Shannon Fentiman: making her case for the top job
As she rebuilds Queensland’s troubled justice system, Shannon Fentiman will be out to show she has what it takes to take the next step.
This is the make-or-break year for Shannon Fentiman, and won’t her colleagues be watching. As she rebuilds Queensland’s troubled justice system, the state’s fresh-faced Attorney-General will be out to show she has what it takes to take the next step.
The issues on her plate require no soft touch: restoring trust in the state’s DNA laboratory, overhauling domestic violence and sexual consent laws, allaying growing public anger over youth justice issues and reining in a rogue casino giant.
It is work that would challenge even the most seasoned political operative.
Fentiman, a 39-year-old former solicitor, is touted as a possible successor to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, whose government is looking increasingly shopworn after the toughest 12 months of her eight years in office.
These should be salad days for Palaszczuk’s Labor government, but a series of integrity scandals and missteps have continued to excite speculation about whether she will see through the term to the October 2024 election.
Let’s be clear; there is no challenger counting the numbers to roll the boss. If there were, Labor Party rules make it almost impossible for any internal rival to wield the knife.
Of course, Palaszczuk’s record is not too shabby with three elections under her belt, but party players have been lining up her successor since she was opposition leader. The Premier delights in exceeding expectations; her biggest upset came in 2015 when she led Labor to victory just three years after the party suffered one of the greatest electoral defeats in modern Australian political history. She is now Australia’s longest-serving premier behind Victoria’s Dan Andrews, and arguably the most successful female politician in the country’s history having increased Labor’s seat count at three successive elections.
But her shine has been dulled as uncertainty grows within Labor’s ranks about whether she has the energy, or will, to run for a fourth term in 2024. A YouGov poll, published by The Courier-Mail last month, revealed voters had similar concerns.
The poll suggested Palaszczuk’s net satisfaction rating was in the negative for the first time since before the pandemic while six in 10 Queenslanders believe she now “enjoys the high life”.
Despite this, the consensus is that Palaszczuk will be around for as long as she wants, or until voters show her the door. But people will talk, and Fentiman’s name continues to crop up in those succession plan discussions.
Fentiman, who declined an interview, has become the government’s main reformer since the departure of her mentor, former deputy premier Jackie Trad. Holding one of the safest seats in the Queensland parliament, on a comfortable 16 per cent margin, her focus in the lead-up to the next election will be on rebuilding the state’s criminal justice system after a series of damaging inquiries.
She worked her way on to the frontbench through the ALP’s traditional apprenticeship; a union organiser first, then solicitor at a Labor-friendly law firm before securing preselection in a safe seat on Brisbane’s outskirts.
Previously married to David Nelson – a lobbyist black-listed by Palaszczuk earlier this year – Fentiman is settled in Logan with her partner, Matt Collins. Collins was Trad’s former chief of staff and was recently appointed chief executive of the Planning Institute of Australia.
Popular without caving to populism, Fentiman’s Labor colleagues praise her near-photographic memory and in-depth grasp on policy.
“She demands excellence from herself, her staff and her department, which can rub some the wrong way,” one said.
A fellow MP from Labor’s Left said Fentiman was one of the hardest workers in government, inclusive and self-aware.
“She is very capable and is one of the better-performing ministers in my view,” they said. “If she perceives she is lacking in a certain area, she is wise enough to deal with that herself.
“She can be forthright and strict with people too.”
A Labor colleague in the opposing Right faction said: “She is very smart. If she says she is going to do something, she will get it done.
“But you never know how people will go in leadership positions. The general public doubted Palaszczuk’s abilities when she became leader, and now she is one of the best premiers the state has ever had.”
Even her opponents in the Liberal National Party profess their admiration for Fentiman’s intellect.
“If they were smart, they would make her the next leader,” one LNP source said. “We would obviously prefer (Steven) Miles or (Cameron) Dick.”
Once a prevailing force, Labor’s Right faction has been in rapid decline in recent years, hamstringing hopes its leader, Treasurer Cameron Dick, will ever become premier.
In the dominant Left faction – which controls the numbers in cabinet and caucus – Deputy Premier Steven Miles is top of the pecking order followed by Transport Minister Mark Bailey and Energy Minister Mick de Brenni.
But Fentiman could leapfrog them all. The next 21 months will be her audition for the main stage whenever Palaszczuk eventually decides to close the curtains on her political career.
Labor’s kingmakers will be watching how Fentiman overcomes hurdles as she implements more than 300 recommendations from a slew of inquiries and reviews.
Let’s start with the DNA testing disaster. After finding the health department’s lab had compromised thousands of criminal cases over a decade, former judge Walter Sofronoff recommended forensic testing responsibility be stripped from Queensland Health.
Fentiman’s justice department will now be in charge of overseeing a new Forensic Service agency, which will be responsible for DNA testing. A separate management board, to provide independent oversight and ensure scientific integrity, will report to Fentiman.
The Attorney-General has also been tasked with reworking double-jeopardy exemptions to allow people acquitted of rape to be retried if fresh evidence is uncovered during the testing of crime scene samples shelved by the lab. The reforms have drawn rebuke from legal experts, who question whether they will have any tangible impact.
Overhauling double-jeopardy laws is just one of a series of clashes Fentiman will face with the legal fraternity in the coming months. She will introduce controversial new laws later this year allowing the media to name people charged with rape and sexual assault.
Queensland is one of the last remaining jurisdictions that prohibits the media from naming people charged with serious sexual offences until the accused is committed to stand trial, which can take months or even years.
The state’s peak legal bodies – the Bar Association and Law Society – have deep reservations about naming accused rapists during early stages of court process. The issue came to a head this week when a high-profile man was charged with two counts of rape in Toowoomba.
A new crackdown on juvenile crime is also under way after Brisbane mother Emma Lovell was allegedly stabbed to death by knife-wielding teens during a home invasion on Boxing Day. Bill Potts, a veteran criminal defence lawyer and former law society president, said Fentiman had to be marked down for the government’s ad hoc approach to youth justice and its never-ending battle with the LNP on who is tougher on crime.
“Her job as the first law officer of the state is to do a number of things, some of which include reform. Often it’s about defending the courts and explaining the courts to the public. Unfortunately, she follows a long line of attorneys-general who have abrogated this most important role.”
A separate fight with the churches is brewing over proposed reforms that will make it harder for religious schools to sack teachers on the basis of their sexuality, marital status and gender identity. It will be up to Fentiman to engage with the church-run schools to find a palatable balance between religious freedom and teachers’ individual rights.
If that’s not enough, she is spearheading a complete reshaping of domestic violence and sexual consent laws.
Queensland and NSW will be the first Australian states to criminalise coercive control in response to the brutal murders of Hannah Clarke and her three children on a suburban Brisbane street almost three years ago. Their horrific slayings triggered a national push to criminalise coercive and controlling behaviour, identified as a “red flag for murder”.
Navigating the relatively new policy area of coercive control will be done at the same time as major sexual consent reform. Queensland will follow a number of other states and require consent to be conveyed by words or actions rather than assumed
Gold Coast-born Fentiman earned her law degree from Queensland University of Technology and a Masters of Laws from Melbourne University, but it was the decade she spent on the Logan Centre Against Sexual Violence Board that makes her well-placed to lead these reforms.
Angela Lynch, head of Queensland’s Sexual Assault Network and former chief of the Women’s Legal Service, said Fentiman had good insight into victims’ perspective.
“The Attorney-General has a longstanding commitment to sexual violence reform, since the early days of her career. These are really significant reforms and she understands their necessity.”
If her to-do list is not long enough, the Attorney-General will also be keeping a tight leash on casino giant Star after a damning inquiry report that found it allowed money laundering to flourish with a “one-eyed focus on profit”. Before the next election she plans to decriminalise sex work and extend journalistic shield laws to cover secretive Crime and Corruption Commission hearings.
That’s some list. Now let’s see what she does with it.
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