Queensland Premier Anna Bligh says criticism of her taking part in a magazine photo shoot days after north Queensland was hit by a massive cyclone is "petty and nasty".
Ms Bligh posed for the Australian Women's Weekly magazine on February 5, as north Queensland reeled from Cyclone Yasi which had struck just before midnight on February 2.
It was part of a cover story for the February edition, which carries the tag line: "Anna Bligh - on leadership, love and looking after mum".
In the article, she speaks of the challenges ahead for Queensland after devastating floods and Yasi.
But the state opposition has questioned how Ms Bligh was able to "take half a day off for a photo shoot" and accused her of being more focused on a media strategy than on disaster recovery.
Deputy Leader Lawrence Springborg said Ms Bligh had argued she returned to Brisbane to organise food distribution in cyclone areas, but the phone hook-up could have been done in the north.
"This was all about the premier reconstructing her own image," he told reporters in Brisbane.
"This government has one eye on disaster reconstruction, the other eye on political reconstruction, and it just proves again they have reverted to type and will stop at nothing to try to cling to the next election."
But Ms Bligh said the article kept Queensland's plight in the national spotlight as media interest in Queensland's flood and cyclone disasters waned.
"There might be some people who are nasty and petty about these sort of things, but I've got a job to do," she told reporters in Port Douglas, in Queensland's far north.
"That job is to help people recover, and part of that means keeping this issue alive in the national media and the minds of people around the country."
She said the magazine was the most widely read in Australia and was therefore an important forum.
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