Editorial: The reshuffle Labor had to have to survive

A reset on the state’s three most critical issues is necessary, and it is good the Premier has finally come to acknowledge it, writes the editor.

This is the reshuffle the Queensland government had to have.

It has been bleeding on the three critical issues Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will move on on Wednesday: health, housing and youth justice.

A reset is necessary, and it is a good thing for Labor and for the state that Ms Palaszczuk has finally come to acknowledge that truth.

Her decision comes a month after exclusive YouGov polling for The Courier-Mail confirmed that housing affordability, youth crime and health were the top concerns for Queenslanders – and that the LNP was considered better than Labor at handling them.

This reshuffle – the first for Ms Palaszczuk in years – also comes after campaigning by The Courier-Mail on all three issues in recent months.

And it follows an editorial a week ago where we recommended Ms Palaszczuk “cauterise the two gaping wounds on her government – health and youth crime”.

But this is not about us. This is about Queensland – and the need to put ministers in those three key portfolios who are going to drive real change, and politically who are going to be seen to be doing so now just 16 months from the election.

The biggest issue has been health, with the outgoing Minister Yvette D’Ath clearly out of her depth and making both poor decisions and showing weak leadership by buying rather than challenging the excuses for terrible outcomes across the public health system being spouted by her department’s pen-pushers.

The finding in the YouGov poll that more voters think the LNP would be better at handling health than Labor (26 points to 22) is understood to have been the thing that started tongues really wagging on Minister D’Ath within the circle of power around Ms Palaszczuk. It was a shock for a Labor government.

Yvette D’Ath

The incoming health minister will be current Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman, a member of the party’s dominant Left faction who is considered a future leader.

As a former lawyer, Ms Fentiman has been active in the portfolio that she has held since the election. She has pushed through necessary change across a range of areas, including most notably her passion project of violence against women.

She has done well, but Health will be the real test of whether she has the mettle to lead state Labor. She should begin by showing empathy to those brave souls at the coalface of our health system who bear the burden of the public criticisms of the work they tirelessly do when they are let down by the army of bureaucrats the health department is known for. Perhaps a “listening tour” of hospital wards across the state would be a good way for Ms Fentiman to start her new role.

The other two big casualties of the reshuffle will be the Ministers currently responsible for the troubled areas of Housing and Youth Justice: Leeanne Enoch and Leanne Linard.

To housing first, and the decision should not be a surprise. Like Ms D’Ath in health, Minister Enoch has been exposed over the past year as having presided over a system that is failing. Perhaps the biggest hit to her credibility came last July when the state’s auditor-general revealed the government’s current plan for public housing would not deliver enough homes to keep up with demand – and Queensland was spending the least of all the states on social housing.

Those revelations – and the subsequent denials by Ms Palaszczuk that there was a problem – led directly to The Courier-Mail’s Hitting Home campaign, which in turn led to both a housing summit and the government in October announcing it would double its Housing Investment Fund.

Leanne Linard

As the housing affordability crisis in the private sector then flared up in recent months and little was achieved in delivering urgent shelter in the public system, Labor powerbrokers realised they needed a circuit breaker on housing.

It is not known who Ms Palaszczuk has tapped to replace Ms Enoch in the housing portfolio, but Ms Palaszczuk will likely charge with delivering on housing someone from Ms Enoch’s Left faction.

Youth justice has, meanwhile, quickly become a massive headache for the government, as it is a big political problem without an easy solution. But it is understood Ms Palaszczuk has, regardless, become increasingly frustrated at Minister Linard’s performance in the job.

What certainly did not help were the embarrassing revelations on the front page of The Sunday Mail on April 16 that Ms Linard’s staff had delivered her “Draft LNP attack lines” about youth justice in the days after the alleged murder of mother Emma Lovell in her North Lakes home on Boxing Day.

And so Ms Palaszczuk will confirm as early as Wednesday that Ms D’Ath will return to the role of attorney-general that she held for almost six years before the 2020 election.

It is understood that both Ms Enoch and Ms Linard will stay in the ministry, but will be demoted. The resulting shuffles will lead to a range of less significant job changes across Ms Palaszczuk’s frontbench.

We now need to hope that the three new ministers in these critical portfolios will come in both ready to learn from the failures of their predecessors, and to energetically take the opportunity handed to them to make a real difference.

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

Leeanne Enoch

Originally published as Editorial: The reshuffle Labor had to have to survive