Opinion: Premier, you won’t have to watch your back when it comes to D’Ath
If there’s one thing we can be grateful for amid leadership rumbles, it is that Yvette D’Ath’s name is not being tossed around as a successor to the Premier, writes Kylie Lang.
Kylie Lang
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If there’s one thing we can be grateful for amid leadership rumbles within the Labor party, it is that Yvette D’Ath’s name is not being tossed around as a successor to Annastacia Palaszczuk.
It’s hard to imagine Ms D’Ath, who has comprehensively backfired in her recycled portfolios, is capable of running anything but a chook raffle.
However, for reasons that surely cannot be as simple as belonging to the same Right faction, she continues to be supported by Ms Palaszczuk – who will jet in from Italy this weekend and be greeted with another dreadful decision by Ms D’Ath.
It won’t be the only mess the Premier will need to be seen to address – two weeks is a long time in politics – so let’s hope she is well rested and reinvigorated to do her job.
This week, The Courier-Mail revealed Ms D’Ath scrapped an in-depth probe into truly sickening child safety failures – just days before the government went into caretaker mode ahead of the October 2020 election. During this period no major ministerial decisions should be made.
Coincidence? Not according to Ms D’Ath, but I’m not buying it.
In shades of Groundhog Day, Ms D’Ath was Attorney-General at the time, and axed an investigation into how two Brisbane brothers were so utterly failed by numerous state agencies as they suffered two decades of shocking abuse by their father.
Damning revelations by the Disability Royal Commission show the state government was planning its own probe, kicking off in June 2020, but then on October 2 of that year – the Friday before the pre-election caretaker period – Ms D’Ath canned it. She maintains she was acting on advice, and says “none of this takes away from the findings of the royal commission of the failures of the government”.
On this latter point, she is correct.
But as one reader said to me on Thursday, “this Queensland government is really starting to get a pong about it”.
I reckon the handling of the matter concerning these two poor lads makes the stench all the stronger.
No surprises that the royal commission is demanding an urgent inquiry and, more than a year out from the next state election, it appears Ms D’Ath, following a disastrous run as Health Minister, could be now on board.
The Attorney-General says if the head of the Queensland Family and Child Commission – the body which put together terms of reference for the first, abandoned investigation – believes a review is warranted, then she’ll support it.
For heavens’ sake. There’s three years lost and who knows how many other travesties allowed to fester during this time.
It was back in May 2020 that the brothers, known by pseudonyms Kaleb and Jonathon, were found malnourished, naked except for wearing soiled nappies, and locked in a bare room while their father lay dead in another part of the house.
They were 19 and 17 years old respectively, but the royal commission found several state government agencies were aware of the risks from when Kaleb was born.
We’re talking four governments here, one LNP under Campbell Newman, the rest Labor under Ms Palaszczuk, Ms Bligh and Mr Beattie. Sadly, on this current government’s so-called watch, there have been many other injustices.
Consider the crises in our public health system that exploded during Ms D’Ath’s two-and-a-half years as minister, and which current Health Minister Shannon Fentiman is left trying to fix.
A case in point: In April this year, this newspaper exposed degrading treatment of paralysed patients in the Spinal Cord Injury Service at the Princess Alexandra Hospital.
In August, Ms Fentiman, three months’ into the health job, announced the spinal injuries unit would receive an immediate $20m funding boost for improvements.
There are grave issues in our regional hospitals too – including access to maternity services – that were all but ignored by Ms D’Ath.
To say people have lost faith in this government is an understatement.
As an April YouGov poll showed, nearly half of all Queenslanders have struggled to get a GP appointment in the last three years, and almost a third have waited for more than four hours in an emergency department.
We deserve capable, empathetic leaders who aren’t afraid to address problems and, ideally, have the smarts (or right people around them) to take preventative action.
A reminder to the returning Premier and those who would seek to replace her: good government serves the people.
Kylie lang is associate editor of The Courier-Mail Kylie.lang@news.com.au
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