and Friday’s finalisation of the ­redistributed electoral map, Palaszczuk could pull the poll trigger at any moment.

Barbagallo doesn’t have much time before his ultimate test as Queensland Labor’s reinvented Mr Fix-It.