Qld’s border to fully reopen as police checkpoints come down

Domestic travellers will no longer need a border pass to enter Queensland with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announcing the border checkpoints would be removed from Saturday.

Queensland will fully reopen to all domestic travellers - regardless of Covid status - from this Saturday with police checkpoints to be removed from the border.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced the road borders would be coming down from 1am Saturday January 15 as Queensland nears 90 per cent double vaccinated.

She said this meant anyone coming domestically into Queensland by road or air would not need to show their border pass.

Queensland is set to hit the 90 per cent double dose vaccination rate by the end of next week.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said as Omicron ripped through all of Australia, it was no longer important to declare hotspots.

Police at the Queensland border in Griffith Street, Coolangatta. The checkpoints will be removed on Saturday. Picture: NIGEL HALLETT

She said it would be assumed all travellers domestically had Covid-19 and it was now important to ensure the unvaccinated were not exposed to the virus in high risk settings like restaurants.

“This virus could be in any jurisdiction, with anyone travelling whether they are coming from a hotspot or not,” she said.

“We don’t want to spend our time looking at whether we should be declaring or changing hotspots.

“It is now less important to worry about hotspot arrivals, changes to border passes and restrictions

“That is why our restrictions on who can access certain venues and events remain, because we are still wanting to make sure that only fully vaccinated people are entering those venues and events that are more likely to see fast transmission happening than where those people have travelled from.

“Now is the time to shift our focus on where people are going rather than where they are coming from.”

International travellers will not be able to arrive in Queensland quarantine-free until the state officially hit 90 per cent double dose mark.

Chief health officer Dr John Gerrard said the border restrictions had ‘served their purpose’ which was to allow all Queenslanders access to a vaccine before the virus swept through the community.

He said now the virus was spreading through the population - as expected - the border restrictions had ‘done their job’.

An ‘elated' police commissioner Katarina Carroll said the removal of the border checkpoints would enable police resources to be reprioritised to focus on the upcoming Covid peak.

‘I am elated, I can’t take the smile off my face, it’s been exhausting,” she said.

Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said she is ‘elated’ the border wall is being removed. Photo: Peter Wallis

Ms Carroll said over the past two years, frontline police had intercepted millions of vehicles and passengers, ensuring Queenslanders remained safe during the first phase of the pandemic.

She said 3.3m border passes had been issued, police had done 3.68m vehicle checks, turned around 35,000 vehicles, had put 20,000 people coming in via road into quarantine, they’d checked 1.8m passengers flying in, refused entry to 4,452 people coming in via air and put 64,000 air travellers into quarantine.

However, Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate said the border checkpoints should be removed immediately.

Cr Tate, a vocal critic of the Palaszczuk Government’s Covid control policies, threw his weight behind Coast cops who are demanding to be relieved of border duties.

Cr Tate said ‘today should be the day’ to tear down the border barricades.

“Bring it down and let the hard-working police get back to their core duties,” he said.

“I could never understand why the army was not deployed to manage the border in the first instance.

Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate has demanded the border wall comes down immediately. Picture: NIGEL HALLETT

“The focus should be on protecting our vulnerable residents in aged care and other facilities. That should be our focus now.

“Omicron is here and it is everywhere. That is a good thing.

“We need to hit the peak of infections as quickly as possible. The data from all levels of government should focus on hospital rates, ICU beds and deaths.

“The loss of one life is one too many but imagine how many lives have been lost through suicide given the huge pressure on our economy.

“Further, I know that domestic and family violence has spiked nationally. That is where we should be putting our resources.

“The irony is that as a city, as a state and as a country, we may never hit 95 percent double dose vaccination. We will never get to 100 percent so why all the focus on percentages?

“Living with Covid is just that: living with it in our community.

“In 2019, we had 264 deaths attributed to the flu in Queensland alone yet we didn’t shut down entire industries and stop children attending school.

“It’s time that the message is: if you are not vaccinated by now, you made a choice and you are nine times more likely to get sick, possibly very sick.

“For the rest of the population which has done the right thing, the message should be: get on with your lives, wear a mask if you feel it will help you, socially distance where you can and learn to live with Covid.’’

Southern Gold Coast Chamber of Commerce president Hilary Jacobs welcomed the end of border controls, saying: “Thank God for small mercies.”

Ms Jacobs said the removal of checkpoints would hopefully make it easier for struggling businesses to get staff who lived south of the Tweed, as well as for police.

“It was a waste of resources having police at the border and something we didn’t support from day one,” she said.

“We’ve been calling for the checkpoints to be removed all along and as recently as yesterday.”

Ms Jacobs did not believe the move would boost tourism as “anybody who was planning to come up (from NSW and Victoria) were probably coming anyway”.

She said she hoped the need for negative Covid tests for southern tourists was also being scrapped.

“You can’t get your hands on a Rapid Antigen Test so it makes no sense to still have that requirement,” she said.

Ms Jacobs said the Gold Coast community wanted “more clarity” on whether it was locals or tourists who were testing positive to Covid.

She said there needed to be a suburb-by-suburb breakdown on case numbers and vaccination rates.

It comes as Queensland recorded its deadliest day of the pandemic with six deaths and 14,914 new cases.

Originally published as Qld’s border to fully reopen as police checkpoints come down