Coronavirus: Queensland border closure ‘bureaucratic bloody-mindedness’, Tony Abbott says

Tony Abbott has taken aim at the heartless and ‘bureaucratic bloody-mindedness’ of Queensland’s state border closure.

Tony Abbott from his Sydney hotel room in quarantine.

Tony Abbott has blasted the heartless and “bureaucratic bloody-mindedness” of the Queens­land state border closure and quarantine zealotry from his own enforced international quarantine in a Sydney hotel.

While the former prime minister fully supported the “health ­security” two-week enforced stay in a designated quarantine hotel after his return from Britain, he described the Queensland refusal to allow people from NSW across the border without permission or quarantine as “a moonbeam from the larger lunacy”.

Mr Abbott, unlike Hollywood star Tom Hanks, who was granted an exemption from the normal overseas quarantine scheme to enter Queensland and is serving his isolation in a luxury resort at Broadbeach, was put straight into a standard quarantine hotel in Sydney with other passengers.

Mr Abbott said the process for the health security on arrival in Sydney — being transferred to a secure bus and being put into the hotel — was “brisk, professional and efficient”.

“The staff at the hotel are ­efficient, friendly and professional and the accommodation is clean and well run,” he said.

He understood the reasons for the international quarantine but hoped the rules requiring Australians to seek permission to leave the country should be “liberalised as soon as possible” so that anyone who wanted to leave could do so.

“That New South Welshmen coming from a state with almost no cases and going into a state with almost no cases should be seen as somehow toxic to Queenslanders is simply crazy,” he said.

Referring to cases of families being refused compassionate exemptions to see their dying parents, attend their funerals or be with their families, Mr Abbott said: “We are now seeing the heartless and mind-boggling bureaucratic bloody-mindedness that goes with these border closures”.

Queensland has given special treatment to scores of AFL players, officials and their families and for Hanks to resume making a movie, including exemptions to cross the border from Victoria and special isolation after coming from overseas.

Mr Abbott, who is paying the standard $3000 quarantine hotel bill himself, returned from London where he was appointed UK Trade Commissioner.