Coronavirus: Queensland border system broken, state opposition says

Annastacia Palaszczuk faces calls to overhaul her border plan after three people travelled back from a Melbourne hotspot.

Police on duty at the Queensland border in Coolangatta. Picture: Adam Head

Queensland’s Liberal National Party opposition has called for a rethink of the border system being used to ensure people travelling into Queensland have not passed through coronavirus hotspots interstate.

Deputy Opposition Leader Tim Mander said the system was broken and police needed to be given the time and resources to conduct more thorough checks of border declaration passes presented to authorities by people entering into the state through its airports or at border crossings.

It comes after three Brisbane women, two of whom have tested positive for COVID-19, spent more than a week in the community after returning from Melbourne via Sydney and falsifying their border declarations to omit the Victorian visit.

“It would seem that the system is broken down,” Mr Mander said. “When it comes to protecting the health and lives of Queenslanders we cannot rely on an honour system and that’s what’s happened in this case.”

“We need to ensure that we apply the right amount of scrutiny to the declarations that are being made.”

Mr Mander’s call came hours after Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll and Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski defended the role of the police border checks.

“You’ve got to have confidence that the system we’ve got in place is exceptional,” Ms Carroll said.

Mr Gollschewski said police relied somewhat on people being honest in their border declarations and that most of the 95,000 to enter the state through airports since borders reopened on July 10 had done the right thing, including putting themselves into hotel quarantine.

“These people (the three women), on our investigation, and we will allege to the court, have knowingly and deliberately deceived us about where they’ve been,” Mr Gollschewski said.

“There is no system in the world, unless we track people, that can tell us where they’ve been.

“Because they transited in Sydney, the only information available to police was that they boarded a flight in Sydney.”

Mr Gollschewski said privacy issues with airlines meant police could only access certain information from flight registers while conducting an investigation.

Olivia Winnie Muranga has coronavirus after travelling from Queensland to Melbourne and back. Picture: Facebook

Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll has condemned the actions of two teens who returned to the state after a trip to Melbourne and Sydney and contracted COVID-19 as “deceitful, deceptive and criminal”.

“They went to extraordinary lengths to be deceitful and deceptive and quite frankly criminal in their behaviour and that is what has put the community at risk,” Commissioner Carroll said.

“We will not tolerate this behaviour at our borders which is putting people at risk.”