Home Affairs Minister blasts Queensland’s state leaders over criticism of international arrivals

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has come under fire for criticism of the federal government around international arrivals as she prepares to fly to Tokyo for the Olympic Games.

Misleading allegations by Queensland’s state leaders around international arrivals is a “smokescreen” to distract from their own coronavirus failures, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews has said.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk declared Australia was in a “pressure cooker” situation and that the Federal Government needed to reduce the caps on international arrivals, saying the nation was at a “pressure cooker moment”.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has come under fire for hypocrisy around international travel caps. Picture: Dan Peled

“There are a large number of people that are travelling overseas for business … and there are questions that need to be answered about why they are leaving without being vaccinated,” she said.

Speaking from the Gold Coast, Ms Andrews derided Ms Palaszczuk for hypocrisy around international travel caps considering the Premier is herself considering flying to Japan for the Olympics.

“So clearly what Annastacia Palaszczuk is doing is making sure that she is doing as much as she possibly can to ensure that she puts up a smokescreen to hide the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of quarantine that is administered and managed by the Queensland Government,” she said.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews says Queensland is using international travel caps as a smokescreen to distract from its own vaccine failures. Picture: Mark Evans

Ms Andrews said the state government had failed by failing to vaccinate its health staff working in high risk areas and also by putting a miner from coronavirus-free Bendigo into hotel quarantine among high-risk arrivals — a move that has caused the spread of the Delta strain across the nation.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles also took aim at the Federal Government for allowing more than 20,000 non-Australian residents into the country last month, while claiming the international border wasn’t “genuinely” shut.

He said 223 international travellers arrived in Queensland yesterday.

Citing data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Mr Miles claimed “these travellers are displacing Australians who are genuinely stranded overseas trying to get home”.

“Many then seek to return rejoining the queue, going back through hotel quarantine, putting, putting our community at risk,” he said.

Mr Miles made the claims after confirming an infected hospital worker had caught Covid-19 from a returned traveller who had been “allowed to come and go between Australia and Indonesia repeatedly through the pandemic” and was being treated at Prince Charles Hospital.

But Mr Miles’s claims have been refuted by Australian Border Force, as new information emerges about a traveller the state government has blamed for Queensland’s latest outbreak.

In a detailed statement, Australian Border Force said claiming half of all arrivals were non-citizens taking quarantine places from citizens and transmitting Covid-19 was “misleading”.

The ABF said permanent residents and their immediate family members who are not Australians do travel into the country on foreign passports — a detail not reflected in data being used by political leaders.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles speaks during a Covid update on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

On average, 80 per cent of international arrivals coming into Australia are citizens, permanent residents, or their immediate family members.

The ABF also revealed 13,762 Australians and permanent residents had been allowed to come in and out of the country since the beginning of the pandemic, but said this includes people who have “legitimate reasons to undertake multiple trips”.

“Many of whom don’t take quarantine places from returning Australians,” a spokesman said.

This includes arrivals from New Zealand as part of the travel bubble, Defence personnel, medevac crew and medical or security escorts.

Air crew returning to Australia are also another cohort allowed to come and go, as well as those that travel between mainland Australia and Christmas Island.

“In addition to hotel quarantine as a first line of defence, all travellers must present evidence of a negative COVID-19 PCR test taken 72 hours or less before the scheduled departure to Australia, unless travelling on a quarantine-free flight from New Zealand,” an ABF spokesman said.

“Australian citizens and permanent residents under 50 years of age who have an approved outwards travel exemption in an eligible category are automatically eligible to receive a COVID19 vaccination.”

Mr Miles, in Queensland’s daily Covid-19 press conference on Wednesday, also laid blame on a man who had been allowed to go to and from Indonesia for being the source of the state’s latest Covid-19 outbreak.

The man had tested positive in hotel quarantine and was being care for at the Prince Charles Hospital, where a hospital receptionists working outside the Covid-19 ward later caught the virus.

It has since been revealed that the man is a helicopter pilot who works in Indonesia and on his return spends two weeks in quarantine and two weeks at home before going back to the country for work.

Mr Miles said 500 Chinese citizens, more than 300 Indonesians, more than 250 people from the US, more than 200 from the Philippines, and 115 people from South Africa arrived in Australia last month.

He said half of the 20,000 arrivals were on short-term temporary visas.

“The borders are not genuinely closed,” he said.

“These travellers are displacing Australians who are genuinely stranded overseas, genuinely trying to get home.”

The Deputy Premier also took aim at the Commonwealth for allowing Australians to leave the country and return, thereby rejoining the hotel quarantine queue and “putting our community at risk.”

“It’s not good enough that just because you can afford a business class fight, or a charter flight, you can breach our closed international borders,” he said.

The Premier said there needed to be a serious discussion about ensuring people are vaccinated before travelling to Australia.

“We’re at a pressure cooker moment at the moment,” she said.

“Right across Australia it’s like a pressure cooker.

“We’ve got to relieve that pressure, so what are the levers we can pull to relieve that pressure;

well we can lower the caps, lower the people coming in.”

Ms Palaszczuk said regional quarantine hubs should be located away from densely populated areas like capital cities.