Premier Pete's $1 million urgent history of Qld ...

More evidence that Premier Beattie is on his way out, commissioning an 'urgent' history of Qld without going to a tender process.

Could it possibly be argued that Dr Fitzgerald will write a sympathetic history of the Beattie years?

If not, why the urgency to get it written, why the need for an advance of almost $1 million and why was there no tender for the work?

Excerpt from the Courier Mail:

$1m for 'urgent' history book

16 August 2007

Taxpayers will fork out almost $1 million for a new history of Queensland under a publishing deal approved by Premier Peter Beattie but not offered for public tender.

Griffith University professor of history and politics Ross Fitzgerald scored the plum job in a contract worth about $900,000 over three years.

Dr Fitzgerald has already written a two-volume history of Queensland up to the early 1980s.

The deal has raised eyebrows in publishing circles and sparked Opposition accusations of cronyism.

Henry Rosenbloom, publisher of the highly respected independent Scribe, Australia's small publisher of the year in 2006, was astonished at the figure.

"I've never heard of anything like it," he said. "It's the sort of advance you would give a major sporting celebrity like Steve Waugh for a biography that you could be certain of selling hundreds of thousands of copies."

See - Beattie's on his way out - but it costs us another $1 million.