Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk reviewing ‘swamped’ quarantine exemption system

An “upset” Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has promised action on the broken compassionate exemption system after one of her childhood friends suicided following his release from hotel quarantine.

PREMIER Annastacia Palaszczuk has admitted her government has “just been swamped” with requests for quarantine exemptions as the team in charge of compassionate cases is “thoroughly reviewed”.

Brendan Luxton.

Ms Palaszczuk fronted the media on Sunday morning where she spoke of her sadness on hearing of the suicide of former school friend Brendan Luxton less than 24 hours after he left hotel quarantine, which he could not get an exemption from despite suffering a mental health crisis.

Asked whether people were falling through the cracks, the Premier said: “I think that’s happening around the world.”

“Many people have lost loved ones, friends and family during this pandemic,” the Premier said after Brendan’s family demanded a fix to the state’s broken system.

“It is a deeply distressing time for the family and in relation there are currently some matters before the coroner and once the coroner makes the determination, I’m more than happy to meet with the family.”

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk before Suinday’s press conference. Picture: Liam Kidston

She said she hadn’t reached out to them yet because it wouldn’t be appropriate while matters were being considered by the coroner.

“I was upset, I mean everyone is upset when they lose someone who you've known at primary school, or a friend,” she said.

“This pandemic has taken an awful toll on so many people and the rules around hotel quarantine, they have been put in place by the national cabinet, welfare checks have increased, which is good, and the exemptions unit has increased too.”

Regarding the family’s calls for her to admit the exemptions system is broken and fix it, the Premier said it was being “thoroughly reviewed at the moment” and new Deputy Chief Health Officer Dr Lynne McKinlay had been put in charge of it.

“And we’ve just been swamped,” she added.

“The reason why we have an exemptions unit is because there is a massive outbreak and we’re dealing with a pandemic.”

“ … This is a global pandemic, it is not nice.”

She said she understood people had a range of different circumstances, but the people working in the exemptions unit were “humans as well so they are trying as hard as they possibly can”.

“We’re putting in more clinicians into that unit, we need more social workers,” she said.

Dr McKinlay said an audit was done last week “to make sure that we have looked at every exemption request”.

“Obviously there’s more coming in every day and we are really prioritising looking at all of them, triaging to make sure that we are looking at the most urgent and the most need for compassionate response as quickly as we can,” she said.

Dr McKinlay said working really hard to make the best decisions.

“Sometimes that decision is they can’t grant and exemption and sometimes we can,” she said.

Originally published as Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk reviewing ‘swamped’ quarantine exemption system