Opinion: Qld Govt’s extraordinary exercise in blame shifting

In a highly political media conference, everyone but the State Government was to blame for Queensland’s Covid catastrophe, writes Jessica Marszalek. VOTE IN OUR POLL

Yesterday’s press conference by the Queensland Government was such an incredible exercise in finger pointing, it’s surprising no one lost an eye.

There was so much blame shifting, it’s hard to even remember who the public are meant to blame over the leaking of the highly infectious Delta strain from The Prince Charles Hospital Covid ward and into the community via an unvaccinated worker.

Certainly not the State Government.

But let’s recap.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath was asked outright whether she owed Queenslanders in lockdown an apology.

Despite admitting there was a failure, that the receptionist should have been vaccinated and that there was a dispute around whether the health directive requiring that was clear enough, no apology was forthcoming.

In a bitsy, defensive and highly political press conference, the lack of vaccine availability, the contagiousness of the virus, and a mysterious “someone (who) will be held responsible” for not making sure the woman was vaccinated were all to blame, according to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and her entourage.

But it was Deputy Premier Steven Miles who took the blame-game prize with his gobsmacking and deceptive exercise in dog whistling, where he basically suggested the virus would have never gotten out if “all those foreigners” weren’t coming in.

Now there is certainly room for a grown-up conversation about whether arrival caps should be cut for a time while Australia battles Delta outbreaks on multiple fronts and, yes, we should require travellers to be vaccinated.

But how helpful is it to stand up and rattle off a list of English, Scottish, Welsh, Chinese, American, Indonesian, Filipino and South African people coming in and “displacing Australians who are genuinely stranded overseas” on flimsy evidence?

You don’t get to blame people travelling for reasons deemed important enough if you haven’t done everything possible to contain the virus.

And the Government didn’t do everything it could, because there was a woman working right outside the Covid ward who anyone with a passing understanding of infection control knows should have been vaccinated, but wasn’t.

But Miles wasn’t finished, invoking a class-war argument around how people shouldn’t be allowed to travel “just because you can afford a business-class flight or a charter flight”.

“It’s not good enough that the borders are open for the Prime Minister’s corporate mates but closed for the rest of us, putting Queenslanders at risk,” he barked.

But presumably it is good that the borders are open for the State Government’s Hollywood mates who are coming to Queensland to film movies – oh, and Palaszczuk herself, who opened herself up to criticism over her own trip to Tokyo for the Olympics and Paralympics as Brisbane touts for the 2032 Games.

But that’s politics.