Gordon Richard Nuttall (born 13 June 1953) is an Australian former politician who represented Sandgate in the Queensland Parliament from 1992 to 2006. He was a member of the Labor Party and served as a minister in the Beattie Ministry from 2001 to 2005. In 2009 he was found guilty of corruptly receiving secret commissions during his time in office and jailed for seven years. In 2010, he was found guilty of five charges of official corruption and five charges of perjury and, ultimately, jailed for an additional seven years, the longest jail term for corruption handed to a Commonwealth politician. He was released on parole in July 2015.
Political career
Nuttall won the seat of Sandgate at the 1992 state election as the Labor candidate, succeeding the retiring former Labor Opposition leader, Nev Warburton. He was previously an organiser for the Electrical Trades Union.
He served in the Beattie Ministry as:
Parliamentary Secretary to the Premier with special responsibilities for Multicultural Affairs (29 June 1998 – 17 February 2001); Minister for Industrial Relations (22 February 2001 – 12 February 2004); Minister for Health (12 February 2004 – 28 July 2005); and Minister for Primary Industries and Fisheries (28 July 2005 – 7 December 2005).
In 2004 he attempted to become Deputy Premier with a plan to overthrow the Premier at the time, Peter Beattie. However, a leadership challenge received no support from then Deputy Premier Anna Bligh, whom Nuttall proposed as the new Premier. Ms Bligh later said, "I didn't see it as any serious proposition that would have received any support from my colleagues and it didn't receive any support from myself."
In July 2005, he resigned as Minister for Health following media exposure of problems at Bundaberg Base Hospital. In June 2010, following a number of investigations, the hospital's director of surgery, Jayant Patel, was convicted and jailed for seven years on three counts of manslaughter and one count of grievous bodily harm to patients in his care. Nuttall blamed the system he had inherited as well as the administrators at the hospital for the situation which had arisen, but ultimately stepped down from the health portfolio. Premier Peter Beattie opted to take over the portfolio himself, relocating Nuttall to the primary industries and fisheries portfolio.
In August 2005, Nuttall stepped aside from the Ministry while the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) investigated claims he had given a false answer to a Parliamentary estimates committee regarding his prior knowledge of problems with overseas-trained doctors. The Commission reported back in December 2005, recommending the Attorney-General prosecute Nuttall under section 57 of the Criminal Code. The prosecution was not proceeded with; the government decided to revoke the relevant section of the Criminal Code so Parliament could deal with such matters itself under contempt of parliament provisions.
Nuttall resigned from the Ministry on 7 December 2005 and retired from Parliament at the September 2006 election. He resigned from the Labor Party on 12 December 2006 before he was referred to the party's Disputes Tribunal, which could have expelled him.
Corruption investigation
Initial charges and imprisonment
In 2006 the CMC also began an investigation into a series of loans Nuttall received from Queensland mining magnate Ken Talbot. On 19 January 2007, the CMC charged Nuttall with 35 counts of corruptly receiving payments totalling almost $300,000 from Talbot between 2002 and 2005. Nuttall was later charged with receiving a further secret commission of $60,000 in 2002 from businessman and WorkCover Queensland director Harold Shand. Talbot and Shand were also charged over the alleged secret commissions.
Nuttall was committed to stand trial in December 2008. In June 2009, he pleaded not guilty to all charges before the District Court. On 15 July 2009, a jury convicted him on all 36 charges, and on 17 July he was sentenced to seven years' jail with a non-parole period of two and a half years.
Ten years earlier, on 12 May 1998, Nuttall said of his benefactor, Talbot, in Parliament,
On 14 August 2009, Nuttall lodged an appeal against his July 2009 conviction and sentence. On 12 February 2010, his appeal against conviction and sentence was heard in the Supreme Court of Queensland. On 23 March 2010, his appeal against conviction was dismissed, and his application for leave to appeal against sentence was refused.
In June 2010, Talbot died in an aircraft accident in Africa and charges against him were dropped. In 2011, Shand was convicted of paying Nuttall a secret commission and sentenced to 15 months jail.