Annastacia Palaszczuk repeatedly polled Queenslanders on pandemic travel ban
Annastacia Palaszczuk spent $500,000 of taxpayers’ money on secretly polling Queenslanders about Covid border closures, but her government denied it.
The Palaszczuk government spent more than $500,000 in taxpayers’ money at the height of the Covid pandemic to secretly poll Queenslanders about whether interstate borders should reopen, while publicly denying it had asked the questions.
In mid-2020, premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was maintaining a hard line on keeping the state’s borders closed, and insisting she relied solely on advice from chief health officer Jeannette Young to make decisions about restrictions and the government’s coronavirus response.
But successor Steven Miles on Thursday released months of polling commissioned by Ms Palaszczuk’s department between May 2020 and March 2022 surveying Queenslanders on the states Covid restrictions, when they should ease, and what impact they were having on their lives and the economy.
Pollster Ipsos was told by Ms Palaszczuk’s department to “uncover Queenslanders’ expectations and preferences for the journey Queensland should take out of the response phase into recovery – in particular, the staged easing of restrictions”. The department said the information would be used to “shape the government’s approach and communication for the Covid-19 recovery phase”.
Ipsos started monitoring social media in April 2020, and the following month conducted extensive online surveys about Queenslanders’ “sentiments” over the proposed “road map” to easing restrictions, and the possible reopening of interstate borders on July 10, 2020.
During Ipsos’s June research, the idea of opening the borders was specifically polled. At the time, 51 per cent of those surveyed said interstate travel should be allowed between states with similar numbers of Covid-19, and 67 per cent were confident the state government could manage the easing of restrictions, up from 59 per cent the previous month.
“Queenslanders continue to be aligned with the way (the) Queensland government is making decisions about border closure (sic) and easing restrictions with health risks as a priority,” the Ipsos report told Ms Palaszczuk’s department in June.
On June 27, 2020, after receiving two secret Ipsos sentiment reports, Ms Palaszczuk, asked about lifting restrictions and border closures, told reporters she was acting only on health advice.
“It’s not about feelings here, it’s about listening to the health advice and making sure we take on board that health advice,’’ the premier said.
Ms Palaszczuk ordered Queensland’s borders to reopen to all states and territories but Victoria on July 10, 2020,
In late July, Ipsos reported there was “almost consensus across Queensland that border (sic) should be closed to states that continue to record hotspots or multiple new cases per day”.
Around the same time, about three months before the October 2020 state election, Ms Palaszczuk’s office denied to The Australian the government had polled Queenslanders to test support for border closures.
When the newspaper revealed the existence of the $528,000 Ipsos contract in September 2020, Ms Palaszczuk said the research would not help Labor in the election, because it was “about how people are responding to the economic recovery”.
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