COVID-19 Gold Coast: Why QLD has avoided coronavirus surge

Labor want you to believe that Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s tough border measures are what’s kept us safe from COVID-19. But the truth is not so simple, writes Keith Woods.

• Border warning as troops pull out
• Chilling prediction for one of Coast’s leading industries

YOUR columnist was told a very sad tale by his sister this week.

A good friend was seriously ill. The man is married with a young family. He is in intensive care. Doctors have told his devastated wife to prepare for the worst.

He is only 41 years old, has never had any health problems before in his life, but is in ICU, clinging to life. He has COVID-19.

My sister, you see, lives in the United States.

Although she does not live in a big city and, by American standards, cases are relatively low, such stories are common. Daily life is disrupted to an extent unknown here on the Gold Coast. Her seven-year-old son, as with all children where she lives, can only go to school two days a week. Why? Half the children attend on Monday and Tuesday, the school undergoes a deep clean on Wednesday, and the other half go to school on Thursday and Friday.

Friends and relatives in Europe, where the virus is resurgent, have a similar story to tell.

But here, life proceeds very much as normal. As I write, from the comfort of my front garden amid a glorious Gold Coast sunset, I am interrupted by charity collectors at the gate. It feels like little has changed. For those of us who have kept our jobs, we don’t know how lucky we are.

New waves of COVID-19 are wreaking havoc around the world, claiming lives and ravaging economies.

We don’t want that to happen here.

Keep following the health advice so Queensland can stay safe and focused on our plan for economic recovery.#covid19 pic.twitter.com/FqC2GP9NUt

— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) September 27, 2020

This is something that Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk attempted to convey to voters on Monday. “New waves of COVID-19 are wreaking havoc around the world, claiming lives and ravaging economies,” she wrote. “We don’t want that to happen here.”

Indeed we don’t. We do not want Queenslanders to end up in the same position as my sister’s friend. One case among many that proves those who claim COVID-19 is little worse than the flu are flat wrong.

But there is more than one way to ravage an economy. Or cause heartache to families. And the reason we are not in the same position as the United States and Europe is nowhere near as clear-cut as Ms Palaszczuk and her ministers would have you believe.

Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Phil Gaetjens, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Chief Medical Officer Professor Brendan Murphy, speak with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (on screen) during a National Cabinet meeting to discuss COVID-19 (coronavirus), from the teleprescence room of Parliament House in Canberra on Sunday 22 March 2020. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen.

While in Melbourne, the argument is about who let the virus in, here we are in the happy position of arguing over who or what has kept it out.

Labor are pushing the narrative that it is because of the Premier’s tough stance on the border. But it’s a bloody hard sell. NSW has recorded no new locally acquired cases in four days. They have never let the virus get out of control. The ACT had no new cases for weeks, but we shut the door to them anyway.

Keeping the border shut to Victorians when a second wave took hold was obviously the right call - but it was opposed by almost nobody. Even NSW, which has pursued a far less extreme policy on borders, did the same.

Instead, looked at from the international perspective, as Ms Palaszczuk has encouraged us to do, the real story is how Australia has kept the virus out, not individual states. The decision, made early in the pandemic, to close the country’s borders to first China and then the rest of the world was key.

If anyone deserves credit, it is Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Ms Palaszczuk should be thanking him, as should we all.

Instead, through stubborn parochialism, Ms Palaszczuk has managed to fall out spectacularly with both Mr Morrison and her NSW counterpart Gladys Berejiklian. Her attack dog, Steven Miles, spends his weekends heaping clumsy abuse on Federal colleagues.

It’s awful to see. Ms Palaszczuk has also proclaimed this week that “Queenslanders work best when we work together”. Ditto Australians.

The division and backbiting is not what Queensland needs right now and it’s definitely not what the Gold Coast needs.

We may not have people suffering from COVID-19 in ICU, but this city’s economy is flatlining. People are worried for their futures. They deserve to see the highly paid politicians they have elected working together in this time of crisis, not tearing each other apart.

Yes, we do not want to be in the situation encountered in the United States, where previously healthy people fight for their lives in ICU. But neither do want American-style petty partisanship.

Ordinary people, left without jobs, or left to watch their businesses crumble, are the ones who will suffer if pollies can’t get their act together.

Something else that will also lead to some very sad tales.

Follow @keithjwoods