‘Shameless political cover-up’ a threat to Queensland minister Shannon Fentiman’s ambition to be premier

Queensland Health Minister Shannon Fentiman. Picture: Dan Peled / NCA NewsWire

Shannon Fentiman is going to “own” a shameless cover-up at the state’s DNA laboratory unless she takes decisive action.

The dithering, spin and lobbying of the mother of a murder victim will not end well. It threatens the Queensland Health Minister’s ambitions to be the state’s next premier.

Fentiman should announce an open but mercifully short commission of inquiry. It would take a month at most to investigate the most significant disaster at the state’s DNA lab. It is a disaster that was missed by the DNA Commission of Inquiry in 2022 after the inquiry was, unknowingly, misled.

But for as long as Fentiman and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk avoid it, the failure to investigate the issue will hurt them, the criminal justice system and victims of crime. There will be years of mistrust and all the recent efforts will have been wasted. Where is the Crime and Corruption Commission?

Three key questions should be troubling Queensland’s Health Minister and Palaszczuk.

Question 1: Did Professor Linzi Wilson-Wilde, an expert witness at the DNA Commission of Inquiry last October and now the scientist in charge of all forensic services for Queensland, disclose anything in her written evidence about an obvious and catastrophic collapse in DNA yield, arising from something the lab had called Project 13 and compromising thousands of cases and victims of crime over nine years?

Answer: No, she did not. Nowhere in Wilson-Wilde’s statement to former judge Walter Sofronoff’s DNA inquiry did she state anything about the collapse in DNA yield after the lab had changed its testing method in 2007.

Forensic Science Queensland chief executive Linzi Wilson-Wilde. Picture: Liam Kidston

Anyone reading Wilson-Wilde’s expert witness report, which was tendered as evidence, would have no concerns about DNA results arising from the change in method. Her report stated: “I did not find any significant failings that would indicate that the final results were not reliable.”

That’s why Sofronoff’s DNA inquiry missed a disaster many times bigger in scale and seriousness than those he reported upon.

The spin now, that the Project 13 debacle does not need to be thoroughly looked at, is offensive to victims of crime and the criminal justice system.

Question 2: Was Wilson-Wilde expected by the DNA inquiry to disclose in her report any evidence of the state lab’s catastrophic failure to detect DNA?

Answer: Yes, of course. The DNA inquiry provided her with documents including the lab’s internal report, which revolved around Project 13. She received written questions.

Forensic scientist, Kirsty Wright (c) with L-R Vicki Blackburn and Shannah Blackburn - mother and sister of Shandee. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

That internal report dated August 2008 is the “smoking gun”, as forensic biologist Dr Kirsty Wright dubbed it. The report describes the collapse in DNA yield after a change in the lab from manual processing of samples to an automated system. Thousands of crime scene samples have been failing to yield DNA with a method that continued for nine years from 2007.

Wilson-Wilde knew the DNA inquiry was set up to find out why DNA was not being detected by the lab in cases such as that of Shandee Blackburn, who was stabbed to death in Mackay.

Wilson-Wilde was specifically instructed by Sofronoff’s inquiry lawyers to examine the change in the lab’s method – from manual to automated processing – and to report on “any deficiency in the methods, systems or processes”, relating to the change in method “in and around 2008”.

When Wright read the Project 13 document for the first time, months after the DNA inquiry had ended, she was aghast. The lab’s failure to find DNA in thousands of cases was now clear.

Shandee Blackburn.

When we showed a former lab senior scientist, Ron Grice, the same document, he spotted the evidence of the collapse in DNA yield in a minute. It is that obvious.

But when Wilson-Wilde was provided the document by the DNA inquiry in October last year, she did not alert the DNA inquiry of any issues arising from it. Yet she has told us that she saw the yield collapse, too.

Following the DNA inquiry, Wilson-Wilde left South Australia and was appointed to a job in December in charge of scientific services in the lab and across Queensland.

Question 3: Why did Wilson-Wilde, a senior scientist, fail to tell the DNA inquiry last October what she says she herself saw?

We have asked her this question and got different answers.

She said in a recorded interview last month: “I wasn’t asked to look at a yield issue at all.” But that’s not right.

She has said she had told a DNA inquiry lawyer about the yield collapse. But we have been shown no evidence of this, and it contradicts what she reported in her official statement.

She has said that she knew other expert witness scientists were looking at it and had the same Project 13 report. But that’s incorrect.

And she has said she did not report on it because she believed the method would have changed, probably resulting in the DNA yield improving. But that is incorrect, too.

These are strange days in Queensland.

The cover-up in the lab for nine years from 2007 was serious. A political cover-up is well advanced now, too.