Meet Steve Gollschewski, the man behind fortress Queensland

On a Monday morning in March, Queensland’s Premier informed Steve Gollschewski the state’s borders would close in two days and he was in charge of making it happen.

“When do you want it done? Two days!? Fantastic.”

A few hours later, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk let the public know in 92 characters. “BREAKING: Cabinet has decided to close Queensland’s borders. I’ll bring you more detail soon,” she tweeted on March 23, 2020.

Police patrol South Bank during the three-day lockdown this month.Credit: Jono Searle/Getty

The same day, Australia entered the first stage of a nationwide shutdown, which closed restaurants, pubs, clubs and gyms and instantly forced thousands of workers to seek unemployment benefits.

There was no time to erect concrete barriers. Orange traffic cones would have to do.

Public servants were still working on the online system for travellers to apply for passes to cross the border.

Motorists with Queensland registration plates were waved through the major crossing on the M1 and random patrols were set up on smaller backroads.

Traffic was in gridlock. People were confused and no helpline had been set up.

Mr Gollschewski, the Deputy Police Commissioner and State Disaster Co-ordinator, knew the original border regime would be “clunky and rudimentary”.

But Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said it needed to be done as soon as possible to halt the spread of the coronavirus. Orange traffic cones were deemed better than nothing.

“I remember that decision really clearly, it was early on in the week, a Monday,” Mr Gollschewski says.

“We had to close the borders really quickly and they wanted to do it on the Wednesday.

“They are such big borders. When you think of the size of Queensland, you have New South Wales, a little bit of South Australia and the Northern Territory and then you’ve got your marine borders and your air borders as well.

“It was like, whoa.”

One in 10 Queensland police officers were eventually sent to staff the ring of concrete on the southern border, dubbed “the Great Wall of Coolangatta”.

“We have managed so far, but I am watching very closely because we have had people working very hard for a year without taking any leave and that eventually takes its toll,” Mr Gollschewski says.

“I am even planning for some sort of operational response [on the borders] into next year - that will depend on how quickly the vaccine rolls out and how effective it is.

“So it will be a while yet.”

When you type Steve Gollschewski’s name into Google, suggested options relate to his wife, family and age.

I share that when we meet at Brisbane’s police headquarters in mid-January, between his briefings on COVID-19 and Cyclone Kimi looming off the Queensland coast.

He is confused but obliging.

“I have five kids, I have been married a couple of times,” he says.

“My eldest is 38 and my youngest is five. I got remarried later in life and my wife is a little bit younger than me.

State Disaster Co-ordinator Steve Gollschewski.Credit:  Facebook/Annastacia Palaszczuk

“We did eight years of IVF to get her [his youngest daughter].”

One of Mr Gollschewski’s daughters lives in London and gave birth to a daughter in May.

The State Disaster Co-ordinator is holding out for a vaccine as much as the next person so he can fly to Britain to meet his granddaughter.

Mr Gollschewski was born in Brisbane and became a police officer in 1980.

In the mid-1990s, after the Fitzgerald Inquiry into official corruption, Mr Gollschewski was sent to work at the Criminal Justice Commission, now known as the Crime and Corruption Commission.

At the CJC, he became friends with his eventual boss, Katarina Carroll, now Queensland’s Police Commissioner.

“We go back 30-something years, we were work buddies,” he says.

“We worked in that organised crime area, stuff like the Italian organised crime, outlaw motorcycle gangs.

“It was all the big-end stuff.”

Mr Gollschewski went on to work on the Carter Inquiry, which investigated police involved in drug trafficking and the conduct of undercover agents.

“After Fitzgerald, there were a lot of other things that happened, you know, to keep working on tidying up the [Queensland Police Service] to make sure it is what it is now,” he says.

Mr Gollschewski was moved to the internal investigation branch, Ethical Standards Command, in 1998. Six years later, he was tapped to lead the State Intelligence Group.

Promoted to Assistant Commissioner in 2010, he was the man in charge when an “extraordinary” afternoon deluge hit Toowoomba and triggered a deadly wall of water that swept through the Lockyer Valley in January 2011.

“In the area I was in charge of, we lost 21 people in a day. Three of them were children and three of the bodies that we lost we never recovered,” he says.

“The youngest was a baby and the eldest was a grandparent.

“It was catastrophic. That is still the worst day [of my career] by far.

“Nothing compares to what that was like.”

Grantham was hit hard in the 2011 Queensland floods.Credit: Paul Harris

He has been the State Disaster Co-ordinator since 2013, with a year-long secondment to lead policing at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

In his time, he has organised the state’s response to disasters such as Cyclone Debbie, the Peregian Beach bushfires and, now, the pandemic.

“I think COVID is so different because it’s just so long and persistent and it impacts everybody in the state,” he says.

“It is a marathon.”

Since the first case was recorded in Queensland on January 28, 2020, three people have fronted the media almost daily: Ms Palaszczuk, Dr Young and Mr Gollschewski.

Did the trio get together and pop a bottle of champagne on New Year’s Eve to celebrate Queensland’s success at avoiding widespread transmission of COVID-19?

“I think we were all too tired,” Mr Gollschewski says.

“It is all very professional but also very relaxed in a lot of ways. It is remarkable how good-humoured they have all been through it.”

Steve Gollschewski with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and her deputy, Steven Miles.

And each time Ms Palaszczuk, Dr Young or Mr Gollschewski have tried to take a few days off, the virus thwarted them.

“You mean the last time I didn’t answer the phone or anything? I can not remember,” he says.

“But it is not just me, it is everyone.

“I have had emails coming from Dr Young at ridiculous hours and I think, ‘Why are you up, Jeannette, go to bed’.”

He stresses that the police service, from the Commissioner down to the rank-and-file, has worked “very, very hard every day” to deal with the pandemic.

“It’s all right for us that stand up there and talk about it, they’re actually in doing the work,” Mr Gollschewski says.

“I take my hat off to the men and women standing on the border in the middle of the night.”

Vehicles arriving from NSW queue at a police checkpoint at the Queensland-NSW border in Coolangatta.Credit: Dan Peled

Queensland has one of the world’s most successful track records in responding to the pandemic on the health front.

The state’s death toll is about 1.15 deaths per million people, compared with 35 deaths per million Australia-wide. The US has a mortality rate of 1205.4 deaths per million and Britain 1326.2.

“The huge thing that we have in our favour is the way the Queensland community and the Australian community is actually taking this thing seriously,” Mr Gollschewski says.

“If we had a much less compliant community, and I think we’ve seen that in other jurisdictions where they just don’t want to do what’s asked of them, that would have been so much harder.

“We whinge and moan and kick cans and say, ‘Why do we have to do this?’, but then we do it.

“I am just glad we are where we are.”

Mr Gollschewski can’t pin down Queensland’s success – or, more broadly, Australia’s – to “any one thing”.

“But I think a lot of it is down to the leadership in Australia of our governments and our agencies,” he says.

“Maybe we are lucky because we are a big island and people have to fly in, but I am big on the stats.

“I compared us with the US one time and thought, what would Queensland look like if we had the same infection and death rate, and it was something ridiculous like 4000 dead and 100,000-something infected.”

Police quizz a driver at a Queensland-NSW border checkpoint in the Gold Coast hinterland. Credit: Elise Derwin

Closing Queensland’s borders has been one of the most dramatic steps taken to curb the spread of coronavirus.

The NSW and federal governments have consistently criticised Queensland’s border restrictions but Mr Gollschewski believes the state’s tough stance has saved lives.

“We had people saying you have got to open the borders because the economy will suffer, but the countries that have had those really huge outbreaks, their economies are no good either because it shuts everything down and their health systems can not cope,” he says.

Thursday marked one year since Queensland recorded its first case of COVID-19.

“A year ago when they said it is a pandemic, there was no pandemic handbook,” he says.

“I had a meeting with my guys, the senior management, and I said, ‘Right, put your hand up if you have ever done a pandemic before’.

“Everyone looked at me like I was an idiot and I said, ‘Well, me neither, so we will have to make [a handbook] up’.”

Queensland will remove all interstate border restrictions on Monday. The only time this occurred since the borders closed in March was for eight days in December.