Coronavirus Australia: Annastacia Palaszczuk, premier who mistakes combativeness for assertiveness, risks becoming castaway

Tom Hanks in the movie Cast Away, left, and his best mate, Wilson the soccer ball, inset. Even Wilson may have shown more empathy than Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Pictures:

Queensland is for Queenslanders only, and that means barring entry for sick people desperately needing treatment, as well as children wanting to say goodbye to their dying father. It is to do with expert and impartial medical advice you see, unless of course your name is Tom Hanks or you are an AFL official from a state locked down by a second wave, in which case Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will present you with the keys to the city.

Last week we witnessed the unedifying spectacle of Palaszczuk going to pieces as she tried to justify why ACT-based nurse Sarah Caisip was forbidden from attending her father’s funeral in Brisbane. She had applied to visit him during his last days, but her request to travel to Queensland had taken 20 days to be approved.

“I came from virus-free Canberra, so the fact that I’m even in quarantine is beyond belief, wrote Caisip in a letter to Palaszczuk which the LNP Opposition subsequently tabled in Parliament, “but the fact that I am being denied my basic human rights to care for my grief-stricken mother and little 11-year-old sister enrages, disgusts and devastates me at the same time”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison had telephoned Palaszczuk to ask her to intervene. Apparently this informal approach constituted an assault upon her person. “I will not be bullied nor will I be intimidated by the Prime Minister of this country, who contacted me this morning,” Palaszczuk told Parliament. Tom Hanks, any chance you can give the Premier some much-needed lessons in acting while you are here?

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. left, and Chief Health Officer Dr Jeanette Young, right. came under fire for the heartbreaking decision to only let Sarah Caisip, inset, view her father’s body alone after his funeral. Picture: News Corp

Caisip was permitted only to view her father’s body while she was dressed in PPE and in the custody of security guards. She was not allowed contact with those who attended the funeral. It was a ridiculous example of tinpot despotism.

Suffice to say that “Wilson” from the film “Castaway” – the volleyball with the painted face and the twigs for hair which serves as the marooned Hanks’s long-term sole companion – is capable of far more empathy and common sense than Palaszczuk showed.

Likewise, her indifference to those in northern NSW requiring medical treatment in Queensland – many for life-threatening illnesses – is one that borders on contempt. Who could forget her infamous remark that Queensland hospitals were “for our people”? It was not only callous, but hypocritical given 20 per cent of in-patients last year at Tweed Hospital in NSW were Queenslanders.

Both Palaszczuk and Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young have repeatedly insisted the state’s border closure and entry restrictions are strictly in accordance with medical advice. Last week, however, Young made an audacious admission. “I’ve given exemptions to people in entertainment and film, because that’s bringing a lot of money into this state,” she said. As former Queensland Law Society president Bill Potts observed: “How does that sit with science?”

Queensland borders will close to NSW and the ACT from 1am this Saturday, August 8.

This hard border closure puts Queenslanders first.#COVID19au pic.twitter.com/K5VZkPQK9F

— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) August 4, 2020

In April, Young spoke of how she told Palaszczuk the previous month to shut schools despite them not being a high-risk environment for the spread of the virus. “If you go out to the community and say, ‘this is so bad, we can’t even have schools, all schools have got to be closed’, you are really getting to people,” she said. “So sometimes it’s more than just the science and the health, it’s about the messaging.” On that note, perhaps she could explain what sort of message she sends when she authorises the admission of 400 AFL officials from a state suffering a second wave.

Annastacia Palaszczuk celebrates securing the AFL grand final. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Dan Peled

When she became Premier in 2015, Palaszczuk spoke of how proud she was “to lead the first Cabinet in Australia’s history with a majority of women ministers”. You might recall feminism’s official line about women being better leaders because of their superior empathy and kindness, but I have trouble recognising how this plays out up north.

To understand why Palaszczuk is portraying herself as the Boadicea of state borders, you need to think back to March 2017 when she and then Treasurer Curtis Pitt met with conglomerate giant Adani’s leadership in India regarding the Carmichael project in the Galilee Basin.

The @AnnastaciaMP government denied a request by a NSW couple to enter Qld, so they could hold their son's hand as his life support was turned off.
Any Premier who thinks there isnt an almighty reckoning afoot should wake up.
We won't cop this.
Story in tomorrow's @australian

— GemmaTognini (@GemmaTognini) September 10, 2020

Conscious that it was an election year and keen to boost her party’s support in regional Queensland, Palaszczuk reportedly reached a preliminary agreement with Adani that royalties would be limited to $2 million annually for the first seven years of the mine’s operation. This proposal would have amounted to an estimated $320 million incentive for Adani, a not unreasonable measure considering the mine – estimated to have a 60-year life – would generate about $22 billion in taxes and royalties during its first 30 years.

At a press conference on May 17 of that year, Palaszczuk was blindsided when an ABC journalist asked her questions about the supposedly confidential agreement. On May 22, then Deputy Premier Jackie Trad publicly opposed the Premier. “We’ve got a pre-election commitment in relation to any subsidisation of Adani, and we made that commitment very clearly at the last state election, that there would be no royalty holiday or subsidisation of taxpayer funds for Adani,” Trad said.

Adani was anathema for Trad, whose inner-city seat of South Brisbane was under growing threat from the Greens. Then leader of the party’s dominant left faction, she ensured Cabinet quashed the Adani incentives. When Palaszczuk said on May 26 “The Adani Carmichael mine will pay every cent of royalties in full,” it was obvious she was Premier in name only.

It was a humiliating backdown for Palaszczuk, and it confirmed perceptions that she was weak and prone to vacillating. Conversely, Trad’s prestige and influence grew. For two years, Palaszczuk dithered and dissembled over Carmichael’s approval. It took a Coalition victory and the rout of federal Labor in Queensland before Anna-stasis finally acted to impose deadlines on her environmental department for the mine’s approval.

When Trad resigned as Deputy Premier in May this year following an integrity probe by the Crime and Misconduct Commission, Palaszczuk made a revealing remark upon naming her reshuffled Cabinet. “These are my decisions. I’ve acted swiftly and decisively,” she stated, inadvertently raising the question of why it needed to be said. And with the coronavirus crisis came the perfect opportunity, at least in her mind, to prove she was the big kahuna and not Trad’s doormat.

At times her language is such that she appears to suffer from a persecution complex. “I will hold my head up high and I will stare down those people who are trying to tear Queensland apart,” she said last week. “Now if it means I have to lose the election, I’ll risk all of that if it means keeping Queenslanders safe.” Spare us the martyr rhetoric. As The Australian revealed on Wednesday, Palaszczuk’s department spent $528,000 of taxpayers’ money polling voter sentiment about coronavirus restrictions.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and chief health officer Janette Young have proven unbending on borders … except for the likes of the AFL and Tom Hanks. Picture: Peter Wallis

Announcing the return of border closures last month, Palaszczuk gave every impression she was listening not to science but to sentiment. “Today is the day I say to Queenslanders, we’ve listened to you,” she said. “Today is the day we say we’re putting Queenslanders first.”

The same month she also insinuated in her address to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia that the border closures had benefited Queensland’s economy. Presumably the law degree she holds did not require study of the Constitution, What next, tariffs?

But it was Palaszczuk’s announcement that Queensland would be closed to visitors from the ACT that has attracted the most criticism. Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles tried to defend this, claiming last month “the challenge with the ACT was people were travelling from NSW to Canberra airport to fly into Queensland”. How many people, he was asked. Answer, just one. Last week Palaszczuk referred to this example as justification for this policy, claiming the man concerned had coronavirus. In fact he did not, a government spokesperson saying the Premier “misspoke”. It certainly is not the first time.

Palaszczuk has badly overreached in attempting to prove to others – and to herself – that she is her own woman and a strong leader. She has mistaken combativeness for assertiveness, she has poisoned her working relationship with Morrison, and she and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian are barely on speaking terms. This is not the time for her to make enemies. The state’s debt is due to hit $102 billion by June 2021, and its unemployment rate is the highest in the nation.

If she is defeated next month, the paraphrased words of author and playwright W. Somerset Maugham would make for a fitting political epitaph. “Like all weak women she laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.”