Recall that Queensland’s Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, this week stated that border restrictions will not be relaxed until there are no cases of community transmission in New South Wales and Victoria:
“We do not have any intentions of opening any borders whilst there is community transmission active in Victoria and in New South Wales,” she said.
“I think we’re going to continue to see restrictions in Victoria up until Christmas time, that’s very unfortunate for people living there but it’s a serious situation.
“You only have to look at what’s happening around the world and we definitely don’t want to see that happening here.”
This has already seen harsh treatment dealt to those seeking to enter Queensland on compassionate grounds.
Consider this via The ABC:
The Queensland hospital treating a newborn baby refuses entry to the baby’s mother.
The hospital wants parents from northern NSW to go into quarantine for 14 days before entering hospital.
One senior doctor says the decision borders on medical negligence because newborns need their mothers’ immunity.
Terry Moss only has a few weeks before he loses his battle with cancer.
His three sons live in Sydney and Victoria and are barred from entering Queensland.
Tom Moss wants to come back but can’t afford two weeks of hotel quarantine.
Amazingly, while it deals out harsh treatment to Australians south of the border, the Queensland Government is hypocritically considering opening its border to international students:
A PLAN to bring in hundreds of international students from overseas is being considered by the Queensland Chief Health Officer, even as borders between states remain shut.
Queensland universities and Study Queensland have banded together to put forward the proposal…
A draft pilot program for 300 students already enrolled, but currently overseas, to be allowed to return here under strict quarantine procedures has been put to the CHO…
QUT vice-chancellor Professor Margaret Sheil… said the higher education sector were working closely with the State Government to put together to proposal.
“That draft proposal is with the Queensland Chief Health Officer, who has been constructively engaged with the proposal,” she said…
International Education Association of Australia CEO Phil Honeywood said… “Queensland is in danger of losing early mover advantage, compared to other states”…
The Queensland Government must flat out reject this proposal.
It is highly inappropriate to allow international students into the state while its borders remain closed to Australian citizens in New South Wales and Victoria, and while so many Australians are stranded overseas and blocked from returning home.
Universities are not alone in this pandemic and should not get special treatment. Tourism operators and other businesses are going broke as a result of border closures, and people living down the road in Northern New South Wales are being denied entry to cross the border. Yet, it is somehow okay to bring in students from overseas? No way.
One quarantine leak obviously has the potential to destroy the Queensland economy, just as it has in Victoria. Is the Queensland Government really so captured by its rent-seeking universities that it is willing to risk so much for minimal pay-off?
Consider SA where the Government increasingly appears completely out of its mind, via the ABC:
The South Australian Government will not say if 300 international students returning to Adelaide in a pilot program will come from high-risk countries for coronavirus.
It comes as the state gets set to ban almost all Victorians from crossing the border on Friday.
Premier Steven Marshall said “no decisions have been made” about where they will come from.
South Australia is part of a pilot program announced on Sunday to get international students to return to Australia via Singapore.
Everyone apart from essential workers, some farmers and Year 11 and 12 students will be blocked from crossing into SA from Victoria from Friday, which cross-border communities say will throw their lives into chaos.
Speaking at a school this afternoon, Mr Marshall said “the final planning is being done at the moment” on the international student program.
He said there were no “exact dates” they would be arriving on and a decision about which countries they would come from would be done as late as possible to keep an eye on the COVID-19 situation in their home countries.
When pressed, he said: “That decision hasn’t been made.”
The international students will have to quarantine for two weeks in a hotel at their own expense and pay for their flights to Australia.
The Premier also defended Stephen Wade as “the best health minister in the country” after Mr Wade last night overstated the number of active coronavirus cases in Victoria while defending the international student scheme.
Mr Wade told Sky News last night there were 17,000 active cases in Melbourne, whereas the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services says there are 7,274 in the entire state.
He could not name the number of cases in Singapore.
There are 3,378 active coronavirus cases in Singapore, the country’s Government says.
Singapore has a slightly larger population than Melbourne.
Mr Marshall told ABC Radio Adelaide Mr Wade, “does an excellent job”.
“I think he does an 18-hour day,” Mr Marshall said, adding that the Minister had not had a day off work in months.
Facing criticism about the plan from the Opposition and especially from people wanting to come to South Australia from Victoria, Mr Marshall said the state could not afford “to shoot itself in the foot” economically during the coronavirus pandemic by not allowing the students to return to Adelaide.
In short:
- Why bring in foreign students when 60% already here are unemployed and we have the highest jobless rate since the Great Depression?
- Why bring in any foreigner when the state is sealed off from Aussies, including state residents that that want to come home and can’t?
- Why bring in infected foreigners when we see daily reports of quarantine failure everywhere and one outbreak will smash the economy to smithereens?
Transparently regime-threatening lunacy top to bottom.
