We all lose under Queensland’s winner-takes-all political games

Practice makes perfect, as the saying goes. And there are few less-practised areas in Queensland politics and parliament than collaboration.

This has rarely been on such full display as in last week’s collapse of the cross-party committee set up to look into youth justice – an area desperately in need of collaborative spirit.

Noosa MP Sandy Bolton (centre) was the first head of an independent policy committee in at least two decades.Credit: Matt Dennien

The Youth Justice Reform Select Committee was announced in an attempt at (or at least a show of) bipartisanship late last year, as the Labor government appeared destabilised by youth crime.

Chaired by the sole independent MP in Queensland’s single house of parliament, Sandy Bolton, the group required major party MPs to find agreement across the aisle to take any action.

After 26 meetings, 22 public hearings or briefings, and multiple site visits statewide – along with 220 submissions – this is where it all fell apart.

Standing to speak in parliament on Wednesday, Bolton said her position trying to wrangle the three Labor and three LNP MPs into agreement on a weeks-late interim report had become “untenable”.

With heightened media attention and “politicking” ahead of the October state election, she said, MPs had “polarising” views on what shape reform should take.

Some, unnamed by Bolton, essentially blocked the interim report’s release as she worked to find compromises on a handful of the 60 recommendations, even though any MP could write a dissenting report.

“An outcome where there is no report tabled, especially given that we have developed and agreed on many substantive comments and recommendations, is unacceptable,” she said.

Bolton stood to ask the parliament to shift rules back to the norm, where the chair, usually a government MP, can vote as tiebreaker to pass decisions with a majority.

Instead, Leader of the House Mick de Brenni moved to dissolve the committee and have the draft report tabled, and parachuted Bolton into a regular Labor-controlled committee with oversight of the portfolio.

The blame game then erupted in the late-night parliamentary sitting, and continued the next day.

LNP members said they had hoped to extend the report’s deadline, while criticising recommendations suggesting further review was needed in certain areas.

Instead, they argued that what was needed was a handful of urgent actions (one Labor MP put the figure at five), along the lines of those repeated by the LNP for the better part of a year.

Cries that Labor was attempting to “gag” media reporting of crime also followed. It wasn’t.

However, the decision to throw out the entire committee rather than grant Bolton’s request – which could also have seen her side with the LNP and use the committee’s power against the government – is worthy of criticism.

Among the recommendations and findings in the draft report, there were key themes we’ve heard for years about the need to intervene earlier to help set (or reset) complex kids on a path away from the criminal justice system.

They heard again about the need for a different approach, somewhere between youth detention centres and release into a community where many are on edge.

The nuance of the committee report is telling of the broader issue: Queensland’s state MPs just don’t have to collaborate or compromise often.

In the sole Australian state without an upper house of parliament, a committee system meant to act as an alternative check on government is often trivialised, as the 2022 Coaldrake report put it.

It’s been described by many, including former corruption fighter Tony Fitzgerald and the parliament’s long-term Clerk, Neil Laurie, as a “winner takes all” approach.

In other Australian states, said Laurie in a 2022 seminar marking 100 years since the upper house ended, “there is by virtue of necessity more of a culture of compromise than exists in Queensland, more tolerance of other views”.

Last week, Bolton shared an idea about why the committee collapsed – and what it means.

“You can only do this with practice, and as we have seen, doing so infrequently makes it difficult for some MPs to move from combative conduct to working collaboratively,” she wrote in a media release.

“This is especially important when it comes to such critical issues such as youth crime, which if not addressed appropriately, can lead to even greater trauma for our communities.”

How MPs across the political spectrum can expect to do so on any other polarising issue facing the community or parliament itself is anyone’s guess. But they need to practise harder.