It’s the stuff of a Yes Minister episode. Allegations of files being deleted. Computers taken from offices. Reports to Parliament being changed to improve the government’s performance. Investigations into ministers kept secret. Attempts to have the head of bodies overseeing the government sacked.
These are not accusations being levelled at Joh Bejlke-Petersen’s Queensland. This is Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Queensland, 35 years after Tony Fitzgerald QC and his seminal report rewrote history. And how she handles the swag of complaints about honesty and transparency and accountability will dictate how much of a problem she will face.
These are uncharted waters for this state government. Palaszczuk has not had to deal with accusations directed at her government’s integrity, and that’s been clear in how she’s handled allegations from the state’s former activist, the outgoing integrity commissioner, the former acting legal services commissioner and a senior government adviser.
Together those four have alleged annual reports have been changed, files deleted, a computer confiscated, ministers using personal email accounts to avoid scrutiny, and difficulty for public servants and watchdogs to provide independent advice — and keep their jobs.
Her response? To ask her director-general — the state’s most senior public servant — to investigate some of those claims and to ignore the rest.
That ended yesterday, after days of strong criticism and her director-general informing the premier she did not want the perception of a conflict in running an integrity probe into some of the accusations. That meant Palasczcuk was forced to back down, and now a QC will wrestle with accusations made by former state archivist Mike Summerell that include a raft of complaints — from reports being kept secret to others being altered to make the government look better.
But the government, hell-bent on creating a narrative, might have been too clever by half. That integrity probe just looks at a slice of the accusations. What about claims that a computer was taken from the integrity commissioner’s office and files deleted? And that she was secretly referred to a parliamentary committee in a bid to have her removed? What about the claims that lawyers got to pick their own watchdog? Or that ministers used their private emails to skirt around requirements that enveloped work accounts?
The government thought it had dealt with integrity complaints by announcing a narrow, limited inquiry by Tony Fitzgerald QC into the state’s anti-corruption watchdog; that the focus would move from its performance to that of one of those independent bodies.
Even there, it was careful to ensure there was little wriggle room for Fitzgerald. The inquiry, which began on Monday, is unlikely to have public hearings, and will be confined to probing the structure of the Crime and Corruption Commission and the legislation around it.
The commissioners say they do not intend to extend those terms of reference.
The problem for the government is that a host of accusations — including those made by the state’s integrity commissioner — continue to be unaddressed.
Why wouldn’t a government that boasts about its record of accountability want to shut down the serious accusations being levelled at it? Hubris? Fear of what might be found? A disregard for voters?
Whatever it is, the government will need to deal with it, or the bruising it has had this week will develop into an open sore.
Stop trying to re-write Queensland political history.
Bill Gunn the straightest politician who has ever graced our parliament called the Fitzgerald Inquiry and his “mates” from the Country/ National Party never spoke to him again.
Joh Bejelke Petersen was not convicted of being corrupt due to a hold out jury chairman.
A number of other cabinet ministers and the Police Commissioner were convicted and then jailed.
The Bejelke Petersen era started as most governments do and then slowly over the 35 years some of the police became more and more corrupt. The majority of the politicians took some favours, and others took none.
The public service was not immune from collecting bribes either.
The absolute numbers and types of sordid crimes which were committed will not be released for another 20 years, as the Fitzgerald Inquiry took much more evidence in camera with their evidence given being sealed, in order to protect the people giving witness testimony.
One, I can testify to, was that, as a young teenager in a large country town, I was friends with the daughters of a police sergeant.
He used to always warn us that when we came out from a night venue we all went to, to stand back from the footpath edge and never accept an offer of a lift home from police officers.
When we were about 30 or so, he explained that he had given testimony regarding his colleagues to the Fitzgerald Inquiry and if he appeared to have committed suicide, that he would have been murdered.
His colleagues were running a child prostitution racket out of the watch house and until Fitzgerald, he had no one he trusted.that he could tell because, as he said, I have a wife and two girls to look after and there was nobody who I knew could do something without those bastards coming for me and my family.
Compare this one case, and contrast with the relative crimes of using a private email address for government business and not having an up to date diary.
The stench of the corruption wafting from Queensland in the 80’s was eyewatering even when I was OS and living and working in Sydney.
Knighthoods being stripped and a Police Commissioner going to jail
A lot of police resigned and public servants careers ended with sudden resignations……..
Tony Fitzgerald and all those involved in the RC had to leave their home state, because it was unsafe to be here.
Remember Russ Hinze..he was right up there with Joe and Flo Petersen and ( pumpkin scones)
He was a kiwi same as Barnaby Joyce and neither were very smart, Joe was as corrupt as they come and inarticulate, Barnaby must hsve been taught by Petersen .
I was in Queensland when Petersen was Premier
During the lead-up to the RC, after “The Moonlight State”* was aired – a couple of journos took Hinze in a car, down to The Valley, to show him where a couple of those brothels were – he wouldn’t get out of the car, didn’t want to go in….. probably would have been embarrassing :- …. “The usual Russ?”
[Funny those journos “knowing” where those brothels were – for years, before that 4 Corners* light show, they didn’t seem too? …. Sure ‘Bubbles Bath House’ was on that corner on the main drag a block from The Valley on the main drag into town (half a Km away) – but “who” would have known what it really was?]
The timing of this is interesting – particularly given it is being pushed by ‘Gleeson – (Sky/CM)’ and Des Houghton from the Courier Mail and now Ms King.
Maybe it has more to do with the upcoming federal election than anything else.
Former Walkley award winning and News Ltd journo Tony Koch called Gleeson a lightweight and one of the reasons the CM was now a sewer – and it is – it is not worth wrapping your used kitty litter in.
I think there needs to be more than a couple of disaffected former LNP public servants and two CM bigmouths and troublemakers running off at the mouth for a proper commission of inquiry to be called. Fitzgerald will shine some light.
Funny that “coincidence” – still getting riding instructions from Murdoch’s rags?
Another breathless, hyperinflated anti-Queensland-Labor/Palaszczuk government propaganda battle waged in the Curry or Maul, Crikey, and no doubt, in time, The Drum, next time King (“works at Crikey” = “lefty”?) is on.
I don’t know Tony Fitzgerald or his family, but, they should be put up for the highest AO’s once this one is done.
I don’t doubt that if anything is there, it will be found.
‘…the bruising it has had this week will develop into an open sore.’
‘this’ week?! The Courier-Mail engages in unrelenting attacks on the Palaszczuk government in every edition so, pray tell, why would one week be any different from another.
TBF, they don’t do it every day of the year though.
…. There’s Good Friday and Christmas Day – when they don’t print.
Hey, there’s an idea :- “The political agenda driven m.o. of one of Rupert’s rags – from an ex-insider”?
…. Waddayareckon Madonna?
… “Different broom, different carpet”?
Yep zut, being an ex-Qlder living in SA and reading Murdoch tabloids in Brisbane and Adelaide, it has been nauseating reading daily criticism of Palaszczuk’s handling of the pandemic and favourable coverage of Marshall’s handling of the pandemic when they’ve both done the same thing (Marshall sometimes being even more draconian than Palaszczuk). Any online comment to this effect to the CM is invariably deleted.
Madonna King, the LNP’s chief cheerleader, pom-poms shaking high to the sky. Why does Crikey continue to encourage this discredited, partisan hack?
“Hell-bent on creating a narrative”? There a bit of that going around.
Still seething about how the ABC/4 Corners/Chris Masters/”Moonlight State” snuck into Queensland to shine a light in the backyard of what her Curry Or Maul put up with for years – an act that resulted in that rag sending out one, single journo (Phil Dickie) to save face.
Working for a rag that editorialised the lauding of those ‘halcyon days of Bjelke-Petersen premiership’ for years after.
And now can’t wait to try to spin and equate the present Palaszczuk Labor government’s embarrassment with Bjelke-Petersen’s – in that “they all do it” make-over mitigation.
As if the corruption here is on the same scale as under the “misunderstood” Bjelke-Petersen.
…. At least the premier (herself) has pulled this on – back in Bjelke-Petersen’s corruption daze, we had to wait for him to be out of the country for Bill Gunn to do it.
Does King give her that differentiated credit here?
Next week “The Case for a Real Federal ICAC” – needed for much the same reasons (and worse – “Pass the pork barrel Madonna”) as “the case for”, dwelt on here?
Yes, if only the current federal government could have the same problems of being under this level of scrutiny. One could only wish.