Queensland election debate: Who between Annastacia Palaszczuk and Deb Frecklington?
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has ‘concerns’ about reopening the state for one of its biggest industries international education.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has “concerns” about reopening the state for one of its biggest industries — international education — warning it would overwhelm the already stretched hotel quarantine system.
In the first debate of the campaign ahead of Saturday’s knife-edge election, the Palaszczuk government’s handling of COVID-19 dominated a sometimes-fiery exchange between Ms Palaszczuk and Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington.
Undecided voters awarded the debate to Ms Palaszczuk, with 53 per cent, or 25 of the 47 swinging voters at the Sky and The Courier-Mail People’s Forum, backing Labor, while 30 per cent, or 14, chose Ms Frecklington’s Liberal National Party. Eight, or 17 per cent, remained undecided.
Ms Frecklington focused her attack on the government’s five-year economic record before the coronavirus hit, citing high unemployment, bankruptcies and Labor’s ambivalence towards the resources industry.
“(We) cannot sit back in Queensland and accept being at the bottom of the economic ladder … you don’t want to be below those people (in Tasmania and South Australia),” Ms Frecklington said.
She said she would take a more “compassionate” and “commonsense” approach to border exemptions, after Ms Palaszczuk was asked more than once why she allowed footballers and celebrities into Queensland but denied grieving relatives access to funerals.
Ms Palaszczuk relied heavily on her record managing the COVID-19 crisis, saying Queensland had been spared the experience of Victoria and the rest of the world thanks to her strong borders policy. “You only have to look at what’s happened in Victoria with the second wave … more than 700 people have lost their lives,” she said.
“We see what happens when COVID gets out of control … but the Leader of the Opposition called for the border to be opened 64 times. We would have had a second wave here, like Victoria, and the consequences would have been diabolical.”
The leaders were asked about the impact the closed borders had on Queensland’s international education industry. Trade and Investment Queensland says it is the state’s largest services export, with about 100,000 international students usually studying in the state.
Ms Frecklington said she was concerned the state would miss out on attempts to revive the industry when other states reopened their borders.
“It’s a massive boon to the Queensland economy … universities (are) crying out in pain from the lack of students,” she said.
But Ms Palaszczuk said she was concerned about reopening the international borders too quickly and risking COVID-19. “What I have said is I will see how the trial goes with international students coming back into a couple of other states,” she said. “We can’t rush a whole lot of people coming into Queensland and putting at risk our quarantine.”
But there were unanswered questions. Ms Palaszczuk declined to offer her support for the thermal coal industry, preferring instead to reiterate the government’s backing of metallurgical coal projects.
And Ms Frecklington did not say whether she would keep Labor’s 50 per cent by 2030 renewable energy target if she was elected on Saturday.
Ms Palaszczuk warned voters it was not a time for risk. “Now is the time for stability,” she said.
Ms Frecklington urged people not to vote “for more of the same”.
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