Minister pushed one-time rival from hospital role, then changed board laws

2 months ago 6

Queensland’s health minister pushed a prominent abortion advocate to quit a hospital board concerned that her public work could harm its relationship with the new LNP government.

Documents obtained by this masthead show Health Minister Tim Nicholls directed former board member Daile Kelleher – once a candidate for his seat of Clayfield – to “resolve” what he deemed were unmanageable conflicts between her roles.

Kelleher, the chief executive of Sexual and Reproductive Health Australia, decided to speak out after state parliament last week passed laws giving cabinet the power to dismiss health service board members without reason.

Former Gold Coast Health and Hospital Service board member Daile Kelleher and Health Minister Tim Nicholls.

“I made the decision that I felt I was forced to make,” Kelleher told this masthead of her May resignation, which came about a year into her four-year term on the board.

“I fundamentally believe that they specifically gave the ultimatum knowing that my only option would be to resign from my board role,” she said.

The former Children by Choice boss, who led the Queensland campaign to decriminalise abortion, joined the Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service board – on which she earned a $44,000 annual fee – in April last year.

Labor’s then health minister, Shannon Fentiman, appointed her after an independent recruitment process, citing her experience with women’s health.

After last October’s state election, in which the issue of abortion dogged the LNP, Kelleher spoke to this masthead for a story about the adoption of US-style abortion politics in Australia.

Board members are bound by public service code of conduct rules barring media commentary about government policy, but they can carefully contribute to public discussion in a private capacity.

But the comments sparked concern among the board, which prompted Kelleher to seek Integrity Commissioner advice about potential conflicts of interest, including her role leading Family Planning Alliance Australia, now called Sexual and Reproductive Health Australia.

What followed was a period of intense scrutiny by the board and its chair, Cindy Shannon AM. Kelleher said she disclosed about a decade of past jobs and relationships to the commissioner.

These included an ultimately abandoned run against Nicholls as the Greens candidate for Clayfield in 2017, which Shannon first raised with Kelleher.

Kelleher then also sought advice about membership of The Services Union and the Greens, and pro bono work done by Labor-aligned lobbyists Anacta for Children by Choice.

The commissioner had earlier considered Kelleher’s marriage to Maiwar MP Michael Berkman, and her 2023 Churchill Fellowship investigating abortion advocacy models, as only minor conflict risks not requiring action.

Integrity Commissioner Linda Waugh noted board concerns about reputational risk and “risks of damaging the relationship between the board and the minister”.

Waugh reiterated warnings that public comments made in a personal capacity could compromise Kelleher’s independence, but found that conflicts around board “matters or decisions regarding abortion or sexual or reproductive health” could be managed.

Under a plan drafted in December, Kelleher would be “quarantined” from such matters, along with those on which she or the alliance had a public policy position, or where the union was involved.

This would involve being recused from parts of meetings, and having some board material redacted or not provided. Kelleher would also advise of any planned public comments or activities.

Tim Nicholls, pictured last year with then opposition leader David Crisafulli, was one of only three LNP MPs who voted to decriminalise abortion in 2018.

Such plans require ministerial sign-off, but Nicholls never granted it.

In a letter to Kelleher in late February, he said this was because the broad scope of the quarantine would be too onerous to manage and created a risk that she would be unable to participate.

Nicholls said he had formed the view that the conflict, or possible conflict, between Kelleher’s alliance role and the board, which he directed her to “resolve”, “are not capable of being reasonably managed”.

Kelleher responded with two letters in early March, adding that she had looked back at all board meetings since her appointment and found no examples where quarantining was needed.

She said it would be a shame if such an approach meant leaders of other health sector organisations, such as the Cancer Council or Headspace, could not serve on boards due to administrative burden.

“As the consideration of sexual and reproductive health policy decisions arises so infrequently for a HHS board, I propose that this administrative burden is not impractical and more imagined than real,” Kelleher wrote.

“I suggest that if this particular conflict is unable to be managed, it must follow that there is no ability to accommodate any conflicts.”

Nicholls wrote back to say he still considered the situation unmanageable, and cited her comments to this masthead. He said they were not communicated to the board in advance, which Kelleher disputes.

Nicholls noted other media appearances, saying Kelleher had not liaised with Shannon about their content, and an Instagram post she shared with the words “abortion is halal”.

He also highlighted her Churchill report’s call for the government to broaden abortion access, which he said was “inconsistent with the Crisafulli government’s current position, which is to make no amendments in this term of government”.

Kelleher told this masthead Shannon was an experienced board member of whom she thought highly. But she felt the board was spooked by the change of government.

“I was seen as low-hanging fruit, or an easy thing to get rid of, rather than to manage,” she said.

A series of questions from this masthead to Nicholls went unanswered.

“We are unable to comment on individual workplace matters,” a spokesperson for the minister said. The Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service was contacted for comment.

Despite the LNP’s sweeping changes to other boards, revealed by this masthead, it could previously only remove health service directors for reasons including convictions, insolvency, or incompetence.

These powers have now been broadened, in a move that anti-corruption group Transparency International Australia warned “risked entrenching ministerial power” and creating “conditions for cronyism”.

Nicholls told parliament on Tuesday that beyond one former health service director who had been in jail, “those appointed by the former government ... are still in office”.

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