No guarantee borders will open when vaccine milestones reached

The Queensland Treasurer has taken aim at LNP governments as the Prime Minister sounds a warning on state border reopenings.

There is no guarantee state borders will reopen even when vaccine milestones are reached, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison pressures Queensland to return to home quarantine for interstate travellers at 70 per cent.

Mr Morrison said Queenslanders should be able to home quarantine when returning from interstate at 70 per cent vaccination and for overseas returns at 80 per cent, as part of a blitz in states with low Covid exposure promoting the national plan for reopening.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says it is a state matter whether border closures end once vaccination milestones are reached. Picture: Martin Ollman/NCA NewsWire

But he refused to say at what points state border closures should end, saying it was up to the state governments.

“Ultimately everything is a state matter, but I note that there was an agreement to the national plan which was to see Australians coming together,” he said despite repeated questioning in Canberra today.

But he pushed for the nation to start moving towards home quarantine, particularly for Australians returning from overseas, once 80 per cent of the population had been immunised.

He said that in Queensland it should be considered for the interstate arrivals from 70 per cent of the population being vaccinated, pointing to a trial already being run in South Australia.

“Home quarantine needs to be a viable and widespread option for people who are travelling overseas and returning, and indeed people who are overseas and have been vaccinated by the vaccines that are recognised in Australia,” Mr Morrison said.

“For that to occur then we need to get these home quarantine models up and running in states and territories across the country.

Queensland last week declared its hotel quarantine system was full, 3257 out of 5114 of which were domestic travellers, and paused all arrivals from NSW, Victoria and the ACT for two weeks.

Long lines of cars at the crossing to Queensland from NSW during the border closure due to the Covid-19. Picture: NCA NewsWire / John Gass

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced on Tuesday that Queensland children who go to boarding school interstate and have become stuck due to border closures will be allowed to go into home quarantine to reunite families.

Meanwhile, Mr Morrison told his colleagues the election will be around “sooner than you think”, but repeated that it will be next year.

“We need to go the term and get the job done,” he said.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese told Labor MPs at a caucus meeting that if the government called an early election it was because “they think 2022 will be worse”.

Meanwhile, Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick has accused LNP governments of being “chock full of crazies” as he vowed Queensland would not “open the borders to an uncontrolled outbreak in New South Wales”.

Mr Dick gave the spray in Parliament as he accused the NSW Government of mismanaging its crisis there and the Federal Government of harbouring an obsession with opening up.

He said the NSW Government was dragging down the national economy as well as the morale of its own people.

“All they talk about is opening up, regardless of the health consequences,” he said.

“It’s an obsession shared by the Federal Government.

“Scott Morrison botched the vaccine rollout.

“Scott Morrison botched international quarantine.

Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick in Parliament today. Picture: Dan Peled/NCA NewsWire

“It is no accident that these LNP governments keep falling into these errors.

“That’s because these LNP governments are chock full of crazies.

“They don’t believe in border controls.

“Some of them don’t even believe in Covid-19.”

He accused LNP governments of not wanting to fight the virus.

“They want us to run up the white flag and open the borders to an uncontrolled outbreak in New South Wales, just because they say they have hit their vaccination target,” he said.

The comments follow a refusal by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Monday to state whether she remained committed to a national cabinet plan to significantly relax restrictions once vaccination rates hit 80 per cent.

She said she still needed to see updated modelling, saying that what was provided to the national cabinet last Friday was not comprehensive enough.

Mr Dick said health disasters quickly became economic ones.

“Our government will not subject Queenslanders to an uncontrolled outbreak of the virus, and the needless disease and suffering that follows,” he said.

“We are not going to subject Queenslanders to needless economic destruction and mass unemployment that would result from an uncontrolled Covid outbreak.

“Queensland and Western Australia are the powerhouse states who now carry the nation.

“We have demonstrated that our way is the only way to protect jobs and the economy.”