Top Queensland public servant ‘to review blowout email’

Questions have been raised about whether staff in Mark Bailey’s office breached the code of conduct for ministerial staff by asking public servants to delete a cost blowout from communications.

Queensland Transport Minister Mark Bailey. Picture: Dan Peled / NCA NewsWire

Annastacia Palaszczuk’s office has asked Queensland’s top public servant to “review” an email sent by staff inside Transport Minister Mark Bailey’s office that asked public servants to delete a $2.4bn cost blowout from communications.

Mr Bailey’s office sent an email to the transport department on July 3, with a “couple of things to consider” including a deleting reference to the true cost of the state’s flagship manufacturing program days after the final contract had been signed.

The price tag to build 65 trains in Maryborough, had surged from $7.1bn to $9.5bn.

Days earlier, the Premier and Mr Bailey issued a joint media release with the outdated $7.1bn figure, despite knowing it was incorrect.

During budget estimates this week, acting transport director-general Sally Stannard said the email sent to her department had “suggestions” and public servants were not “directed” by Mr Bailey’s office to delete the figure.

Mr Bailey has said he was not aware the department had made the suggestion. He also blamed ministerial staff for inserting the wrong figure in his press release.

Under the state’s code of conduct for workers in ministerial officers, staff cannot “direct, or attempt to direct, a public service employee unless you are acting under the express direction or expressly on behalf of a person with authority to direct a public service employee”.

Asked what action the Premier had taken to investigate whether the code of conduct had been breached, a spokesman for Ms Palaszczuk told The Australian: “The director-general of the Department of Premier and Cabinet has been asked to review the email.”

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli said it was clear Mr ­Bailey’s office had deliberately tried to conceal the cost blowout from taxpayers. “When an email comes through from a minister's office and says ‘delete reference’, that’s about as clear as it gets,” he said. “Have ministerial guidelines been breached? Has the public servants’ code of conduct been breached?

“There are all manner of things that need to be looked at.”

Mr Crisafulli questioned what Ms Palaszczuk’s threshold was for ministerial accountability.

“Have a look across the border and a first-term fresh premier is prepared to hold a minister accountable because of one breach of standards,” he said in reference to NSW Premier Chris Minns’ sacking of education minister Tim Crakanthorp last week for failing to disclose properties owned by his family.