Queensland Parliament live blog: Covid exemption failings to come under fire again
The government is facing a grilling about its embattled Covid exemptions unit, with Opposition Leader David Crisafulli questioning whether Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk "needs to take responsibility, and do better".
The government has faced a grilling about its exemptions unit, which Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk last week said needed to work harder amid criticism from families wanting to travel to Queensland.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk last week promised more workers will be added to the state’s Covid border exemption unit, after burnt out Queensland Health insiders revealed a backlog of urgent applications.
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Speaking at a press conference on Friday morning, where it was revealed that Queensland had recorded one new mystery case of Covid-19, Ms Palaszczuk confirmed that more staff would be allocated to the exemption unit over the weekend to ‘ramp up’ and respond to the thousand of people asking for exemption to come into Queensland.
“It is a matter for the health team but I believe we should be scaling that unit up to around 100 staff,” she said.
The Premier confirmed about 80 people were chiefly responsible for processing exemption allocations, but that the unit had the capacity to have about 120 staff.
“I have made it a priority and I have spoken to senior levels of the government about this issue,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
Originally published as Queensland Parliament live blog: Covid exemption failings to come under fire again
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