Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk's decision to establish government with 14 mega-portfolios – the initial cabinet of the former Newman government had 19 ministers – was a mistake, political commentator Dr Paul Williams said.
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As a result, responsibility for Queensland Rail was just half of one of five portfolios administered by Deputy Premier Jackie Trad.
"It was a bad idea and I said so at the time," Dr Williams said on Monday.
"I mean having 14 in the cabinet would have been difficult for an experienced government, but given you had so many new faces in the Parliament and in the cabinet - learning new portfolios, learning new body politics, trying to meet with pressure groups - it was almost impossible."
Ms Trad was minister for transport, trade, infrastructure, local government and planning from February 2015 until Ms Palaszczuk enlarged her Cabinet on December 5, 2015.
From then Stirling Hinchliffe – Labor's Leader of the House – became transport minister and minister for the Commonwealth Games, sharing Queensland Rail with Treasurer Curtis Pitt.
Mr Hinchliffe resigned as transport minister on Monday after former Rio Tinto executive Phillip Strachan released his report into train crewing practices at Queensland Rail, with long-running issues exacerbating as QR struggled to find enough drivers for the Moreton Bay Rail Link, now known as the the Redcliffe Peninsula Line.
The actual Moreton Bay Rail Link contract – to build the rail line from Petrie to Kippa Ring – was signed around August 21, 2012, under the LNP.
Queensland Rail was not involved in the beginning of this project in 2012, according to then-transport minister Scott Emerson.
"Previously the delivery of the project was split between the Department of Transport and Main Roads and Queensland Rail," Mr Emerson said in a media statement on July 11, 2012.
The rail project was subsequently administered by the Department of Transport and Main Roads for the first time.
"By bringing the project under one agency, I am looking for more innovation and savings for the funding partners and the people of Queensland," Mr Emerson said at the time.
The Petrie-to-Kippa Ring rail project halted before it opened in May 2016 because of a serious train signalling issue, where the train signalling system "did not speak" to signalling software on the rest of the Citytrain network.
An inquiry into the signalling problems on the line, to be handled by Rob Smith from the Sydney Metro Rail Project, was announced in June 2016, but no findings have been made public.
Several months passed before the driver shortage was made public, prompting another inquiry that led to the Strachan report.
Dr Williams said the mega-ministeries were not directly linked to the Queensland Rail debacles.
"Not as such, however certainly (Ms) Palaszczuk could well have taken the Commonwealth Games from (Mr) Hinchliffe," he said.
"However, if there were 19 members in Cabinet then the relationship between Hinchliffe and QR would have been the same," he said.
"And the slow-moving wheel of decision-making would have moved at the same rate."
Dr Williams said he believed the problems within QR were linked more to it being a government-owned statutory authority, with "a changing status, a changing relationship with the minister, and an at-arms-length relationship with the minister".
He said changes to the shifting status of QR – including privatisation of rail freight (Labor, 2009), criticism of its bureaucracy (LNP, 2012) and transition back to Citytrain (Labor, 2015) had impacted the service.
Dr Williams said he did not believe QR's travails were intractable for Labor.
"I wouldn't put it on quite the same scale as Queensland Health in the mid 2000s," he said.
"Although it is very unhelpful that it is happening right in Brisbane where Labor needs to maintain a majority."
