Opinion: ‘How many people have to die before Premier fixes Queensland Health?’

Brendan Luxton’s heartbroken family spent hours pleading with Queensland Health to help him as his mental health rapidly deteriorated. Now they want – and deserve – change, writes Kylie Lang.

As the shattered family of Brendan Luxton reasonably asks: “How many people have to die before change occurs and the Premier does her job and fixes Queensland Health?”

“Do you have to go to the press to get action if you’re not famous or play a certain sport?”

Here is a Queensland family who did everything right.

They followed every protocol in seeking an exemption for their desperately ill brother and much-loved son so he could quarantine safely at home.

What they got in return for their diligence, persistence and respectful compliance was a big fat nothing.

Brendan Luxton – a man with everything to live for and a success by anyone’s definition – killed himself within 24 hours of release from hotel quarantine.

Brendan Luxton’s (right) sister Marita and brother Derek are asking questions after their pleas to release him from quarantine were ignored.

In his darkest final days, when a government that professes to care about people’s mental health approved celebrity Dannii Minogue’s request to quarantine in a Gold Coast mansion, Brendan was literally left for dead.

His stricken mother, sister and brother were forced to remotely try to manage his fragile state on an iPhone.

From the get-go on July 4, 2020, when they filed for home quarantine and detailed Brendan’s high-risk state and their willingness to “provide any declarations or be subject to any monitoring or inspection”, they were ignored. Comprehensively.

Instead of their well-articulated case being escalated, they watched their beloved “Bren” disappear before their eyes.

It beggars belief that their request for an exemption “did not receive a response”, to use the words of a bureaucrat from Queensland Health who finally contacted the family on August 4 – a full month too late.

Brendan’s mother Liz, his sister Marita Corbett and brother Derek didn’t sit around hoping for the best.

They hounded Queensland Health, calling “clueless” staff several times over several hours, demanding action to save their loved one’s life.

Art for quarantine death yarn

Six days into his quarantine in the Marriott Hotel, they arranged for Brendan to have a tele-consultation with their local Coorparoo GP, who wrote a referral for the 51-year-old to Belmont Private Hospital.

They sent him care packages of his favourite foods, such as sushi and licorice, and FaceTimed and texted him countless times a day.

In hindsight, they wonder if they should have sought special treatment after all, leveraging their brother’s long friendship with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

Should they have knocked on the door of their neighbour, chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young?

The paper trail of the family’s treatment by the Palaszczuk Government, treatment that can only be described as disgraceful, is hard to read.

Even harder is sitting with Brendan’s siblings, who 14 months on remain stricken and shocked by the way their big brother was fobbed off and forgotten.

The siblings in happier times.

When we meet in Marita Corbett’s new home in Coorparoo – she and her husband moved out of their other home the day Brendan suicided in their guest wing – this successful business woman is shaking with nerves.

“This is the bravest day of my life,” she says, crying.

“We thought getting him out of (hotel) quarantine would be the turning point, but it was the end.

“We now strongly believe the reason it happened at home is that he didn’t want to take his life somewhere anonymous; he held out through hotel quarantine to get to our house, to be in a familiar place that felt safe.

Marita Corbett desperately tried to save her brother. Photo: Jamie Hanson

“If we’d got him out of quarantine in that first week, which is what we were trying desperately to achieve, and if we had him at home in the second week, he’d still be here.”

Brendan’s mother Liz, a retired bank teller who had the most special bond of all with her firstborn son, can’t join us for the interview.

It’s too much for the 77-year-old who, her daughter describes, is “heartbroken, but still shows up every day for us, puts on her lipstick and tries to be grateful for what she has left”.

Brendan’s family is only speaking now because they say they are disgusted that the government – led by a woman they once held great affection for – has learned nothing since his passing.

“Sick children and terminally ill older Queenslanders and their loved ones are still being denied exemptions that are freely handed out to any superstar that takes the Premier’s fancy,” Mrs Corbett says.

“Even the death of a close friend was not enough to get her to change her deeply flawed system.”

Derek Luxton, who moved his wife and three daughters from Mackay to Coorparoo to be near his sister following Brendan’s death, is also furious with Jeannette Young.

Earlier this month, on September 3, Dr Young became upset when asked in a press conference what level of deaths she would be “comfortable with” in a Covid scenario going forward.

“Can you please remember who I am?” she told the journalist.

“I stand up here every day but ultimately I went into medicine to save lives.

“I do not want to see any death of a Queenslander that is preventable, whether it be due to smoking, due to obesity, due to high-alcohol intake, due to accidents that could have been prevented, due to road trauma, I could go on.”

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk at CEDA, referred to Mr Luxton’s death while announcing mental health funding.

Mr Luxton says his big brother’s death was “totally preventable” and Dr Young “never once mentioned mental health in that media conference; it was not on her list”.

“If they really cared about mental health, it would automatically come off their tongues,” he says, holding his sister’s hand.

“I’m just dumbfounded by the way the whole situation has been handled.

“Until this happened, I was a Labor supporter through and through; I was a union guy; but not anymore. They’ve lost me.”

Who could blame him?