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For Merri Rose, the one-time thorn in the side of Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, it's been a long, hard fall from grace.
In a dramatic end to a tumultuous ministerial career, Queensland's former "minister for fun" was yesterday sent to jail for three months for blackmailing the Premier, three years after she formally quit the frontbench in disgrace.
The 52-year-old, who has been living with her fisherman partner in a humble cottage on Moreton Island, pleaded guilty to threatening to make public very damaging evidence against someone unless Beattie organised her a tourism post which paid at least $A150,000 ($168,690).
The identity of that person remains a secret, but the court heard what Rose threatened to reveal would cause them to "suffer and lose everything".
Lawyers argued Rose was suffering a major depressive disorder when she made the threat last year and her actions were a cry for help.
But trouble has always followed the colourful former racing, fair trading and tourism minister, known more for her socialising than ministerial achievements.
Rose, a mother of two, had easily held her seat of Currumbin on the Gold Coast for more than a decade.
Her first major political fight, the 1992 state election, saw her pioneer Labor's entree into the Gold Coast - traditional National Party heartland.
As a backbencher she was never afraid of a good stoush and got the Emergency Services portfolio in the first Beattie Government in 1998.
A year later she was given the portfolios of Tourism, Racing and Fair Trading - a glitzy role she admitted she had had her eye on.
She became known as the "minister for fun", attending tourism promotions and race days and regularly appearing in Brisbane gossip columns.
Rose's ministerial car came to be a great source of trouble for the accident-prone minister.
She admitted to overloading her taxpayer-funded limousine with partygoers after a Brisbane State of Origin match in 2002.
She came under fire again over her car after it was damaged by hail when her son Jason drove it work.
It emerged he had also driven to Sydney with friends to watch a rugby league match.
But it was the allegations of mistreating staff members that proved most damaging to Rose.
A report from Q-Comp, a workers' compensation tribunal, upheld a bullying allegation by Rose's personal secretary Barbara Daddow, which included claims the former minister had forced her to doctor parliamentary leave and expense documents.
In an embarrassment for Beattie, Rose was forced to resign from cabinet two days into his Government's 2004 election campaign after Daddow won her claim.
- AAP
