Travis Dawson, former aide to Annastacia Palaszczuk, claims payback sacking

A former senior policy adviser to Annastacia Palaszczuk claims he was sacked after raising integrity issues about her ex-chief of staff, David Barbagallo.

Annastacia Palaszczuk, left, with David Barbagallo in 2019. Picture: AAP

A former senior policy adviser to Annastacia Palaszczuk claims he was sacked after raising integrity issues about her ex-chief of staff, David Barbagallo, and that staffers were pressured into taking unpaid leave to work on Labor’s 2020 re-election campaign.

Travis Dawson has been a senior adviser in various offices in the government for more than a decade and was working in the Department of Premier and Cabinet in 2018 when he was dismissed.

The allegations were aired in a Queensland Industrial Relations Commission case in which he claimed he had been targeted for making public interest disclosures and sought reinstatement to his role as a senior policy adviser. Mr Dawson’s self-represented case was dismissed last year, but the allegations raised go to the heart of integrity issues facing the Palaszczuk government, including concerns that public servants are pressured into withholding complaints that could embarrass the government.

The allegations about Mr Barbagallo, the Premier’s chief of staff from May 2017 to October 2019, relate to his ownership of shares in a company awarded a $267,500 taxpayer-funded co-investment from the Queensland Business Development Fund.

In its Operation Keller report in September 2020, the Crime and Corruption Commission cleared Mr Barbagallo of corrupt conduct but said he breached the code of conduct for ministerial staffers by not disclosing his directorship of the company.

Mr Dawson alleged that in 2017 he raised with Mr Barbagallo the perceived inappropriateness of his company receiving the government funding.

Months later, after the 2017 election, he was told by Mr Barbagallo there were no places for him as a staffer in the incoming cabinet. Emails show Mr Barbagallo told him: “Travis, you can resign or we can terminate you.”

Mr Barbagallo said it was “standard practice” to terminate contracts after an election when no position is available.

The termination was later rescinded and Mr Dawson was employed as an adviser to minister Di Farmer, with whom he already had a poor relationship.

His contract was not renewed two months later.

Mr Dawson, who was re-employed in a less senior role by another minister in November 2018, says he told the Premier’s current chief of staff, Jim Murphy, about his belief that he had been dismissed from the DPC because he had raised the perceived inappropriateness with Mr Barbagallo. In an email to Mr Murphy in July 2020, Mr Dawson said he had been told inadvertently by other DPC staff of Mr Barbagallo’s ownership of the shares sometime around August 2017, and later raised it with Mr Barbagallo.

“He (Mr Barbagallo) told me it was none of my business,” Mr Dawson told Mr Murphy. “It was very soon after this discussion that I stopped being invited to campaign planning meetings or being given any work. I was … terminated months later.”

Mr Murphy forwarded Mr Dawson’s email to the CCC, which was investigating Mr Barbagallo, and Mr Dawson was called in for an interview.

After the October 2020 state election, when Mr Dawson was not immediately re-employed, he complained to Mr Murphy and alleged Ms Palaszczuk’s then deputy chief of staff, Denise Spinks, and executive manager Troy Mitchell had “deliberately” not allocated him a role because of his CCC interview.

Mr Murphy allegedly told him it was because Ms Spinks and Mr Mitchell were unhappy with his professional conduct.

He was later offered a position but not at the same senior policy adviser level he had previously held. A spokesman for Ms Palaszczuk said “the QIRC matter was dismissed”, “Mr Dawson is employed as a ministerial adviser” and the executive manager plays no role in employment decisions.

In a statement, Ms Spinks, who now works for lobbying firm Anacta Consulting, said: “I completely refute the unfounded allegations made by Mr Dawson.”

Mr Barbagallo declined to comment.

In defending the case, the DPC successfully argued that the claim had been made without jurisdiction because it did not identify a breach of the Industrial Relations Act and therefore did not qualify for an injunction under the Public Interest Disclosure Act.

In his QIRC case, Mr Dawson also claimed ministerial staff were coerced into taking unpaid leave to campaign for the Labor Party in the 2020 election. Text messages reveal he was told Ms Spinks had requested he take recreational leave or unpaid leave to travel to Cairns or Townsville to work as a campaign volunteer for Labor. “I knew this … to be inappropriate,” he said in court documents.