Take a cold shower, Annastacia Palaszczuk tells her Covid poll critics

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has defended spending $528,000 of taxpayers’ money on polling voter sentiment about COVID-19 restrictions ahead of the state election.

Treasurer Cameron Dick, Labor candidate Tom Smith and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says critics should “have a cold shower” after it was revealed her government had spent $528,000 of taxpayer money on polling voter sentiment about COVID-19 restrictions ahead of the state election.

An investigation by The Australian uncovered two contracts from the Department of Premier and Cabinet in May and June awarded to polling and market ­research company Ipsos Public Affairs, to run a “COVID-19 key insights project” to conduct “sentiment testing”.

Ms Palaszczuk was cagey on Wednesday when asked whether Ipsos had polled Queenslanders about whether they supported the government’s border closures, saying only that the company asked “numerous questions across the spectrum on a whole range of issues”.

Her office last month flatly denied the government was doing polling on the border closures. “No poll,” a spokesman said.

Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington called the spending “an absolute disgrace” and said Ms Palaszczuk claimed to be following the health advice on corona­virus but “now it is clear it’s all about politics and populism”.

“In the last six months, Labor has spent almost $6m of taxpayers’ money on polling and advertising in a desperate bid to buy the election,” Ms Frecklington said.

Disclosures showed the government awarded $4.9m in contracts to advertising agency MediaCom for COVID-19-­related advertisements, including $1.2m for the government’s “Unite and Recover” pre-election ad blitz.

Newgate Communications, led by partner John Lee, was hired to provide services to the COVID-19 response and recovery taskforce and paid $190,476.

KPMG partner and former Labor MP, campaigner and strategist Mike Kaiser was paid $275,000 by Ms Palaszczuk’s department to advise on the development of an economic roadmap.

Asked at a press conference in regional Queensland on Wednesday about the government’s engagement of Mr Kaiser, Ms Palaszczuk said she “did not know who you’re talking about, sorry” after a journalist slightly mispronounced Mr Kaiser’s name.

The KPMG partner was invited to a high-level strategy meeting on the Sunshine Coast hinterland last year with Ms Palaszczuk and senior ministers to discuss re-election campaigning.

The Premier said critics of her government commissioning the polling should “take a cold shower,” rejecting a suggestion it would assist Labor at the October 31 election.

“It’s interesting Queensland is being singled out here,” she said. “Everyone needs to have a cold shower when it comes to this, because every other state is asking a whole range of questions about how people are feeling about being in lockdown and coming out of lockdown.”

Ms Palaszczuk said the federal government commissioned Ipsos to do polling about COVID-19, and Queensland had used its own Ipsos polling to redirect funding.

“Every state does that … when people were in lockdown, we asked how they were feeling, and because some people were going through a really tough time, we put more money into domestic and family violence services and more money into mental health,” she said.

“We also asked people about how they would feel about signing into restaurants, something they’d never had to do before.”

Ms Palaszczuk has repeatedly insisted her decisions about the coronavirus health response were solely driven by health advice.

Queensland recorded zero new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, for the third day in a row.