Lisa Wilkinson blasts NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on The Project

One comment from NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian over the weekend had Project host Lisa Wilkinson seeing red.

The Project host Lisa Wilkinson has publicly blasted Gladys Berejiklian over her handling of the Covid crisis, making a direct on-air plea to the NSW Premier.

Wilkinson’s comments on The Sunday Project last night came hours after Berejiklian called Saturday’s record high of 466 new Covid cases a “wake-up call” during her Sunday press conference.

“We can’t stress enough that we don’t want to go down the path of all these other places overseas where they have thousands and thousands of cases a day,” the Premier said.

Lisa Wilkinson: “It’s taken you this long to wake up?”

RELATED: ‘Forgotten’ Australians outrage over vaccine announcement

That comment – several months into NSW’s current outbreak of the Delta variant, with steadily rising cases – had Sydney-based Wilkinson seeing red.

“I think everyone in NSW yesterday, when she said that the day before was a ‘wake-up call’, everyone in NSW thought – ‘It‘s taken you this long to wake up?”,’ she said.

“When you consider on June 24, there was 36 cases with 11 new ones that we’d been alerted to … And, please, Premier, can you stop looking to overseas as a place to refer to?”

Wilkinson’s co-host Peter van Onselen agreed, also criticising Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Sunday morning announcement that 1 million extra Pfizer vaccines would soon be arriving from Poland, with many sent straight to south-western Sydney, the heart of NSW’s current outbreak.

RELATED: ‘Gut punch’ - Lisa Wilkinson on Sydney lockdown

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian fronts the press yesterday. Picture: Flavio Brancaleone

“It’s the same with the PM with these vaccines coming in from Poland. Til he was blue in the face, when we had him on the program a couple of weeks ago, he was saying we don’t need extra vaccines to go to south-west Sydney. Now he’s putting half a million in there,” said van Onselen.

“He could’ve done that with vaccines from other states, and topped those states up with what’s coming from Poland. They’re never ahead of this; they’re always behind.”

“Never proactive, completely reactive,” Wilkinson added.

Wilkinson has been an outspoken critic of the government’s handling of the Covid pandemic and vaccine rollout, tweeting over the weekend that the country’s current sweeping lockdowns had come “courtesy of Scott Morrison’s handling of the pandemic.”

A REMINDER: this is the PM on June 24 when the Bondi cluster hit 36 with 11 new cases & epidemiologists were calling for hard lockdown.

"My fellow Sydneysiders can feel very confident that if anyone can get on top of this without shutting the city down it is the NSW government."

— Lisa Wilkinson (@Lisa_Wilkinson) August 15, 2021

If you have a moment today (what am I saying…courtesy of Scott Morrison’s handling of the pandemic, we all have FAR TOO MANY moments right now), I urge you to read this thread by @RonniSalt

I have never heard his time as the “leader” of this country better summed up…#auspolhttps://t.co/DwLHApLHT8

— Lisa Wilkinson (@Lisa_Wilkinson) August 14, 2021

NSW recorded 415 new local infections of Covid-19 and another four people died on Sunday. This morning came news that a teenager from Sydney’s southwest has died after contracting pneumococcal meningitis and Covid-19.

Osama Suduh, 15, died on Sunday night after being hospitalised for meningitis while he also tested positive for Covid.