Annastacia Palaszczuk won’t release private emails

Queensland Premier formally rejects calls to publicly release emails from her personal email accounts.

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

Queensland’s Solicitor-General has told Annastacia Palaszczuk emails sent through her personal account are not public records because they were “party political” in nature, prompting the Premier to reject calls to disclose them.

But Gavin Thompson’s advice is at odds with an assessment by the state archivist outlined in the same document tabled by Ms Palaszczuk on Tuesday.

The Liberal National Party is pursuing Ms Palaszczuk over the personal account, which they suggest could show she misled parliament in 2017 after denying it was used for government business.

On Monday, the LNP asked state archivist Mike Summerell to investigate the handling of the possible ministerial records

However, Mr Summerell finished his role with the Queensland State ­Archives on the same day.

A government spokesman said Mr Summerell’s resignation, which came weeks earlier, was unrelated to the email matter.

Mr Summerell, who served in the role since 2016, confirmed his departure on his LinkedIn page where he said he would be moving to New Zealand for a new role after “five amazing years with the wonderful Queensland state ­archives”.

On Tuesday, Ms Palaszczuk told parliament she would not be publicly releasing the emails and tabled advice from Mr Thompson, who said the emails were not public records because they were not ministerial records because of their “party political” nature.

But Mr Thompson also wrote in the “memorandum of ­advice”, tabled by Ms Palaszczuk, that Mr Summerell had identified the emails as public records when he ­assessed them in 2017.

The matter was reignited in December when the LNP tabled a document showing Ms Palaszczuk had received an email from the then energy minister Mark Bailey in 2015 about the ideological stance of Paul Simshauser, who later ­became director-­general of the Department of ­Energy and Water Supply.

Mr Thompson’s memorandum revealed a second email from January 2016 related to “An Autonomous Vehicle Future” and an email from May 2015 was titled “Tesla Announcement”, to which Ms Palaszczuk responded from a second personal account.

All of the emails, which Ms Palaszczuk described as “unsolicited”, were from Mr Bailey.

Mr Thompson said the Simshauser email was the “most problematical … On balance, I do not consider it is a record received by the Premier in the course of carrying out the Premier’s portfolio,” his advice said.

In 2017, Mr Bailey was ordered to release all of his emails to the state archivist to determine whether they were public records.

Ms Palaszczuk said she would not publicly release her emails, which she said had been examined by the Crime and Corruption Commission.

“They found no impropriety,” she said. “Nothing of interest whatsoever in any of them.

I have sought advice from the Solicitor-General in relation to whether the four emails are ‘public records’ … (He) advises that the emails either do not satisfy the requirement of a record or would be ­exempt within the exception outlined in the act.”