Qld election 2020: Qantas boss takes fresh swipe at Premier
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has again taken aim at Annastacia Palaszczuk in the wake of her election victory, saying the popular decision isn’t always the right one.
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Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has warned newly re-elected Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk that “sometimes the popular decision isn’t the right one” in his continued campaign for the state’s border to reopen.
While the Sunshine State will reopen to NSW from tomorrow, Ms Palaszczuk told reporters on Friday that greater Sydney and Victoria won’t get a look in until at least the end of November.
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Speaking to Sydney radio 2GB today, Mr Joyce described Ms Palaszczuk’s hard border stance as “extremely frustrating”, adding it was causing social and economic damage.
“What gets me is this is obviously popular. She’s won the election and congratulations to the Premier,” Mr Joyce said.
“But sometimes the popular decision is not the right decision and there’s a lot of factors going into this that clearly are not going into it.
“We have a very different position across the country.”
Mr Joyce said a petition launched by Qantas to “safely open borders” has now been signed by 65,000 people, who have shared “heartbreaking stories of people disconnected”.
An exasperated Mr Joyce slammed Queensland’s decision to stay closed to Sydney last Friday, after Ms Palaszczuk made the announcement.
“Frankly, this is ridiculous,” he said in a statement.
“Sydney is the biggest city in Australia and it probably has one of the best track records globally of managing a virus that is clearly going to be with us for a very long time.
“Keeping the doors bolted to places that you can’t reasonably call hot spots makes no sense from a health perspective, and it’s doing a lot of social and economic damage as well.”
He said that by the time Queensland does open up to Sydney, “people may have made other plans”.
Ms Palaszczuk’s NSW counterpart, Gladys Berejiklian, also took a subtle dig at the decision during today’s press conference.
Ms Berejiklian was asked by reporters this morning how opening the border to some NSW residents but not others was going to work logistically.
“That’s the challenge. When you are not briefed you don’t know. That’s for the Queensland government to determine and that’s the chaos they are creating,” the premier said.
“I want to reduce the stress on citizens generally and I think the best way to reduce the stress, to be compassionate, is to get rid of that Queensland/NSW border. There’s no reason it should be there.”