Taxpayer-funded polling is nothing new for Annastacia Palaszczuk

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass

Annastacia Palaszczuk looks like she is spending a tonne of taxpayer money on secret polling to help win her the next election.

In one of the biggest qualitative surveys in the state, “waves” of focus group sessions are being conducted – split between the city and regions – every six weeks, ending just as next year’s election campaign heats up.

Is it any coincidence the project, costing just shy of $400,000, was put together in May, weeks after a newspaper-published poll showed for the first time that the Palaszczuk government was heading to defeat on October 26, 2024?

And now the Premier is keeping it all under wraps.

After the polling was discovered by The Australian in a one-line mention on the Premier’s department contract disclosure log, the government has done everything it can to ensure the public doesn’t get to see what it has paid for. First, we were told it was to help inform preparation for last June’s budget, and how Queenslanders access government assistance. Then, the polling was taken to cabinet, enabling a legally protected rejection of an application under Right to Information laws.

What was eventually obtained was the 62-page contract with pollster Ipsos, heavily redacted. One of the only pages not blanked out was titled “Research Background,’’ setting out the need for the longitudinal polling as the government “shifts from a position of recovery from Covid-19” to economic growth and prosperity. Among the declared objectives of the research is to “gain insights about a range of issues facing Queenslanders” and identify “opportunities to create and sustain value for government and its stakeholders” in tailoring policies/programs to the community.

This sort of taxpayer-funded polling is not new to this government. In 2020, Palaszczuk’s department commissioned Ipsos to conduct $528,000 worth of polling – again kept secret – into her government’s hard line stance in handling the pandemic. Despite denying her government was polling on its Covid approach and was acting only on health advice, an RTI of the contract showed voters were being canvassed on their views on border restrictions and when to lift them. It helped win her the 2020 election.

Palaszczuk has boasted of a commitment to transparency and integrity of government. But she had lobbyists secretly run her last campaign and now she has a pollster shaping policy to win the next one. Just don’t ask to see what Queenslanders really think.