Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says she and her Health Minister and Attorney-General will take 48 hours to read the report and respond to the findings handed down by the inquiry’s commissioner Walter Sofronoff on Tuesday.

The retired judge said the evidence he uncovered made for “horrible reading”, coming months after public hearings uncovered attempts by senior management to obscure the lab’s failings by shredding documents and engaging in misleading behaviour that contributed to a “toxic work environment” according to whistleblowers.

Sofronoff’s report was sparked when it was discovered thousands of criminal investigations, many of them sexual assaults, may have been compromised over several years due to irregularities in DNA testing.

Sofronoff conceded those cases would need to be reviewed as part of a major overhaul of the centre that could take as long as six years to rebuild its reputation and professional standing.

“We found some disturbing and troubling things that were happening within that laboratory, that’s the bad news,” he said.

“I would expect that you’re going to see several important announcements made over the course of the next month, which will tell you about the structural changes and personnel changes that are going to happen to lay the foundation of what I hope will be a world-class facility.”

The first change ahead of the government, he said, would be recruiting a scientist of the “highest calibre and skill” to lead the change.

Sofronoff has also recommended linking the reformed facility to a university to ensure “cross-fertilisation” between academics and working scientists and removing the lab out of the Queensland Health environment and placing it within the Department of Justice.

He said the lab had been located within Queensland Health almost as an accident of history established at the turn of last century when the laboratory’s functions were first used to test water and food safety and later blood profiling and then DNA sampling as technology progressed.

“But it doesn’t belong there, because it’s part of the justice system,” Sofronoff said.

“A scientist examining DNA or blood or anything for evidence involves a set of ethics that have to do with the administration of justice.”

Sheeting home blame for the lab’s deficiencies on its “inapt” fit within the health portfolio and serious mismanagement issues, Sofronoff has maintained that “a reduced prospect” existed to secure criminal convictions due to failures in obtaining evidence.

“I do not doubt that the failure to obtain all of the evidence available from samples has affected some cases,” he said.

“In most cases that will have reduced the prospects of conviction by a failure to obtain evidence which could support a complaint.”

However, Sofronoff said it was unlikely that the failures could have resulted in a wrong conviction.

“None of the failures I have identified call into question the reliability of a match between a crime scene sample and a person’s reference sample, the most probative evidence which often supports convictions,” he said.