School’s back, uni will soon follow and so will parliament. The lazy days of summer are almost passed and it’s time to get serious about what 2023 will hold.

The question hovering over the Queensland Labor government is whether it is now into the final half of what many feel will be its final term – unless something dramatic happens to stop its slide before October next year. In my 40 years of covering Queensland politics, I have rarely seen a government that has so lost its way, so destined for defeat.

The Premier came back to work with a shuffle of her ministerial staff. If she wants a fourth term, she shouldn’t stop there.

Over the next week, the Premier should call in each of her ministers individually, ask them to explain what they are doing to meet the needs of voters. She should assess their responses and then sack the worst performers, putting the rest on notice.

Politics is rightly a brutal business but it has become far too cosy in Queensland where underperformance is buried when, in reality, the underperformers should be buried.

The problem the Premier has is that too many of her ministers are passengers in a ship cruising towards an iceberg. The government reacts rather than enacts. It fails to foresee issues, then belatedly commissions reviews and mainly ignores what they tell them.

A few ministerial scalps will do wonders for the performance of those remaining and their phalanxes of staff. And the same applies at departmental level. Directors-general not delivering innovative solutions to the complex problems government now faces should also be shown the door and not be given the opportunity for contracts that extend beyond the next election cycle.

This is an opportunity for the Premier to use the authority that goes with the length of her tenure. She shouldn’t be nervous about it. And if the factional bosses don’t like it, she should remind them she has won three elections and is still the best asset the government has.

That done, she should innovatively pursue a few worthy causes beyond the business-as-usual announcements that fill her diary.

For instance, what would happen if the state made it mandatory for immobilisers to be installed on new cars registered in Queensland? Sure, it would pick a fight with the auto industry but it would be a bold step to remove a major motivator for youth crime.

What would happen if the state either banned vaping or regulated and taxed its retailing so heavily that young people were discouraged from taking up this pernicious habit which will flow through to the health system very quickly? Who would argue this was a bad idea?

She should match her enthusiasm to build for the 2032 Games with enthusiasm to build public transport and community facilities for outer-urban and regional areas that look with envy but little hope at the investment in the inner city.

The Premier should use some of her political capital (and the capital of any of her team members with the capacity) to help Anthony Albanese succeed in winning a “yes” vote for the voice in Queensland. (Imagine how we’ll be portrayed if the referendum fails because Queensland didn’t deliver the numbers needed for a majority of yes votes in a majority of states).

And she should match it with programs that double down on closing the gap, stopping cities like Mt Isa and Townsville becoming wastelands like Alice Springs has in the past fortnight.

She should invest in a big whiteboard containing a list of the policy initiatives – across health, energy, water, the public service, gambling and racing reform, education and transport – proposed over the past two years and put a priority and delivery date beside each of them. And hold her ministers and D-Gs to them.

And, if they don’t deliver, then repeat how this exercise starts – get rid of them and put in a team that will. Before the voters do it for her in October 2024.