Queensland Cabinet reshuffle is anything but a new beginning
Opinion: Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says this week’s cabinet reshuffle will revitalise the leadership of her third-term government. But it was really about just one thing, writes Stephanie Bennett.
Opinion
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It was not with a bang but a whimper Queensland welcomed in a reshuffled yet highly predictable cabinet on Thursday.
Despite the insistence from the Premier this would revitalise the leadership of a third-term government, the shifting of a few job cards is anything but “a new beginning”.
Yes, burning bushfires in health, housing and youth justice will be momentarily extinguished under the promise of fresh eyes. And while the demise of Health Minister Yvette D’Ath appeared to everyone but the minister as inevitable, when the grenade finally went off there were other casualties.
The health portfolio disasters had only been rivalled by the public’s unhappiness with the hot-button issue of youth justice, and so too went down Minister Leanne Linard.
Quandamooka woman Leeanne Enoch lost Housing to up-and-comer – and renter – Meaghan Scanlon, but will also become the state’s first Minister for Treaty, along with Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships.
But no one has been booted from cabinet itself, and the decision simply shifts D’Ath back into her old stomping ground of Attorney-General.
The move to put one of the government’s strongest performers Shannon Fentiman into Health was the only tenable choice, and of all the fringe shifts this week it is the one that really matters for Labor.
The reality is Health is the party’s bread and butter – and the true issue which, mostly, the LNP cannot sell as well.
But when it’s lurching from crisis to crisis – as it had been under D’Ath’s watch – it was also what would kill any chance of a Labor fourth term.
Health looked like it could be the issue to bring down Labor – but the party hopes a newly appointed popular minister will save it.
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