Chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young needs to delay her move to Governor role

Dr Jeannette Young will likely be a wonderful governor, but with Queensland plunged into lockdown, her proposed start date should be delayed. VOTE IN OUR POLL

Dr Jeannette Young will likely be a wonderful governor of Queensland.

Her experience, warmth and intellect would suggest nothing else.

Throw her husband, Professor Graeme Nimmo, a respected microbiologist, into the mix and we should all be confident that this is a couple who will do us proud as our vice-regal representatives.

Dr Young’s appointment will also mark the first time in our history that women have simultaneously held the roles of Governor, Premier and Chief Justice – a seriously momentous occasion for our state.

But with Queensland again plunged into an uncertain lockdown caused directly by three stuff-ups inside our health and quarantine systems we wonder if Dr Young’s proposed November start date at Fernberg should be delayed.

Some are worried chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young should delay her promotion. Picture: Tara Croser.

Whatever your own opinion is of Dr Young’s risk-averse decision-making during this pandemic, the truth is it has been her decisions that have shielded us from the worst of Covid.

Even Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has conceded many times that it has been Dr Young who has kept us safe.

When the Premier repeats her pandemic mantra of “I will always follow the health advice”, what she means is she defers to Dr Young – Australia’s longest-serving chief health officer, who sagely started planning for a possible pandemic when swine flu hit way back in 2009, four years into her time in the role.

Consequently, Queensland’s pandemic response has been hailed as among the best in the world. We have had just under 1700 confirmed infections and seven deaths.

That compares to modelling at the start of the pandemic that predicted 1.25 million Queenslanders could be infected in the first six months of the pandemic – and 12,500 may die.

As you would expect from a good leader, Dr Young gives the credit to the “brilliant” team around her and their “magnificent joint effort”.

But those in the know are convinced it is Dr Young herself who has played a pivotal role.

She’s acted decisively and the politicians have listened.

When news of her appointment was announced early last week, Dr Young said it was her “hope that the pandemic will be on its way out by the time I become governor”.

Let’s hope she still feels the same, because we now know that as Dr Young was uttering those words last Monday – in a Queensland that felt comfortably safe from the virus that has laid siege to the rest of the world – a mine worker from Victoria who had just caught the Delta variant of Covid from a Brisbane quarantine hotel was infecting co-workers in a central Queensland mine, while an unvaccinated clerical worker at The Prince Charles Hospital was about to start her first of two shifts while infectious.

Fast-forward nine days and here we are again with Brisbane in lockdown, this time with everyone else in the southeast – and the good people of Townsville, who played host to that clerical worker for several days late last week and over the weekend.

Passengers leaving Magnetic Island as the Covid lockdown starts in Townsville.

It shows just how quickly things can change, and how much on a knife edge the situation always is.

In our war with Covid, it is clear that any complacency leads to crisis.

Considering that truth, having Dr Young leave her post before all of us are protected by the vaccine would not be a wise decision.

That is doubly so considering her deputy, Sonya Bennett, will leave her post this week to become Australia’s deputy chief medical officer.

We very much look forward to Governor Jeannette Young.

We just wonder if it should be a bit later.