A political opera: Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk ‘not talking to half the cabinet’
Annastacia Palaszczuk’s cabinet has been fractured for more than a year and the Premier has become increasingly isolated from senior ministers including Cameron Dick and Shannon Fentiman.
Annastacia Palaszczuk’s cabinet has been fractured for more than a year and the Premier has become increasingly isolated from senior ministers including Treasurer Cameron Dick and Health Minister Shannon Fentiman.
As the Queensland Premier continues her two-week Italian holiday with surgeon partner Reza Adib – attending the San Carlo Opera House in Naples for The Great Opera Arias Concert overnight – questions mount about whether Labor can secure a fourth term with her as leader.
An influential Labor figure told The Weekend Australian on condition of anonymity that there needed to be a “deal done” to secure her exit ahead of the October 2024 state election.
“She’s not talking to half of the cabinet,” the senior ALP source said. “It’s no secret the Premier has fallen out with Fentiman and Dick. A lot of the MPs have given up and don’t think they can win it. There’s a real lack of solidarity and no focus on policy.”
The Weekend Australian revealed last week that Ms Palaszczuk had lost the confidence of key sections of Queensland Labor.
ALP rules make it incredibly difficult to roll a sitting leader, and Ms Palaszczuk has previously indicated she plans to lead Labor to the next poll.
A Labor MP said the leadership issues were being fought out in the media because members of Ms Palaszczuk’s caucus felt they could not raise problems internally. “A big reason why a lot of people have been blowing up recently is because of communication issues,” the MP said.
“We never really have debates or robust discussions in caucus. (The Premier) doesn‘t like confrontation or differing opinions.”
Ms Palaszczuk and her Treasurer have a decades-long friendship borne from their teenage years in Young Labor. But this week, Mr Dick conceded he did not know the Premier was going to Europe for a two-week holiday until it was reported in the media.
Fuelling leadership speculation, he released a 576-word re-election blueprint on Tuesday that failed to mention Ms Palaszczuk by name.
In a statement, Mr Dick said he meets with Ms Palaszczuk “every single week”. “I also meet with the Premier as part of Cabinet and relevant cabinet committees,” he said. But their lines of communication broke down publicly in September last year when Ms Palaszczuk announced she was scrapping her Treasurer’s controversial land tax without telling him first.
Ms Palaszczuk made the call to kill off the proposed tax after a Canberra dinner with her interstate counterparts.
In a further humiliation, Mr Dick was left to front the media the following day to explain the policy U-turn. “I found out through the announcement made by the Premier, after she spoke to the leaders, and that’s the right thing, the Premier is the leader, and she makes those calls,” Mr Dick said at the time.
The third-term Premier’s official published diaries record just three one-on-one meetings with Mr Dick since January last year, on May 30 and April 4 this year and October 13 last year. Her diaries from last month, are yet to be released.
There are no recorded one-on-one meetings between Ms Fentiman and Ms Palaszczuk in the same 18-month period, but the pair travelled to Bundaberg for a hospital visit in July.
Even in May, when Palaszczuk ordered a rare cabinet reshuffle, she did not meet Ms Fentiman alone to explain she would be shifted from her role of Attorney-General into the health portfolio.
The communication breakdown between Ms Palaszczuk and her Health Minister was laid bare in late June, when the Premier failed to tell Ms Fentiman the Queensland Health director-general had quit.
Ms Palaszczuk announced the resignation of Shaun Drummond at a press conference, minutes after Ms Fentiman had insisted at a separate media event that she had confidence in him.
Ms Fentiman did not return calls from The Weekend Australian. She and Deputy Premier Steven Miles – as senior members of the dominant Left faction – are the frontrunning leadership contenders; Mr Dick is an outside chance. All three this week publicly backed the Premier to stay on as leader.
Insiders in the Premier’s office said the suggestion that Ms Palaszczuk did not meet with her senior ministers privately was “nonsense” and not every encounter was recorded in the diary.
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