Do we like them?

Do we like Steven Miles?

Our score: 7 out of 10. A Labor leader with a visible pro-LGBTQ+ record and no harmful words found, marked down by a recent contempt finding and a thin, unopened evidence trail.

Steven Miles is the Labor bloke who was Queensland's Premier from December 2023 until Labor lost the October 2024 state election to David Crisafulli's LNP. After the loss he stayed on as Opposition Leader, and Labor's caucus backed him to continue in the job.

His path in was through the union movement, then Labor politics. He rose through the ministry (environment, health, deputy premier) before taking the top job when Annastacia Palaszczuk stepped down. That's the short version: the search tools here only handed over thin biography pages, so treat the backstory as a sketch rather than a portrait.

The recent stoush is a parliamentary one. Reporting from May 2026 says a committee found Miles in contempt of the Queensland parliament over a claim he made, and that his first apology in April 2025 was judged equivocal. He then gave a second, unreserved apology, and Bleijie said he should not stay as leader. That's a political fight with a partisan opponent, so where you land depends on whether you read it as a genuine breach or as a point-scoring exercise.

On the harm test, nothing came up in his own words or acts that targets LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet. As Premier he launched a Pride strategy for LGBTQ+ Queenslanders. I couldn't open enough of the detailed reporting to run a full vote-by-vote check, so this is a pass on what turned up, not a clean bill of health.

The honest gap: the page tools were throttled during this check, so there's no fully read court or fact-check record behind this. Nothing found suggests a pattern of mistreating people, and the one clear stain is the contempt finding and the apologies that followed it.

The good stuff is mostly policy: the Pride strategy, plus a record in government on climate and public transport that supporters point to. Whether it all adds up depends on how much weight you put on his time as Premier versus the recent parliamentary mess.