Premier vows action on damning report, LNP says it shows ‘crimes but no culprit’

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has vowed to implement a sweeping set of recommendations to boost accountability, transparency and the independence of integrity bodies, after a damning review of the government’s internal culture.

The LNP has seized on the report as further fuel for its calls for a broadscale royal commission-style inquiry into the third-term government, with opposition leader David Crisafulli suggesting it “identifies a lot of crimes, but not a single culprit”.

Professor Peter Coaldrake has handed down the final report of his review of culture and accountability in the Queensland public sector.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen / Matt Dennien

The four-month review, by former Queensland University of Technology vice-chancellor Professor Peter Coaldrake AO, has called on the government to shed searing light on its decision-making processes by releasing cabinet documents within 30 days.

Coaldrake found a public service kneecapped by an overreliance on contractors and consultants, a “trivialising” of parliamentary committees, along with an internal culture “too tolerant” of bullying and dominated by short-term political thinking.

Titled Let The Sunshine In, the report stems from 327 submissions and almost 100 meetings. It makes 14 recommendations, accepted in full by the government, including calls for unparallelled cabinet transparency and a central “clearing house” for complaints.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the government would accept all of its recommendations.

“They are bold, they are comprehensive and they are visionary, and they are exactly what I want,” she said, before channelling former premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen successor Mike Ahern’s words in pledging to act on recommendations of the Fitzgerald Inquiry.

“The report will go to cabinet on Monday and we will begin work on implementing these sweeping reforms lock, stock and barrel.”

The LNP has made repeated calls for a royal commission into the government over recently aired integrity issues — previously deemed unnecessary by experts amid other reviews and formal inquiries.

Crisafulli said the report only strengthened them.

“The Premier has overseen a rotten culture that delivers rotten services for Queenslanders and this report shows that the rotten culture comes from the top, this report reveals some incredible breakdowns in the way that government is run in this state,” he said.

“The Premier must front the media today and show why she can lead the government out of the mess she has created.”

Palaszczuk called on Coaldrake to conduct the review in February amid a slew of reporting on accountability issues around her government, most significantly concerns raised by outgoing Integrity Commissioner Nikola Stepanov about interference in her office.

His interim report, published in April, outlined what Coaldrake described as systemic issues including ministerial staff overreach and “artistic obscuring” of lobbying — including a success fee paid to one person employed by a consulting firm because they were not technically a lobbyist.

The Crime and Corruption Commission recently widened its own probe into lobbying.

Palaszczuk sought to get ahead of the findings on Monday, announcing her cabinet had agreed to broaden the definition of a lobbyist to all but admin staff at lobbying firms, require all contact to come via ministers’ chiefs-of-staff in writing, and catch further detail about the subject matter of meetings.

Coaldrake welcomed the move in his report, published late on Tuesday, which he said was an action “portrayed as urgently responding to community concerns”.

Among the 14 recommendations is an even further tightening of lobbying regulations to explicitly ban what Coaldrake described as “dual hatting”, after two former state Labor secretaries-turned-lobbyists also helped run the Palaszczuk government’s 2020 election campaign.

Departments should be required to better spell out the benefits from engaging consultants and contractors.

Coaldrake has also called for cabinet submissions and their attachments, agendas and decision papers to be proactively released and published online within 30 business days.

At present, cabinet minutes are published only after a period of 30 years in Queensland. Broader collections of federal cabinet papers are released after 10 years.

He has also suggested a single “clearing house” for complaints to manage the byzantine system of integrity bodies, allowing the CCC to “redouble its attention on serious corruption and major crime”.