Rita Panahi: Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Covid decisions have lacked logic and humanity

Queensland doesn’t have the destruction that the Victorian government notched up but they too have behaved irrationally, often cruelly, during the crisis.

Victoria’s inept and wildly disproportionate Covid-19 response is unmatched in Australia but Queensland has given it a red hot go.

That may mean thousands of Victorians looking to travel to the sunshine state for the school holidays will miss out on a much-needed break in the sun with private schools finishing the term this week and public schools next week.

Queensland does not have the deaths, destruction and repeated lockdowns that the Victorian government has notched up but they too have consistently behaved irrationally, often cruelly, throughout the crisis.

From banning an Anzac Day flyover in the name of Covid safety to the indecency of refusing medical care for desperately ill or injured Australians due to border closures.

Remember the Queensland premier said: “People living in New South Wales, they have NSW hospitals, in Queensland, we have Queensland hospitals for our people.”

Annastacia Palaszczuk’s legacy will be marked by her government’s callousness and double standards.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: Tara Croser.

Hollywood stars and footballers receive special treatment but a child who had undergone a double-lung transplant had his medical care compromised by her government’s intransigence.

Fully vaccinated parents of a premature baby were kept away from their newborn on “health advice”, and a fully vaccinated man is prevented from saying goodbye to his dying father.

The decisions have lacked not only logic but humanity.

The hysteria extends to border closures that sees five million Victorians banned from entering the state unless they submit to 14 days of quarantine.

Every state with the exception of NSW, which didn’t close its border to Victoria during Lockdown 4, has restrictions on metro Melbourne but it is the Queensland ban that will have the greatest impact.

It matters not that Greater Melbourne had its “hotspot” status removed by the federal government on June 10, the states are ignoring the Commonwealth and creating their own hotspot maps.

Victorians are being treated like lepers in their own country but we can’t be too precious given the speed with which the Dan Andrews government closes our borders when there’s an outbreak interstate.

IN SHORT

There’s something wrong with the system when magistrate Rodney Higgins, who had a seven-month relationship with court clerk Ashleigh Petrie, 45 years his junior, wins her six-figure superannuation death benefit despite the fact she’d bequeathed it to her mother in the months before her death.