A bipartisan committee set out to end Queensland’s politicisation of youth crime. It failed spectacularly

Disappointment and frustration as parliamentary inquiry into youth justice reform ‘degenerates into a squabble’

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Queensland’s only independent state MP, Sandy Bolton, had high hopes last October when she was made chair of a parliamentary committee tasked with coming up with solutions on youth crime.

It was the first parliamentary committee to be independently chaired in more than two decades, and Bolton hoped it would stymie the politicisation of the issue by taking “a collaborative and bipartisan approach” that would lead to “constructive solutions”.

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