‘Smells of jobs for mates’: Labor’s Mike Kaiser gets top climate change gig

Anthony Albanese’s appointment of former ALP staffer, state secretary and MP Mike Kaiser to a $930,000-a-year job has drawn accusations of ‘jobs for mates’.

Mike Kaiser, left, and then Queensland premier Steven Miles at budget estimates hearings in July last year. Picture: Dan Peled / NewsWire

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Anthony Albanese has appointed a veteran Queensland Labor figure to a $930,000-a-year position as the head of his government’s climate change department, the latest in a string of taxpayer-­funded jobs for ALP heavyweights.

Mike Kaiser – who served as Queensland premier Steven Miles’s top public servant before Labor lost the October state election – will take up the job of ­secretary of the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water next week on a five-year contract.

Mr Kaiser was Queensland ALP state secretary between 1993 and 2000, then the state Labor MP for Woodridge. He was forced to quit parliament in 2001 after he admitted to an inquiry into electoral fraud that he had falsely signed an electoral enrolment form in 1986.

Mr Kaiser was also chief of staff to NSW Labor premier Morris Iemma and then succeeded Murray Watt – now federal Minister for Environment and Water – as Queensland Labor premier Anna Bligh’s chief of staff in 2008.

Mr Kaiser at work as Queensland’s director-general of the Department of Premier and Cabinet. Picture: LinkedIn

The appointment comes ­despite a much-vaunted review into public service appointments initiated by Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher in 2023 after she previously accused the ­Coalition of rewarding its political allies with plum public appointments. “This review is all about putting an end to the jobs-for-mates culture that defined the previous Morrison government’s public sector appointments,” Senator Gallagher said at the time.

The review’s author, Lynelle Briggs, handed her findings to Senator Gallagher in ­August 2023, but the federal government has not published the final ­report or responded to its contents.

A spokesman for Senator Gallagher said the review remained under consideration.

Gabrielle Appleby, a constitutional law professor at the University of NSW and director at the Centre for Public Integrity, a think tank that advocates against corruption, described Mr Kaiser’s ­appointment by Labor as “particularly disappointing”.

“The fact that they commissioned the Briggs review, have yet to release it, and are still making appointments through this outdated, opaque, and problematic process is particularly concerning,” she said, warning that such practices were “hugely corrosive”.

“Even if the individual is the right or the best or a good person for the job, it just smells of jobs for mates, it smells of cronyism, and it smells of a conflict of interest – these are the types of issues that undermine public trust in government.”

Anthony Albanese in Tasmania on Tuesday. Picture: Chris Kidd / NewsWire

Mr Albanese thanked outgoing department secretary David Fredericks and praised Mr Kaiser’s career history in the private sector and public service. He will net a salary of $932,120 a year, following the latest determination by the Remuneration Tribunal.

“Mr Kaiser’s experience includes delivering on large-scale projects, administering complex regulatory regimes and leading the Queensland government’s policies on planning and infrastructure,” Mr Albanese said.

When Liberal National Party Premier David Crisafulli came to power, one of his first acts was to remove Mr Kaiser, who he had previously accused of not being politically independent.

On Sunday, the Albanese government announced Labor’s former assistant treasurer Stephen Jones would be Australia’s next ambassador to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris. Mr Jones abruptly retired from politics ahead of May’s federal election.

In 2022, Labor appointed former prime minister Kevin Rudd as US ambassador and former ­defence minister Stephen Smith as UK high commissioner.