Anna Caldwell: Is Annastacia Palaszczuk trying to get away Scott-free?
Why is Annastacia Palaszczuk keeping her borders shut? To protect locals from coronavirus or to keep the Prime Minister out and away from the campaign trail?
Opinion
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Queensland revealed this week it is willing to put a wrecking ball through the Federal Budget and our nation’s economic recovery all in the name of petty pre-election political point scoring.
The border wars have jumped the shark again.
Gladys Berejiklian on Thursday accused her Queensland counterpart of making the rules up as she goes along to keep the borders closed and that very well seems to be the case.
As NSW announced this week it had recorded new community transmissions of COVID, the Queensland government was quick to pin a whole bunch of question marks over its promise to lift border restrictions on November 1.
In doing so, they were effectively putting at risk Scott Morrison’s multi-billion dollar economic recovery plan outlined in the Federal Budget, which very explicitly rests on the assumption that all state borders except WA are opened by the end of the year.
Make no mistake - this is a deliberate pre-election political strategy by Annastacia Palaszczuk.
She was quite pleased to make it hard for Deb Frecklington to campaign alongside Scott Morrison, who is just about the most popular conservative going around in Queensland. The border rules have made it logistically difficult but still possible.
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Palaszczuk also knows full well through internal party polling that keeping the borders shut is a popular strategy in Queensland.
Strong leadership is about more than doing the populist thing. It’s about doing the right thing.
It was like a scene from a political comedy on Thursday when Palaszczuk fronted up to Townsville and was asked by reporters on her campaign trail what her signature pitch would be to win the crucial town.
“It’s jobs, jobs, and more jobs!” she told the Far North Queensland crowd, like some sort of Oprah Winfrey giving away cars – never mind the pain and job losses her own policies have caused.
Queensland’s absurd benchmark for border reopening – requiring 28 days of no mystery cases – has penned NSW into a dynamic where we see anything other than zero cases a failure.
This is not only unrealistic – it is unhelpful for our economy.
The true measure of success in this pandemic is learning how to live with the virus. It’s learning how to keep our economy open, keep people in jobs and keep businesses afloat while also keeping a lid on the health crisis.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison again rounded on Palaszczuk on Thursday, saying “is she for jobs or not?”
“The other day she was saying she was all for jobs but being for jobs means you’ve got to balance the risks that you face like NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian,” he said on 2GB.
“They’re managing to basically keep cases to an incredibly low level, they’re doing a great job with their testing and tracing regime … dealing with outbreaks, getting NSW open.
“Queensland can do the same thing. I want to see people back in jobs.”
Morrison pointed out that the number of people who had come back to jobs in NSW since the depths of the COVID economic crisis was a 70 per cent increase.
In Queensland that figure is just 44 per cent, he said.
Berejiklian took a swing too, accusing Palaszczuk of making it up as she goes along.
“I’ve never heard of this rule where you have to have two days to make sure you link your cases to an existing case,” she said.
“I mean that’s just something they plucked out of, I don’t know where.
“Not only have they set a benchmark which I think is unrealistic, because in a pandemic, in a place like NSW, with eight million people, when you are keeping your economy open, of course you’re going to have cases from time to time. But it’s how you manage that. It’s how you get on top of that.
“I’m just really disturbed by what I’ve heard from the Queensland Government and I hope that they really see beyond the borders of Queensland. We’re all Australians. Yes, we’re from different states of Australia, but we’re also all Australians. And Australians are suffering.”
But it was Health Minister Brad Hazzard who got to the heart of the other issue that really matters – he called the closures “cruel”.
And that’s spot on. Of course it’s hard on businesses – but it’s cruel to families who are being ripped apart.
One of the great shining examples in the country of keeping activity afloat has been NRL and racing boss Peter V’landys.
V’landys got rugby league back on our fields and our TV screens when no one believed it to be possible.
He’s now putting on stunning back to back weekends of spring racing when others would have had us all locked up at home.
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And now the state’s major events taskforce is in talks to secure more guests at the jewel in the NSW racing crown, The Everest, in just over a week.
All of this has not only been good for NSW, it’s been good for Australia.
Pushing the boundaries in a medically safe way that boosts activity is a playbook all our leaders can learn from.
Some observers have suggested Berejiklian’s best retaliation to the Queensland absurdity would be to convince the NRL to call off the State of Origin until borders are open.
That would surely hurt and might get a result – but it’s hard to imagine Berejiklian playing these kinds of games.
Her leadership, too, has been among the best in the country in this pandemic.
Nevertheless, there is still more she can do locally to lift the NSW economy, with senior ministers and business people encouraging her to double the capacity currently allowed in indoor venues.
Reaching a deal to allow more people to attend The Everest will be a step in the right direction.
But whichever way you dice it, Queensland is a world behind us, pretending it is managing a pandemic by hiding behind cruel border closures.