The new Queensland Health Minister will rightly attract attention for the shoulder-high pile of problems she has to solve in her new portfolio but her predecessor/successor inherits some problems left for her through last week’s ministerial “swapsies”.

Shannon Fentiman has been able to quickly identify the priorities of the health portfolio which has been bound her way for most of this year – waiting lists, ambulance ramping, growing mental health demands among them – because they have been the priorities of the past dozen or so health ministers.

I know this because I’ve heard it first hand from a parade of ministers to occupy the biggest spending and most politically fraught portfolio in the state over past decades – some names that come to mind go back to Ahern, Hayward, Beattie, Horan, Edmond, Nuttall, Robertson, Lucas, Springborg and Dick.

The simple truth of the health system is that demands grow with an ageing population, treatments get better but more expensive and we are not training enough people to keep up with what the community expects.

I heard this for the first time almost 40 years ago and only the faces have changed. The circumstances haven’t and it’s hard to see how an individual minister can make too much difference.

Shannon Fentiman deserves praise for both her courage in taking it on and her will to build confidence in the system (and I happily disclose here my own life-saving experience with the Queensland Health system. A combination of good fortune and high-level professionalism saved my life when I had a heart attack while out running three years ago – if only everyone’s experience could be as good, then confidence wouldn’t be a problem!).

But the former attorney-general leaves Yvette D’Ath another confidence sapper as she moves back to her old portfolio where she was applauded for her success.

And that is what to do about the clouds that continue to hang over the ownership of the city’s biggest capital investment, The Star casino complex, which she now regulates.

To recap: Star faces a massive money laundering action from the federal regulator Austrac, it’s also been fined $100 million by the state for years of regulatory breaches and has to have its house in order by the end of this year if it is to keep its licence. Its former directors and senior staff have all gone and some are on the end of civil action by the Australian Securities Commission.

Its new casino, which dominates the southern end of the CBD, is due to open at the end of this year but the very current issue concerns one of its shareholders, the HongKong retailer and investor Chow Tai Fook.

It’s coming up to a year since allegations about the past criminal associations of Chow Tai Fook were aired in the media, causing then attorney-general and first law officer Fentiman enough concern to ask her regulator for a fresh review of its suitability to be a shareholder in a Queensland gaming enterprise.

This column highlighted in November that not much had happened but the Office of Liquor and Gaming Review then appointed a global investigative firm, PKF Integrity, to investigate Chow Tai Fook.

Its report was due by April but InQueensland is told it’s still in preparation – although near completion. In the meantime, Chow Tai Fook and the other big Star shareholder Far Eastern Consortium have kicked in more equity to support Star’s balance sheet as it faces the combination of construction cost blowouts and fines for harbouring cash-laundering criminals.

D’Ath can expect this report and whatever problems it identifies to land on her desk in coming weeks. She will require wisdom similar to that she applied to unravelling the Newman government’s appointment of the under qualified Tim Carmody to be Chief Justice of the state.

With any luck, it establishes that the allegations about Chow Tai Fook are historic and the investor now has a clean slate with no further action (such as a forced share disposal) required. And that leaves her only to deal with how to guarantee the integrity of the state’s casinos.

Money laundering, unlike burglary or car theft, is a crime remote from most of us but it is the activity that allows criminals to legitimise the cash they spin out of other rackets, particularly drug manufacture and distribution. And that, of course, is the root of much of the other crime that is currently capturing more of our attention.

In her new/old role, D’Ath might well ask if Star’s word it’s cleaned up is enough or whether the casinos need more heavy handed supervision if they are to continue to enjoy the benefit of a state monopoly and the assurance the community gets from appropriate regulation of activity they should expect to be conducted legally.

This is a worthy challenge indeed for a first law officer who has something to prove.