Keith Woods: COVID-19 border control should be a federal issue - not ‘palmed off’ to incompetent state governments

The Federal Government has been praised for its response to COVID-19. But it’s made one big mistake, and it’s hurting the Gold Coast, writes Keith Woods.

HERE’S a question to ponder, as we deal with fallout from the COVID-19 outbreak in Victoria.

Anyone arriving at an Australian airport from overseas can expect to be met by biosecurity officials. If you’re carrying an apple, and you haven’t declared it, you can be fined.

In some cases, people get turned away and sent back to where they came from merely for carrying plants. It happened in November to two passengers from Bangladesh, who had live plants in their luggage. They were referred by biosecurity officers to Border Force officials, who promptly cancelled their visas, put them on a flight back and banned them from entering the country for three years.

This is how seriously the Federal Government takes the threat of disease to our flora and fauna.

Biosecurity officers at Perth Airport have referred a serious biosecurity breach to Australian Border Force officials...

Posted by Australian Biosecurity on Monday, 4 November 2019

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis, people arriving in Australian airports will have noticed some changes. They now also get handed a pamphlet outlining what to do if they feel sick and are sent to a hotel for 14 days of quarantine.

This is where the approach, to this writer at least, seems very different.

Where all matters regarding plant biosecurity are handled by impeccably well trained, rigorous border officials, the quarantine arrangements are palmed off to state governments.

Why? If ever this was a Federal matter, surely this is it.

It’s a Federal matter when an outbreak 1600km away in Melbourne has an impact on businesses on the Gold Coast. Politically, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk had little choice but to delay reopening our borders to Victoria. But it deprives struggling Gold Coast operators a huge slice of the domestic tourism market.

Witness the comment made by a reader, Brooke, from Victoria, on a Gold Coast Bulletin story yesterday.

International visitors are always met by biosecurity officials. (AAP Image/Scott Barbour)

“We want to go to the Gold Coast as we have family up there,” Brooke wrote. “I have $5000 sitting in the bank for our holiday (accommodation and spending) – money that would be going to your economy.”

That $5000 – and the holiday money of many other Victorians – is lost to Gold Coast tourism operators not because of any missteps in Queensland, but because of mistakes by the Andrews Government in Melbourne.

A significant portion of that outbreak can be traced to rank incompetence shown by that government. More than 30 cases have been linked to security contractors in two hotels used for quarantine. Whistleblowers have claimed to The Age that those security guards lacked proper training.

We also learnt that 30 per cent of people held in quarantine in Melbourne were allowed leave after 14 days despite refusing to take a COVID-19 test. The equivalent figure in NSW was 2 per cent.

The reason for the discrepancy is not clear, although it was reported the Victorian Government had concerns about breaching its Human Rights Charter if it tried to make the tests mandatory.

We should all be very angry about these failures. We also shouldn’t be surprised.

The rot in the Andrews government was laid bare in astonishing detail by the 60 Minutes program focused on former minister Adem Somyurek, which not only shone a light on his branch-stacking antics, but on the lack of competent leadership at the heart of the administration.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announces the border reopening. Picture: David Kapernick

At the time the program was aired we thought this was a problem for Victoria. It hasn’t taken long to realise that, because states are left to run hotel quarantine, it is a problem for the Gold Coast, for Queensland, for the nation as a whole.

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It is also not the first time the nation as a whole has suffered because of mistakes made at state level. Let’s not forget that the country’s largest outbreak, and greatest source of COVID-19 deaths, came as a result of passengers being allowed to leave the Ruby Princess cruise ship in Sydney without testing after getting the go-ahead from NSW Health.

The Federal government has in the last couple of days been offering ADF personnel to help Victoria in its COVID fight. But it’s already too late. The ADF should have been running this operation from that start.

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When travel from China was banned at the outset of the pandemic, Aussies returning on repatriation flights were forced to spend their 14 days quarantine on Christmas Island under the supervision of Federal officials. Why the big change in attitude since?

How is it that, despite the global pandemic only having become more serious, we are now satisfied to quarantine people in hotels in the middle of our biggest population centres, with security contractors hired to mind them? The Victorian government has failed abysmally, but the Federal Government has also failed to step up to the mark. National Cabinet should have allowed the Commonwealth to take full charge of measures to stop COVID being imported into Australia.

After all, that’s how it’s done to stop diseases being imported that might affect plants.