Brendan Luxton suicide: Yvette D’Ath says lessons to be learned from hotel quarantine

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has again extended her condolences for a childhood friend of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk who suicided after hotel quarantine.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath says it was “extremely unfortunate” an exemption application made by the family of Brendan Luxton due to his deteriorating mental health was not considered before he left quarantine.

Mr Luxton, a childhood friend of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, suicided on July 17, 2020 – the morning after being released from two weeks of mandatory hotel quarantine.

A short time into the two-week period the 51-year-old’s distressed family had lodged an urgent application for him to be exempt from hotel quarantine, due to his rapidly deteriorating mental health.

Ms D’Ath was responding to revelations made by The Sunday Mail about a coroner’s report into Mr Luxton’s death, which also found an army officer involved in hotel quarantine had said she had felt pressured by Metro North Public Health Unit to give false evidence to the coroner about what had occurred.

“It is obviously a really distressing time for the family and our condolences go out to them, as they did at the time of Mr Luxton’s passing back in 2020,” Ms D’Ath said on Sunday.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath on Sunday. Picture: Richard Walker

“We know that during Covid and hotel quarantine, there was incredible pressure on the system and our health workers worked really hard to provide the best care that they could.

“But there was lessons to be learned and as the report has shown, changes started to be made to the system after this tragic event, so that we could learn from it and improve on our systems going forward.”

Ms D’Ath said she was aware there wasn’t a recommendation made by the coroner to proceed to an inquest into Mr Luxton’s death.

“But they (the coroner) did make findings just in relation to the circumstances and just what could have been done better to support Mr Luxton,” she said.

“Most importantly, the exemption process, and it was extremely unfortunate that at that time that application hadn’t been considered before he ended up leaving quarantine.”

In her report coroner Christine Clements notes (Mr Luxton’s sister) “Marita Corbett did everything she could to seek exemption from hotel quarantine, knowing that her brother was significantly unwell”.

“His family had persistently attempted to communicate the urgency of the application and Brendan Luxton’s precipitous deterioration of his mental health during the period of quarantine,” she wrote.

Brendan Luxton

“Marita did not ever receive contact from Queensland Health in relation to the exemption application.”

However she did also report Queensland Health did improve the system after Mr Luxton’s death – a point also made by Ms D’Ath.

Ms D’Ath said at the time Mr Luxton was in hotel quarantine in mid-2020, there was a huge volume of exemption applications which could only then be approved by the chief health officer.

After Mr Luxton’s death, that process was changed with multiple people able to assess exemptions.

Ms Clements also noted “she (the army officer) felt pressure from Metro North Public Health Unit to respond to the request for information from the Coroners Court with a suggested response of ‘I do not recall’ ”.

On that allegation, Queensland Health director-general Shaun Drummond said: “We’re taking the matter very seriously.

“We will be doing an investigation that will actually be led by Queensland Health rather than Metro North, because it is potentially an action of an employee of Metro North.

“We’ve already started the internal investigation, but it is very necessary for us to talk to the individual to find out what their circumstances might have been.”

Marita Corbett with a picture of herself with brothers Derek (left) and Brendan Luxton. Picture: Zak Simmonds