Deputy Premier Steven Miles has once more levelled virus outbreak blame at the number of overseas arrivals

Deputy Premier Steven Miles has once again placed blame for Queensland’s Covid outbreak on the Commonwealth, saying the number of overseas arrivals travelling for business was unacceptable.

Queensland’s Deputy Premier Steven Miles has once again deflected blame for the state’s current Covid-19 outbreak onto the Federal Government, saying the number of people travelling here on business was putting Queenslanders at unacceptable risk.

Mr Miles said police were rushing to expand hotel quarantine capacity because of the number of overseas travellers due to arrive today.

“When Australians think about national travel, when the borders are closed … they think about Australians coming home,” Mr Miles said.

“They don’t think about people coming and going for their regular business … and have been utilising hotel quarantine on multiple occasions.

Mr Miles said returning travellers came at a great cost and posed a risk.

“The Covid risk is borne by Queenslanders,” he said.

Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles speaks during a Covid update press conference. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

Mr Miles said 189 international travellers went into hotel quarantine on Wednesday along with 116 domestic arrivals.

“We only have 140 rooms becoming available today and so the police can outline how they are rushing now to expand hotel quarantine capacity for people we know, that will arrive today,” he said.

“It’s too late to avoid that but it just reiterates the need for that urgent reduction in the cap on returning travellers.”

He said some of the travellers “will have COVID-19” and declared the state had little information about why they were permitted to travel.

Mr Miles also hit back at Australian Border Force’s dispute of the overseas arrivals statistics he quoted on Wednesday.

“They did not dispute the growing trend for an increased number of foreign nationals being permitted to travel, and if you if you look at that ABS report … it points to an increase in the number of foreigners travelling here as well as an increase in the number of Australians travelling since the borders were well closed last year,” he said.

“Between April and May 2021 nine out of the 10 top countries saw an increase in people travelling here and there was an increase across every single visa category and there’s been some analysis today of arrival card data, which also confirms that high level of people travelling for leisure and business purpose.”

The Australian Border Force again responded to Mr Miles’s comments, saying no one is allowed to come to Australia for a holiday during the pandemic.

In a statement, the ABF said “nobody is approved to come to Australia under the current travel exemption arrangements for a holiday”

A spokesman said analysis of arrival card data “does not reflect the categories under which people are approved to arrive into the country”.

“The ABF is the only agency able to analyse movements against exemption requests in order to understand the reason for travel,” a spokesman said.

The ABF also provided new month-by-month data, revealing 83.9 per cent of arrivals needing to go into hotel quarantine in June were Australian citizens, permanent residents, or their immediate family.

In May it 84.8 per cent, 81.9 per cent in April, 81.5 per cent in March and 84.8 per cent in February.

The ABF reiterated that foreigners being granted an exemption to enter the country during the pandemic were either “providing skills deemed critical for Australia or demonstrated compelling and compassionate circumstances”.

Mr Miles was speaking at this morning’s press conference where it was revealed that Queensland has recorded four new cases of Covid-19, two of them as a result of community transmission, in results described as encouraging by the Premier and Chief Health Officer.

His comments followed yesterday’s multi-pronged attack on the Commonwealth by the State Government, where it was blamed for the state’s latest Covid-19 emergency.

His stance was backed by the Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk who was questioned over her plans to attend the Tokyo Olympics.

“If I attend I will come back and do 14 days of mandatory hotel quarantine,” she said.

“People leaving Australia should be vaccinated and people coming into Australia should be vaccinated.”

The Premier did however concede that she would not travel to Japan for the Olympics if Queensland was still having to deal with ongoing outbreaks of Covid-19.

Federal minister Karen Andrews yesterday hit back with a scathing rebuke against the attack, accusing Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk of creating a “smokescreen” campaign to distract from her own failure to inoculate a worker outside a Covid hospital ward.

The incredible tit-for-tat, which erupted just hours into the first day of lockdown for four million Queenslanders, came as former premier Peter Beattie called for an end to the political bickering around the vaccine rollout, saying people are “sick to death of the day to day politics and point scoring”.

The political fireworks came as Health Minister Yvette D’Ath refused to apologise for the latest Covid-19 breach, despite admitting there had been a failure to vaccinate the 19-year-old and Ms Palaszczuk promised a full investigation into how the oversight happened and that someone would be held responsible.

But Ms D’Ath also suggested the woman would have been offered the vaccine.

“It is not that she refused, it may have been that she simply did not take up the offer,” she told ABC Radio.

Originally published as Deputy Premier Steven Miles has once more levelled virus outbreak blame at the number of overseas arrivals