More than $300,000 was spent on an extraordinary Supreme Court application – which was even hidden at the government’s request from the court’s list of cases – to bury findings of its investigation into former deputy premier and treasurer Jackie Trad and former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s hand-picked top bureaucrat, Dave Stewart.
The integrity watchdog was scathing about the pair, who had dominated the running of the Labor government, each with a brutish drive to get their way.
At the centre of the investigation – which involved the CCC using its “coercive powers” to compel Palaszczuk, Trad and Stewart to appear before star chamber hearings – was the appointment of under treasurer Frankie Carroll.
Trad had previously worked with the Irish-born Carroll, who was her director-general when she was Infrastructure, local government and planning minister, and wanted his services when she became treasurer.
The only problem was that the public service panel, set up to vet candidates, didn’t think he was up to the job.
The CCC probe was instigated after the then opposition made a complaint alleging Carroll was not the panel’s pick as under treasurer.
Its report, released by the new Liberal National Party government using a motion in parliament, found Trad had “inappropriately interfered” to overturn the panel’s decision.
The CCC said Stewart said “he gave in to aggressive pressure” from Trad to promote the abilities of Mr Carroll.
“He amended the selection report to ensure that the unappointable candidate was presented as meritorious, and worthy of the premier’s consideration for appointment to the position,” the report said.
The CCC’s findings, in May 2021, were made at a time that the Palaszczuk government was facing allegations it had politicised the public service.
It was also under mounting pressure to act after revelations in The Australian that Labor-aligned lobbyists had run Palaszczuk’s successful re-election campaign in October 2020.
Trad had lost her inner-city seat in Brisbane, and newly anointed opposition leader David Crisafulli was already showing the discipline and cut-through that was to eventually win him government.
Palaszczuk was eventually forced to bow to pressure and call an inquiry, led by Peter Coaldrake, that warned of the politicisation of the top levels of the bureaucracy and banned the lobbyists who ran her campaign.
The release of the “Trad report” would have only stoked the fires.
Palaszczuk and her then attorney-general Shannon Fentiman – a close friend and factional ally of Trad – then quietly signed off on the former treasurer’s request for the government to pay for her legal bid to suppress the report.
The former state public trustee Peter Carne, a one-time boyfriend of Palaszczuk, was already in the courts fighting to have a CCC report into allegations against him suppressed.
His later win in the High Court secured Trad’s hopes to keep the report secret.
On Thursday, Fentiman said she hadn’t spoken to Trad about the report and only acted on crown law advice that it was in the indemnity guidelines for politicians receiving legal assistance.
But this was breaking new ground and not about legal representation to defend a minister’s decision.
It was about protecting Trad’s reputation, and that of the entire government.
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It’s now as clear as day; the former Palaszczuk government’s successful legal bid to keep secret a damning Crime and Corruption Commission report was a rolled-gold, taxpayer-funded political cover-up.