 She was appointed as Minister for the Environment, Resource Management and Climate Change on 22 June 2011, after Kate Jones resigned from cabinet to defend her seat of Ashgrove against Liberal National Party (LNP) leader Campbell Newman.Darling lost her seat in the LNP landslide at the 2012 state election.Her mother, Elaine Darling, the first female member of the Australian House of Representatives from Queensland, was a Labor MP for Lilley from 1980 until 1993.