Opinion: Palaszczuk completely lost us this week with her double standards
Queenslanders are understandably angry at the Premier for giving special treatment to footy stars while ordinary families remain traumatised by her border belligerence, writes Kylie Lang.
Kylie Lang
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​As if Annastacia Palaszczuk’s snap decision to ban Queenslanders coming home wasn’t staggering enough, this week she lost us. Completely.
And no lame late apology will change that.
When the Premier allowed NRL players’ wives, girlfriends and kids into the state on Monday from Covid-ravaged Sydney, while callously shutting out ordinary folk who’ve followed all the rules, she showed the true extent of her out-of-touch and arrogant leadership.
Queenslanders were already fed up with double standards and special favours for people who happen to play a lucrative sport or whose surnames are Hanks or Minogue.
But for her to usher in 100 loved ones (and officials) of footballers while other families are traumatised by forced separation due to a shock pause on relocations from NSW, Victoria and the ACT was disgraceful.
Ms Palaszczuk has invested so much money (ours) in revamping her image – hiring spin doctors at a faster rate than frontline workers such as police – yet that image is now in tatters.
Back-pedalling on arguably her worst call during this pandemic, she said four days after the fact, on Friday, that “it shouldn’t have happened”.
You think?
Could it be that the Premier is finally heeding insider advice that insulting the Queensland public while pandering to celebrities isn’t the smartest political ploy?
I’ve nothing against WAGS or the blokes who love them, but Queenslanders deserve the same rights and opportunities.
These shouldn’t be Orwellian times, where “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”, particularly for a Labor government that professes to stand for workers and battlers.
What a farce.
Even diehard Labor voters have started turning on the Premier, and who could blame them?
One minute, she tells us “we have no room” and our hotels are bursting at the seams – while refusing to consider home-based quarantine, which is working in some other states and many other countries – and the next minute, we have privileged interlopers spending 14-days in hotel quarantine while others deemed less deserving miss out.
We have people with terminal illnesses being separated from their loved ones when they need them most.
Others are wrestling with grief yet unable to attend funerals.
Weddings are being postponed, some three times already, because of rules that apply to some but not all.
In a Courier-Mail poll asking “Should the NRL WAGS have been allowed into Queensland?” a resounding 96 per cent of readers said no.
Ms Palaszczuk has maintained, when it suits her, that she is acting on the advice of Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young.
However, as Premier, the buck stops with her.
Indeed, a rattled Dr Young said she wasn’t even aware of the highly publicised plight of parents to be reunited with their three-year-old son, until weeks after the Fraser Coast family had been pleading for an exemption to have their boy home.
After public outrage forced a response, Dr Young said on Thursday that Memphis Francis would “of course” be allowed to return from his grandparent’s property in rural NSW (a Covid-free area) where he’d been for eight weeks.
Not before considerable distress to the child who was missing his mum and dad.
Tell me, who is paying attention to the little people while the big names swan in?
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has called Queensland’s strict border policy a “profound moral failure”. On this, he is right.
Through its unethical stance, the state government is behaving like a fair-weathered friend, lured by the latest shiny object or glittering prize, and sorely lacking in empathy.
This is not the type of governance Queenslanders deserve, and it is not the type of governance Ms Palaszczuk should feel smugly confident about come the next election.
Experts tell us we will need to live with Covid; it won’t ever disappear.
The business of getting on with life is something we all deserve, not just those who curry favour with a Premier who has lost any connection to the real people of Queensland.
Sorry just doesn’t cut it.
Kylie Lang is associate editor of the Courier-Mail
Kylie.lang@news.com.au
LOVE
A new initiative called Stopped the Stigma that encourages kids to speak up about sexual abuse and spark a national conversation around this scourge that should never, ever occur. Good on Bruce and Denise Morcombe for being among those to support it.
The Rose Revolution festival. This year it’s moved to the South Brisbane foodie precinct Fish Lane, September 26. Tickets, $65, include five tastings from more than 30 wines, and a box of grazing goodies. roserevolution.com.au (tix refunded in case of Covid lockdown).
LOATHE
The State Government refusing to disclose NAPLAN results and telling parents to talk to schools directly to get answers on academic performance. Why the secrecy? Has Queensland tanked even further than in previous years? Don’t ask education Minister Grace Grace because her lips are sealed.
Queensland fails to fall into line with the rest of the nation on an agreement to open borders once a vaccine threshold is reached, and Deputy Premier Steven Miles’s laughable response is to accuse the Federal Government of a “pile on”. The poor pet.
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