Brisbane hotel quarantine guest slapped with $1300 fine for breaching orders
A guest in quarantine in Brisbane has copped a hefty fine after being found in a hotel fire escape. It comes as the Victorian couple who left a Melbourne lockdown to travel through NSW into Queensland have been hit with $10,000 in fines.
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A guest in hotel quarantine was slapped with a hefty fine for breaching strict health orders after being found outside their room in the fire escape of a Brisbane city facility.
Deputy commissioner Steve Gollschewski said the person had been a regular nuisance while in forced quarantine and slapped with a fine of more than $1300 as the state grapples with a number of clusters and escalating Covid-19 case numbers.
The top cop provided minimal details about the breach but said the person was “found in the stairwell” of the Four Points hotel in the CBD.
“We have monitoring systems and officers on site so that person had previously been spoken to for their behaviour and persisted with it so they’ve been fined fairly heavily,” Mr Gollschewski told reporters on Monday.
“Doesn’t matter what the reason is, they’re not allowed out.”
The breach comes after a Melbourne couple who fled the Victorian lockdown to drive through NSW and onto Queensland were slapped with combined fines of $10,000.
The duo travelled through NSW and on to the Sunshine Coast last month without a travel exemption, putting the state on high alert of a potentially deadly outbreak.
In June, Queensland authorities issued the pair with a $4000 fine each and their NSW counterparts compounded the punishment, slapping the pair with a fine for breaching a state public health order.
NSW Police confirmed a week later the couple had each been issued a fine of $1000 for visiting a cinema on their journey through the state, which is deemed as non-essential.
The pair were reported to have spent several days in regional NSW before reaching Queensland, where they were moving interstate, on June 5.
The 44-year-old woman tested positive in Caloundra on June 8, almost a week after she first developed symptoms, while her partner was confirmed as a new case soon after.
The woman and her husband left Victoria on June 1 after a hard lockdown was announced and travelled through regional Queensland centres Goondiwindi and Toowoomba.
Originally published as Brisbane hotel quarantine guest slapped with $1300 fine for breaching orders
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