Editorial: NRL must consider how to avoid B-teams

It is easy to understand why so many fans are disappointed that the Broncos and Storm will battle it out with two sides that are far from full strength, writes the editor.

Regardless of what team runs onto the paddock tomorrow night to face the Storm, they are still our Broncos – and they are a club that for the first time in years are serious title contenders. This is something to celebrate, as the likely sold-out crowd of almost 50,000 will do.

It is understandable why the top-ranked clubs are resting so many of their star players for this last round, with home finals locked in – and the $200,000 financial reward for a minor premiership not worth the risk. It is hard to blame them. The finals are more important.

That said, it is also easy to understand why so many fans are disappointed that the return to the Cauldron for the Broncos against the Storm will see two sides battling it out that are far from full strength.

This is therefore an issue the NRL must resolve. The AFL has a bye week for all clubs between the regular season and the finals as its way of dealing with the challenge – but that takes the excitement away from the finals build-up as everyone suddenly has to deal with a weekend without footy. It is not a great option.

Instead, a wildcard round, as is being explored by the AFL, could also be useful for the NRL.

That means there is a pre-finals bye week for teams who finish first to sixth. The teams that finish seventh and eighth play home games against the ninth and tenth ranked teams to progress.

The highest-ranked clubs would then get a week off to rest, meaning they would never again be tempted to name a second-string team.

YOUTH CRIME MESS AN OWN GOAL

How could the state government have stumbled so badly with its latest efforts to get on top of the increasingly politically poisonous issue of youth crime that they have backfired and helped bring on talk about the Premier’s grip on power?

In short, it has done so by doing what it has done so often in the past – simply ignoring a long-simmering problem until it becomes a crisis, and then responding with panic rather than consideration.

In this case, the problem is that even after eight-and-a-half years in office and much talk of being tough on juvenile crime, it doesn’t have enough beds in youth detention centres.

It is finally building some more centres, but they’re slow to come online. In the meantime, the government has been using police watch-houses to accommodate the overflow of young miscreants.

An estimated 25-70 children are currently being held in police watch-houses at any one time.

It’s a long-standing practice that Police Minister Mark Ryan told parliament last week was “an undesirable but unavoidable limit on children’s human rights”.

It’s also a practice that may not always be legal, according to a technicality raised in a recent Supreme Court hearing testing the state’s right to hold children in watch-houses.

The government’s reaction? It hastily drew up some new laws allowing police watch-houses to be declared as official youth prisons, which it then attached to some legislation already before parliament. The new laws not only override the human rights of children, but also were introduced in such a way as to avoid the normal process of scrutiny by a parliamentary committee.

It is little wonder that some caucus members are now feeling bold enough to speculate anonymously about the capacities of the party’s parliamentary leadership – this was not the action of a typical Labor administration.

Potentially just as damaging for the Palaszczuk government is former judge Margaret McMurdo’s scathing open letter in response to both the Premier and Opposition Leader David Crisafulli, published in The Courier-Mail on Monday.

Ms McMurdo is a former Court of Appeal president whose professional skills the Premier clearly respects – having appointed her to lead the Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce, which produced the landmark Hear Her Voice report.

Her open letter called on both sides of politics in Queensland “to end the race to the bottom on youth justice issues”.

She wrote: “Sound youth justice policy takes time to work and to be assessed. For the sake of our victims, our troubled young people and all Queensland taxpayers, I implore the Premier and the leader of the opposition to abandon the madness of the current law and order youth justice action.”

She then called on both sides to respond to the challenges by working together, saying: “The youth justice minister and her opposition counterpart should reach agreement on the implementation of youth justice policies that truly make our Queensland communities safer.”

But that outcome is not going to happen. It was first floated earlier in the year by former Beattie government minister Robert Schwarten and rejected out of hand by the government. Months later, this mess is just getting worse.

Responsibility for election comment is taken by Chris Jones, corner of Mayne Rd & Campbell St, Bowen Hills, Qld 4006. Printed and published by NEWSQUEENSLAND (ACN 009 661 778). Contact details here

Originally published as Editorial: NRL must consider how to avoid B-teams