Steven Miles refuses to release ‘party political’ texts with ex-minister, lobbyist Kate Jones

The texts from Kate Jones, a plotter in the downfall of Annastacia Palaszczuk, were sent the day after Steven Miles secured the top job in a union deal.

Premier Steven Miles and Kate Jones in 2023. Picture: Adam Head

You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles.

Queensland Premier Steven Miles has refused to release “party political” text messages from Kate Jones, a plotter in the downfall of Annastacia Palaszczuk, sent the day after he secured the top job in a union deal.

The Labor leader, who said he was committed to transparency, integrity and accountability in government after he was installed as Ms Palaszczuk’s successor in December, on Thursday refused to overturn heavy redactions in correspondence with his former cabinet colleague released to The Australian under Right to Information laws.

Mr Miles also confirmed Ms Jones gave him unsolicited advice about how to handle a political scandal in February when she was a specialist consultant at a lobbying firm, and denied corresponding with her about government business on an app that automatically deletes messages.

It is the most recent example of Miles government ministers and a top bureaucrat keeping secret their dealings with Ms Jones, who quit politics in 2020 and took positions as an Australian Rugby League Commissioner, adviser to Rich Lister Bevan Slattery, Tech Council executive director, and Akin Agency specialist consultant.

On the campaign trail in far north Queensland on Thursday, Mr Miles refused to release three messages from Ms Jones on December 12 and 13 last year, after he was installed as Premier in a union and factional deal on December 11. Ms Jones has previously told confidants that she was involved in mobilising Old Guard factional numbers to force Ms Palaszczuk’s resignation earlier that month.

“RTI applies to official communications of our ministers, and that’s really important. It doesn’t apply to personal communications or party political communications,” the Premier said when asked if he would publish the messages.

“I’d have to check individual messages but I’m not going to release personal texts.”

An RTI officer in Mr Miles’s department had marked the messages as “irrelevant – electorate office” in justifying the secrecy.

The Premier’s office later confirmed the messages were party political and personal, and declined to release them.

The Australian applied under RTI laws for all messages between Mr Miles and Ms Jones from January 2023 until March this year. After months of objections by unnamed third parties and internal reviews, just one A4 page of heavily redacted text messages was released.

The text messages show Ms Jones sent Mr Miles an editorial from The Courier-Mail newspaper on February 1, describing as a “monumental stuff-up” the government’s rehiring of former Department of Premier and Cabinet director-general Rachel Hunter just weeks after she was paid $400,000 to resign.

Ms Hunter had been recruited by Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon to lead a review into homelessness in the state, in an announcement that coincided with $390m extra state government funding for homelessness services.

Mr Miles said Ms Jones had then texted him to “provide advice that we should ask Rachel to do the review pro bono”.

“She suggested in response to The Courier Mail’s article that we should ask Rachel to do that review for free, and I said I had (already) asked her to do it for free.”

Ms Jones also texted Mr Miles on the same day and said the “funding announcement today is great,” to which he replied, “it is and it’s a shame it’s been overshadowed”.

Asked why he was accepting advice from someone employed by a lobbying firm, Mr Miles said he received a lot of advice. He again said it would be too difficult to expand the government’s definition of lobbyist to require in-house lobbyists such as Ms Jones to declare their contact with government, opposition and public officials on the public register.

She has previously denied lobbying, but quit Akin in March after The Australian revealed she had set up a meeting with her factional ally, Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace, for a business that later became a paid lobbying client of the agency.

A union and factional deal was stitched up on the night of December 11 between United Workers Union political director Gary Bullock – Mr Miles’ political mentor and leader of his dominant left faction – and Australian Workers Union state secretary Stacey Schrinnerl to install Mr Miles as premier and the Right’s Cameron Dick as his deputy.

It locked out third leadership contender, the Left’s Shannon Fentiman, without the chance to test the numbers in caucus.