NSW Queensland border to open November 3 but shut to Greater Sydney
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will reopen the state border to NSW from November 3, except to people from Greater Sydney.
Queensland will reopen its border with NSW except for the Greater Sydney region, despite mounting pressure on Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to reopen the entire state.
Just a day out from the Queensland election, Ms Palaszczuk said people in 32 local government areas (LGAs) in Greater Sydney will continue to be restricted from entering the state.
People in the rest of NSW will be able to return to Queensland for any reason from 1am on November 3, which is pushed out slightly from the original reopening date of November 1.
“That is to ensure that all the border passes that need to be renewed will be able to be renewed effectively and efficiently,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
As well as Greater Sydney, Queensland’s border will also remain closed to Victoria.
Today’s decision, which affects about five million in the Greater Sydney region, is based on advice from Queensland’s Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young.
Residents of New South Wales, except for Greater Sydney, will be allowed to enter Queensland from 1am on Tuesday, November 3, 2020.
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) October 30, 2020
People who have been in a hotspot in the past 14 days will not be allowed to enter Queensland.
Dr Young said she was concerned Sydney was continuing to experience mystery cases that could not be linked to known clusters.
“New South Wales put out an alert for six different sites across the city where they were concerned that transmission could have occurred,” she said.
“So based on that new information yesterday and the information up to that point, I believe it is important that Queensland remain closed to those 32 LGAs in Sydney.
“Outside those 32 LGAs (there) have not been any cases in the previous 28 days. So that is really good news and NSW has done exceptionally well.”
Dr Young said as the cases in NSW crossed local government areas, it was appropriate to restrict the entire geographic area.
“They are the risk, they are the ones moving around,” she said.
“My concern was that there were four LGAs and then we had three cases and they had been to multiple LGAs. And then it becomes impossible to manage.
“So it really has to be a sensible geographical area because people do not live in LGAs — they cross out of those areas to other places and that is why you need to have a sensible geographic area.”
RELATED: Full list of Sydney suburbs banned from Qld
NSW travellers will be allowed to enter Queensland if they flying from Sydney Airport, but they cannot stop in Sydney on the way to the airport.
The 32 black listed Sydney LGAs are: Bayside, Blacktown, Burwood, Camden, Campbelltown, Canada Bay, Canterbury-Bankstown, Cumberland, Fairfield, Georges River, Hornsby, Hunters Hill, Inner West, Ku-ring-gai, Lane Cove, Liverpool, Mosman, North Sydney, Northern Beaches, Parramatta, Penrith, Randwick, Ryde, Strathfield, Sutherland Shire, Sydney, The Hills Shire, Waverley, Willoughby, Wollondilly Shire, Woollahra and Sydney Harbour (Unincorporated).
The nearby council areas of the Blue Mountains, Hawkesbury and Wollongong are not included in the Sydney ban.
Dr Young said she could not say when Sydney residents could return to Queensland.
“You’re asking me to look into a crystal ball,” she told reporters. “I genuinely do not know.
“It depends what happens with the virus. We are learning more and more about it every day and what we are learning is that it is actually very contagious so we just have to look at the evidence, and I look at the evidence every single day, seven days a week, and work out what is the best advice for me to provide to keep Queenslanders safe.”
Earlier, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian claimed a decision to exclude Sydney from a border reopening was “unfair”.
“I understand she (Ms Palaszczuk) won’t let Sydneysiders come to Queensland,” Ms Berejiklian said ahead of the Queensland Premier’s press conference.
“I understand that there might be an announcement for regional NSW.
“If I have my way, I wouldn’t have any borders but with Victoria. It is extremely unfair and lacks common sense and logic to lump NSW in with Victoria,” she added.
“It is painful to me that New Zealanders can come and go from NSW but I can’t go to Queensland, I can’t go to WA and I don’t think that’s right.”
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RELATED: PM Scott Morrison drops major border news
Ms Palaszczuk’s announcement this morning came after business operators and political leaders made last-minute pleas for the border to reopen and warned of dire economic impacts if millions of southerners continued to be locked out.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged Ms Palaszczuk to reopen the state on 2GB radio this morning.
“Make decisions on the basis of health advice and be transparent about it,” he said.
“It’s hard often to get a clear steer on what’s behind these decisions.
“Australia is opening up again, we’ve committed to having Australia fully open by Christmas and we need to move towards that.
“We can’t stay stuck in neutral. We’ve got to get going again.”
Destination Gold Coast chairman Paul Donovan told the ABC local hotels were only at 40 to 50 per cent capacity.
“We’re hoping that the Premier announces she’s going to open up the border, particularly from Sydney,” he said.
“We need that market, we need to get the industry going again.
“Please Premier, press the button. We need the borders open.
“The people in smaller attractions have been really hurt. The airport is really haemorrhaging, they’ve got virtually no flights so 97 per cent down.
“So overall our industry is really hurting badly.”
The boss of one of Queensland’s largest employers, Village Roadshow Theme Parks, fired off an extraordinary message after Health Minister Steven Miles said the state’s hospitality sector was doing well.
“Which world is this man living in,” the company’s chief operating officer Bikash Randhawa said. “We are bleeding away.”
Wow!! @StevenJMiles just said hospitality sector is running as close to normal and doing better🤦🽠which world is this man living in. We are all bleeding away @GCS_Pottsy @keenatGCB @GCBulletin talk to operators to get a reality check!! #opentheborders #qldpoll @9NewsGoldCoast
— Bikash Randhawa (@BikashRandhawa) October 29, 2020
Queensland Airports chief executive officer Chris Mills warned the future of 3000 tourism businesses and 41,000 jobs on the Gold Coast would be affected if the decision to reopen the border was delayed.
“We have seen good bookings for the flights from Sydney scheduled next week, and the first flight on Sunday is almost full – to turn them away at short notice would be a real blow to the Gold Coast’s recovery,” Mr Mills told the Courier Mail.
“We don’t understand why we have to wait until two days before the potential opening to find out what is happening. Airlines need time to schedule flights, travellers need to book with confidence, and employers need to be able to roster staff accordingly.”
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian called the closed border “frustrating” and said other states were lumping NSW in with Victoria.
“There is no reason why NSW residents shouldn’t be welcomed into other states,” she said.
“It has been, for myself and our agencies in NSW, an acute sense of frustration that a vast number of state premiers have chosen to lump NSW and Victoria in the same category over the course of the last few months.”
She said this week “games” over the border closure created a “very difficult time” for people in mid and northern NSW in particular.
“We have demonstrated our capacity to run a strong economy, but also to protect and keep the community safe. And I hope the Queensland Government accepts that they should too,” Ms Berejiklian said.
Ms Palaszczuk has also faced criticism from former Queensland Labor Premier Peter Beattie, who said Australia had a unique opportunity to fight the virus as a country, and not “on a state-by-state basis”.
“You saw what happened on Wall Street overnight, you saw the infection rates in Europe … this is a unique opportunity for Australia to come together as a nation and partner with fellow countries like New Zealand, some of the islands in the Pacific, maybe even Japan, to open up our economy for jobs for Australia,” Mr Beattie said on Tuesday.
“There is a loss in the major cities and that’s largely where our population is. We have to find ways to protect jobs in Australia, grow the economy, and open up.
“So, if Queensland wants to have a lot of people out of Sydney coming to put jobs in the Gold Coast, Cairns, Townsville, now is the time to change the strategy. No criticism of the past. This is about the future.”
Ms Palaszczuk’s tough stance on borders has been a hallmark of Queensland’s fight against COVID-19.
While the premier’s approach has been attributed to getting on top of community transmission in the state, it was also expected to have cost millions of dollars in lost domestic tourism revenue, which was expected to hit holiday regions such as Far North Queensland particularly hard.
NSW visitors into Queensland spent around $23.6 million in 2019 while Victorian travellers splashed out $16.9 million.
“(This border closure) is likely to inflict collateral damage on Queensland’s tourism industry which is desperately trying to get back off its knees,” tourism lecturer Dr David Beirman from the University of Technology, Sydney previously told news.com.au.
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