Coronavirus: Premiers’ frustrations at hotel quarantine failures, slow rollout sets up tense National Cabinet meeting
Angry state leaders say their frustrations are boiling over as they cane the hotel quarantine system and sluggish vaccine rollout ahead of a tense national cabinet.
With more than 12 million Australians now in lockdown, state premiers’ frustration with the hotel quarantine system and the sluggish vaccine rollout have boiled over once again, setting up a tense showdown with Scott Morrison at Friday’s National Cabinet.
As the Delta variant of the coronavirus continues to spread, the premiers of Queensland and Victoria on Tuesday called for caps on the numbers of returning travellers and attacked the failure of the country’s hotel quarantine system and the vaccine rollout.
As Queensland became the fourth state to lock down millions, the exasperation of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was palpable as she used her daily press conference to air her grievances at the federal government.
Ms Palaszczuk said the hotel quarantine system was “not the answer”, as she once again called for a “massive reduction in overseas arrivals”, saying she would bring the issue to the national cabinet meeting on Friday.
“Hotel quarantine is just not the answer. We need a massive reduction in overseas arrivals because the overseas arrivals are bringing in these contagious strains,” Ms Palaszczuk told a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.
“The reason why: We are having lockdowns in major cities because the overseas arrivals are bringing the virus here. The risk is real and we need to contain the virus. We need to protect Australia. We need to protect Queensland.”
The Premier added: “I raised it at national cabinet. The Victorian premier raised it at national cabinet. There’s another meeting later this week of national cabinet. We’ve got to act now. “That is a national issue. We should be utilising Howard Springs.
“The federal government has control of that. They can do that immediately to alleviate the pressure that you see the states are under at the moment and it’s a lot of pressure that states are under. The hotels or full or nearing maximum capacity and they are not meant to fight infectious diseases and we’re seeing now that even in Covid wards, it is so hard to contain this virus. This is highly infectious.”.
With 190 international travellers expected to arrive in Queensland on Tuesday, Deputy Premier Stephen Miles said the arrivals were posing an “unacceptable risk” to the community, as he demanded more purpose-built quarantine facilities to augment Howard Springs.
“In Sydney, in Perth, in Darwin, multiple outbreaks now here in the southeast and, for the first time in some time, potential exposure in regional Queensland. All of them can be traced back to international arrivals,” said Mr Miles.
“In fact, every day we have new cases in hotel quarantine from people who have travelled from overseas. Our international borders are supposed to be closed. But every week, thousands of people are allowed to travel.
“We will now move to dramatically cut the number of international travellers permitted to return to Queensland”.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has dug in on his earlier call to temporarily halve Australia’s intake of international arrivals, declaring: “locking some people out is better than locking everyone down”.
Mr Andrews said it was evident in Australia and across the world that “you cannot manage Delta outbreaks without significant restrictions”.
“The lockdowns and restrictions in place across the country right now are all a result of hotel quarantine breaches - which is why we need a national discussion about how many people we’re letting in,” Mr Andrews said.
“Locking some people out is better than locking everyone down - we need a national approach to how we manage this new threat until we achieve proper vaccine coverage.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Andrews argued capping the numbers of returning travellers would significantly reduce the risk of yet more Covid-19 leaks out of hotel quarantine until a higher proportion of the community had been vaccinated.
“The reason I want us to have a debate and I’ve secured that we will have a debate, either at the next meeting this week or next week’s meeting of national cabinet (is that) we have to make a choice between more people coming here or reducing those numbers for the next three months, which will make lockdowns less likely,” Mr Andrews told ABC radio
“I don’t think that’s a very difficult choice to make. The maths of that, the logic of that, the pain ratio.
“Now a lockdown of a whole city will hurt many more people much more profoundly than saying ‘okay, we’re going to halve the number of people who can come home, for a three-month period’.
“It’s not easy. It’s not simple. No one will enjoy it. I don’t want more lockdowns. I want to do everything we can to avoid that.”
Gladys Berejiklian also used her press conference to attack the vaccine rollout, saying her frustration was “boiling over” at the commonwealth’s lack of preparedness.
As Greater Sydney entered its fourth day of lockdown, the NSW Premier claimed she had been pushing “behind closed doors” to get more GPs on the rollout for weeks.
As all adult Australians become eligible for the vaccine and with the Pfizer vaccine supply expected to ramp up in the coming months, only 140 GPs in NSW are signed up by the commonwealth to administer the Pfizer vaccines.
Ms Berejiklian said she had been pushing “behind closed doors” to get more GPs for weeks.
“If the supplies turn up we will need all hands on deck to get them into the arms of our citizens,” she said.
“I know a lot of the GPs on the program now want more doses.
“I’ve made these points very clearly in national cabinet behind closed doors and more publicly yesterday.
“I feel that’s what we need to do to get these jabs in arms.”
Ms Berejiklian was not able to provide an exact number of Pfizer doses expected to arrive in NSW, but said authorities will be given four to five weeks lead to prepare.
“What we do know is that if all those doses that we’ve been promised are going to arrive, we need more points of access to get those jabs into arms,” she said.
The public broadsides come less than 24 hours after an emergency meeting between the Prime Minister and state premiers resolved to open AstraZeneca jabs to people under 60 and mandate jabs for aged care workers.
But with another meeting poised for the end of the week, Mr Morrison will come under pressure to find solutions to issues unseen since the height of the pandemic last year.
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