Premier David Crisafulli and ministers set to face integrity acid test

Will the integrity scandals that swamped the Palaszczuk and Miles governments return to haunt David Crisafulli? He is about to be tested, writes Des Houghton.

Queensland Whistleblowers’ Action Group founder Dr William De Maria.

Will the integrity scandals that swamped the Palaszczuk and Miles governments return to haunt David Crisafulli? And will the Premier have the courage to stand up when it really matters? He is about to be tested.

Crisafulli and his Cabinet ministers will first have to overcome the often-intransigent public service that will deliberately frustrate their efforts to honour their election pledges.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott had wise words on that topic last weekend when he said “unaccountable” bureaucrats stymied his government from the moment it was elected.

In an opinion piece in the Canadian newspaper, National Post, Abbott warned centre-right leaders around the world not to make the same mistakes he did.

Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

“Across the Anglosphere, recent conservative governments have tended to be in office but not really in power – either because they lacked an agenda of their own, or because what agenda they had was thwarted by a leftist establishment,” he wrote.

The words may have been written for Crisafulli and his team. I thought they especially applied to Jarrod Bleijie, Tim Nicholls, David Janetzki, John-Paul Langbroek, Dale Last, Brent Mickelberg, Andrew Powell, Laura Gerber, Dan Purdie, and Amanda Camm. They hold portfolio responsibilities where there will be push-back from Labor-appointed unionists, flyblown greens, socialist misfits, transgender activists and assorted cultural Marxists.

Under Labor, whistleblowers inside and outside of government who attempted to expose wrongdoing were treated with contempt. Many made Public Interest Disclosures that remain in limbo. I know not all PIDs will stand up to scrutiny, but many will.

University of Queensland academic William De Maria saw all this coming some years ago.

He won a battle against the university in 1997 when it attempted to reprimand him for providing evidence to a Senate inquiry.

Jarrod Bleijie. Picture: Supplied

Tim Nicholls. Picture: Supplied

He started the Queensland Whistleblowers’ Action Group. Later he said: “Being a whistleblower is risky. Common responses include ostracism, harassment, reprimands, referral to psychiatrists, demotion, punitive transfer, dismissal of black-listing.’’

During last year’s election campaign the LNP accused ALP ministerial staffers of bullying the bureaucrats and said there was “inadequate protection for government whistleblowers”.

In a speech in Parliament, the LNP’s integrity spokeswoman Fiona Simpson said there was “a culture of bullying and shooting the messenger”. She referred specifically to Mike Summerell, the former State Archivist unfairly ousted for his role in the Mangocube scandal. Simpson also told the House there was bullying behind the scenes to get rid of Integrity Commissioner Dr Nikola Stepanov. She had her office raided and her laptop seized in a mystery that remains unresolved.

“Our public servants have been labouring under this culture of entrenched fear and intimidation,” Simpson told Parliament.

“Queenslanders have paid the price for speaking out. Our public servants should be able to bring forward fearless and frank advice without fear or favour – not in fear of the favoured.’’ Integrity is suddenly back on the agenda. This time the shoe is on your foot, Mr Premier.

I hear there was a sudden rush of public servants reporting wrongdoing under the state’s whistleblower laws after Crisafulli won the election.

Some whistleblowers who have made PIDs are in Health, with more in the Department of Education, Works and the government-owned entities that run railways and ports. Some concern conflicts of interests, nepotism, falsifying of documents, the disbursement of taxpayer funds to Labor mates, and inappropriate sexual liaisons. More about that later.

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli during a press conference in Brisbane this week. Picture: Supplied

Right now there is a power struggle being played out in Health, and it seems to me the minister Tim Nicholls has already been put in his place by controlling hospital bureaucrats who seem to think elected Members of Parliament should not meddle in their affairs. They should, and they must.

In my opinion Nicholls must not bow to pressure to implement the recommendations from a flawed Labor review into the transgender clinic at the Queensland Children’s Hospital.

Bleijie and Nicholls held a rushed press conference last Sunday, where Bleijie said any further delivery of the recommendations would not be implemented until the government had time to review them.

The words from Nicholls and Bleijie were rather hollow and only added to the confusion. Both declined to say whether or not puberty blockers and sex change hormones were still being prescribed in Queensland. I’m told they are, despite these treatments being banned and discredited in the UK, the US and Europe.

Could it be that Nicholls and Bleijie are being kept in the dark?

Dr Jillian Spencer, a Queensland Health child psychiatrist who raised valid concerns about the gender clinic, was suspended for doing so and her PID was rejected by Queensland Health.

Spencer suggested teenagers and pre-pubescent children were directed towards life-changing drug treatment or surgery that most did not require, and, after a time realised they did not want. A landmark UK study came to the same conclusions, yet Spencer remains on the outer.

Bleijie and Nicholls must now compare her treatment to another brave whistleblower, Dr Kristy Wright, the forensic scientist who exposed a series of catastrophic problems at Queensland’s DNA laboratory.

Queensland Children's Hospital at South Brisbane.

Wright was brought back by Crisafulli to help fix the mess and retest the DNA samples from thousands of serious crime cases. Spencer, too, must be brought back.

When he comes up for air, Crisafulli must put meat on the bones of the promises the LNP made about whistleblowers.

De Maria, meanwhile, is unconvinced the LNP will protect “vulnerable whistleblowers” any better than the ALP.

“There is a fatal flaw in the whistleblower model which savvy bureaucrats and politicians know only too well,” he said.

“There is an insidious power imbalance between the whistleblower who stands alone and the powerful organisation he is challenging.

“It has always been a David and Goliath battle and will continue to be that.”

De Maria, 78, the son of a Sydney tailor, said he would like to see more “group dissent” with whistleblowers supporting one another.

“I tell whistleblowers: Don’t stick your head out, it will f--k your life.”

The press, too, had to be more vigilant in reporting the “moral warriors”.

“As a society we haven’t had an epiphany of righteousness.

“We remain an ethically challenged society where people are too scared to speak up.

“A lot of us won’t speak up because we value our careers more than the wrongdoing.’’

De Maria wonders whether the LNP pledge to protect whistleblowers “is a genuine one”.

“Public interest protection is not in the DNA of any of the political parties,” he said.

“They prefer to be their own watchdogs and not rely on these rule-breaking moral crusaders.’’

Originally published as Premier David Crisafulli and ministers set to face integrity acid test