Lisa Wilkinson rips into NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian

The Project host has launched another scathing attack on Gladys Berejiklian, telling the NSW Premier she’s “stuffed this.”

The Project host Lisa Wilkinson has again ripped into Gladys Berejiklian over her handling of the Covid crisis.

Wilkinson accused the NSW Premier of “doing nothing” and demanded she “step aside” after NSW recorded its worst day of the pandemic.

“I think I speak on behalf of just about everybody that is watching these press conferences at 11am every day — they are almost unwatchable,” she began, during Thursday night’s episode of The Project.

“The whole situation is completely farcical. On a day when NSW is recording its highest numbers of the pandemic, another family is grieving a loved one, Gladys Berejiklian makes no new restrictions.

“She’s doing nothing, the soft lockdown continues, and we’re all scratching our heads trying to work out if she’s not going to do anything more — why is she continuing with this same rhetoric?”

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Lisa Wilkinson rips into NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on The Project on Thursday. Picture: Twitter/The Project

Sydney-based Wilkinson claimed the whole state of NSW needed a “complete reset”, before making a shock call that “if Gladys Berejiklian isn’t up to the job, then she needs to step aside”.

Wilkinson said the premier needed to make room for somebody who is up to the job — “because she’s stuffed this.”

“That’s a technical term. We’re at that point where we need to use technical terms now — it is ridiculous.”

Wilkinson’s address came as NSW recorded 681 new cases on Thursday — the worst day of the pandemic so far for the state.

The Project host continued that “the problem” is that Ms Berejiklian keeps saying there is light at the end of the tunnel.

“When you watch these press conferences, journalists are going hard trying to get that granular information that seems to be missing between these really high numbers and her continually saying, as she has said today, ‘There is a light at the end of the tunnel’.”

RELATED: ‘Gut punch’ – Lisa Wilkinson on Sydney lockdown

Wilkinson said the whole state needs a complete reset before making a shock call that ‘if Gladys Berejiklian isn’t up to the job, then she needs to step aside’. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ Christian Gilles

“That light she can see at the end of the tunnel, we can all see it too — it’s a complete bin fire. And somebody else needs to step in.”

Wilkinson’s on-air comments came hours after she tweeted yesterday criticising the Premier and claiming NSW is in a “soft lockdown” that is not working:

681 new COVID cases, the highest NSW number of the pandemic, one new death, a soft “lockdown” that’s not working…and no new restrictions proposed to STOP the spread.

And @GladysB chooses this moment to say she can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

— Lisa Wilkinson (@Lisa_Wilkinson) August 19, 2021

Covid restrictions extended across all of NSW, with 11 LGAs now in hard lockdown, including stricter mask rules and a 5km radius travel limit in greater Sydney. The ACT went into a seven-day lockdown from 5pm Thursday.

Reaction to Wilkinson’s on-air speech was mixed, with some praising and agreeing with her views, while others strongly disagreed.

Lisa and Waleed are incorrect - if you have to lock down, do so where the cases are. Why would you damage the broader community (economically and from a mental health viewpoint) if they don’t have any cases? Where has this broad lockdown approach worked?

— Marshall Brentnall (@MarshBrentnall) August 19, 2021

@Lisa_Wilkinson is completely out of touch with reality. Zero Covid is dead. Get vaccinated now. Either you get Covid before or after you get vaccinated. Which do you prefer?

— DeeCee (@DeeCee451) August 19, 2021

“Thank you @Lisa_Wilkinson. Coffee shops, takeaway, Bunnings. Reject Shop, even party shops still open. This madness can’t continue,” said another.

Meanwhile, others accused Wilkinson of being “out of touch with reality”.

“LOL “I speak for everyone” @Lisa_Wilkinson Please don’t say that,” one person wrote, while another added: “@Lisa_Wilkinson you don’t speak for me. @GladysB has been in one of the most stressful roles during this time and is doing what a lot of people want. The journalists in the daily press conferences need a reset.”

A REMINDER: this is the PM on June 24 when the Bondi cluster hit 36 with 11 new cases & epidemiologists were calling for hard lockdown.

"My fellow Sydneysiders can feel very confident that if anyone can get on top of this without shutting the city down it is the NSW government."

— Lisa Wilkinson (@Lisa_Wilkinson) August 15, 2021

It’s not the first time that Wilkinson as hit out at the state premier.

Three days ago, when Berejiklian said this — “We can’t stress enough that we don’t want to go down the path of all these other places overseas where they have thousands and thousands of cases a day” — Wilkinson saw red.

“I think everyone in NSW yesterday, when she said that the day before was a ‘wake-up call’, everyone in NSW thought – ‘It‘s taken you this long to wake up?”,’ Wilkinson said.

“When you consider on June 24, there was 36 cases with 11 new ones that we’d been alerted to … And, please, Premier, can you stop looking to overseas as a place to refer to?”

Wilkinson’s co-host Peter van Onselen agreed, also criticising Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Sunday morning announcement that 1 million extra Pfizer vaccines would soon be arriving from Poland, with many sent straight to southwestern Sydney, the heart of NSW’s current outbreak.

“It’s the same with the PM with these vaccines coming in from Poland. Til he was blue in the face, when we had him on the program a couple of weeks ago, he was saying we don’t need extra vaccines to go to southwest Sydney. Now he’s putting half a million in there,” said van Onselen.

Wilkinson has been an outspoken critic of the government’s handling of the Covid pandemic and vaccine rollout, tweeting over the weekend that the country’s current sweeping lockdowns had come “courtesy of Scott Morrison’s handling of the pandemic.”

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Originally published as Lisa Wilkinson rips into NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian