‘We won’t be lectured by you’: Premier fires back over border wars

The border wars have escalated again today with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk saying she will ‘not be lectured’ by a state with the highest number of active cases in Australia as NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian slams the shutdown as ‘not logical’.

The border wars have escalated again today with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk saying she will ‘not be lectured’ by a state with the highest number of active cases in Australia as NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian slams the shutdown as ‘not logical’.

Ms Palaszczuk used her morning press conference to double down on her stance to keep Queensland’s borders shut saying NSW and Victoria still had too many active cases and posed a risk to Sunshine State residents.

“We are not going to be lectured by a state that has the highest number of cases in Australia,” she said.

“It is very prevalent in NSW and Victoria.

“They have 401 active cases in NSW at the moment, we’ve seen a school closed in NSW and we don’t want to risk Queensland.”

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says she will not be lectured by NSW. (AAP Image/Dan Peled)

She said Queensland now only had 12 active cases with another zero new case day today and ‘why would we put all of that at risk?’.

Asked if she would buckle to pressure from other states, she said ‘I will always take the health advice’.

It came as Transport Minister Mark Bailey also blasted Ms Berejiklian saying NSW ‘needs to get their act together and perform as well as Queensland’.

‘We won’t be lectured to by the worst performing state in Australia,” he said.

“There are 33 times the number of active cases in NSW compared to Queensland.”

QLD Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk provides an update on the coronavirus pandemic. For rolling coverage watch Sky News Australia on Foxtel or visit www.skynews.com.au.

Posted by Courier Mail on Wednesday, 20 May 2020

Queensland chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young justified the border closure saying it was in response to high numbers of cases coming from overseas and interstate.

“We saw Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory, Tasmania and Queensland close their borders and we are still seeing significantly more cases of local transmission in NSW and Victoria,” she said.

“This is not the time for tourists to travel to Queensland because one case can cause an enormous set back to our plan to open up communities.”

She said there was one set of health advice despite Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly yesterday claiming there was no health advice that said domestic borders should close.

Dr Young said there was plenty of advice about the importance of minimising the number of cases coming into a community.

“We saw how effective that was for Australia when the international borders were closed, and then as we started to see in Queensland the number of cases acquired interstate and then coming into Queenlsand, we immediately acted here,” she said.

“There isn’t (two sets), there is one set, AHPPC gets together most days, we were getting together every single day until recently, now it’s most days where we talk this through.

“So I will at the next opportunity, which is today’s meeting, talk to my colleagues about their plans around the country.

“I spoke to the Western Australia chief health officer as late as yesterday to talk about their plans.

“Each state will do what is best for their state and today here in Queensland it is best for us that we continue to minimise movement across domestic borders.”

Asked what had changed, when the Government’s roadmap says July but this week the Premier revealed it could be September, Dr Young said nothing had changed.

“We were always going to review the travel arrangement at the end of each month,” she said.

“That was made very, very clear.”

It came as Ms Berejiklian has again taken aim at Queensland’s controversial closed border measures, claiming Australia cannot fully recover until restrictions are eased.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian continues to push for Queensland’s borders to be reopened. (AAP Image/Dean Lewins)

She also called the closures “not logical” to be maintained until September.

Talking on ABC News Breakfast this morning, Ms Berejiklian maintained the QLD Government, along with other states maintaining those border closures, are only holding the country back from moving forward together.

“NSW is in a position now where we’re really focused on jobs and the economy, and we’ll be able to get our industries up and running.” she said

“For Australia to move forward as a nation during this very difficult economic and health time, we do need our borders down, we do need to allow people to move between states.”

She also went onto say that the original concerns about the bigger states like NSW and Victoria bringing more cases to smaller states has now been lessened due to the number of new cases being seen across the nation.

This comes as NSW recorded two new coronavirus cases overnight from over 9700 tests.

Yesterday QLD Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk fired back at those attacking her decision to keep the Sunshine States borders closed until at least September, claiming to have the best medical interests of Queenslanders at heart.

“I will always put Queenslanders first, that’s my job,” she said.

“We’ve got to protect Queenslanders; their health is my number one priority.”

This came despite claims from Federal Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly that there is no reason for borders to still be closed “from a medical point of view” and that the state governments should “take into account” how unlikely their timeline for no new cases would be achieved in the short term.

Originally published as ‘We won’t be lectured by you’: Premier fires back over border wars