Comment: Quarantine scandal reveals lunacy of border blockade
When it comes to Queensland’s border exemption regime, there’s one rule for the rich and famous and another for everyone else.And that couldn’t be better demonstrated by how a corporate high flyer and a terminal brain cancer patient were treated, writes Steven Wardill.
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Jayne Hrdlicka is a class act, a corporate success story and someone we should welcome to Queensland with open arms.
Yet she and her family have been caught up in the rolling cluster that’s become the Palaszczuk Government’s border blockade.
Wife’s joy after text message releases brain cancer sufferer Gary Ralph from hotel
When it comes to the exemption regime, there’s one rule for the rich and famous and another for everyone else.
And that couldn’t be better demonstrated by how Ms Hrdlicka from Hawthorn and Mr Ralph from Logan have been treated.
Ms Hrdlicka applied and was granted an exemption from hotel quarantine and the ability to isolate in a Brisbane house by Queensland Health after travelling from Victoria.
It’s understood her husband is undergoing chemotherapy so who can blame her?
The decision was compassionate. It was correct.
Yet it starkly contrasts with the treatment of the terminally ill Gary Ralph who was forced into hotel quarantine after travelling to Sydney for life-extending surgery.
That decision was cruel. It lacked common sense.
It took national television exposure and intervention from Prime Minister Scott Morrison for Queensland Health to reconsider and allow Mr Ralph and his wife to isolate at home.
The burning question, the one Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and her health minister Steven Miles must answer, is why the inconsistency?
Why does one family returning from Sydney and another arriving from Melbourne, both who have love ones with serious health conditions receive different treatment?
It’s happened far too often now to blame bureaucratic bungling.
With no end of the border closure in sight, Queenslanders deserve a proper answer.
Originally published as Comment: Quarantine scandal reveals lunacy of border blockade
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