Qld coronavirus: Police reliant on people telling truth, top cops say

Queensland Police say it is impossible for them to stop people evading border restrictions if they set out to lie, saying they can’t track every incoming passenger. It comes as questions rise about the best way to handle the state’s borders amid fears of a second wave.

POLICE say there’s “no system in the world” that can stop people evading border restrictions if they purposely lie, saying they aren’t able to track every incoming passenger.

Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said 95,000 people had flown into Queensland this month alone, and cross checking flight manifests in real time simply wasn’t possible as people streamed through airports.

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The admission comes amid public anger over how three women were able to return from Victoria, via Sydney, before two tested positive to COVID-19.

A police investigation is under way but it’s understood there were no rules in New South Wales that would have stopped the women transitioning flights there and travelling from Sydney onto Brisbane, where they should have gone into hotel quarantine.

Queensland Deputy Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski on Thursday. Picture: Liam Kidston

Mr Gollschewski said police would allege the women “deliberately deceived us – knowingly, and deliberately deceived us about where they’ve been.”

“Now there is no system in the world, unless we track people, that can tell us exactly where those people have been,” he said.

“And because they transited through Sydney, the only information available to the police was the fact that they had boarded a flight in Sydney.”

Mr Gollschewski said accessing a flight manifest was something police did when investigating.

“There are privacy issues around this in terms of the information we can access in a proactive manner,” he said.

“The airlines have been very cooperative in terms of how we deal with these things but generally speaking we can only access certain information when we’re doing an investigation for a crime that’s been occurred.”

Deputy Opposition Leader Tim Mander claimed authorities shouldn’t be relying on an honesty system.

“It would seem that the system is broken down, when it comes to protecting the health and lives of Queenslanders we cannot rely on an honour system,” he said.

“I think that we need to have more thorough examination of those declarations to make sure that we determine whether people are telling the truth or not.

“What has to happen is the police need to be given permission and also the time to do the checks that are required.”

But a government spokesperson hit back, claiming Mr Mander’s comments were “a bit rich” coming from an Opposition which called for the borders to be opened at least 64 times when it was not safe to open them.

Meanwhile Deputy Premier Steven Miles said he didn’t believe hotel quarantine costs were the reason the women skipped it.

“We spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on that and certainly that disincentive was something we considered when we put those charges in place,” he said.

“I suspect it wouldn’t have made a difference in this case.

“It’s definitely the case thought that these women should have been in quarantine, they should have been tested in quarantine.

“They appeared to have lied to get around that.

“I don’t think the charging was necessarily the reason for that.

“We gave people a long time to get back home to Queensland and there’s certainly no excuse for people from Queensland travelling to Victoria now.”