Gordon Nuttall

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The Honorable Gordon Richard Nuttall (born 13 June 1953) was an Australian politician. He was a member of the Labor Party until he resigned in 2007. He served as the member for Sandgate in the Queensland Legislative Assembly. He served as parliamentary secretary to the Premier for Multicultural Affairs and then Minister for Industrial Relations and then Health in the Beattie Government, but resigned from that portfolio following ongoing criticism of his handling the "Dr Death" scandal. Before being elected to the Assembly in 1991, he was an organiser for the Electrical Trades Union.

Nuttall admitted to lying to a Queensland Parliamentary Estimates Committee about his knowledge of the Dr Death scandal. The scandal involved a highly incompetent doctor Jayant Patel at the Bundaberg Base Hospital. Patel has been found responsible for the deaths of eight people and may be associated with as many as eighty-eight fatalities. Nuttall has asserted that the administrators of the Bundaberg Base Hospital were responsible for failing to monitor Dr Patel's activities.

In the 2005 Cabinet reshuffle Nuttall was appointed the Queensland Minister for Primary Industries, a senior portfolio in the Beattie Cabinet. He was replaced as Minister for Health by Stephen Robertson.

On 28 August 2005 Nuttall announced he was standing aside from the Primary Industries portfolio while the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) investigated his comments at the Estimates Committee. Although he briefly returned to his ministerial duties before the completion of the CMC inquiry, he was eventually forced to resign from the Cabinet. In 2006, after 14 years in the state parliament, Nuttall retired at the 9 September election.

In 2006 the CMC also began an investigation into a series of suspicious loans Nuttall received from Queensland mining magnate, Ken Talbot. On 19 January 2007, the CMC charged Nuttall with corruptly receiving payments totaling close to $300,000 from Mr Talbot[1][2]. Nuttall appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates Court for a brief hearing on 25 January 2007 where he was remanded on bail on his own undertaking[3].

Nuttall's ministerial contributions included the creation of the electrical safety office, reforms to shopping hours, hearing tests for newborn babies, significant increases to government nurses and teachers and the first state laws to restrict smoking in public areas.