Hypocritical Palasczuk mustn’t leave the country

Yesterday’s Double Shot commentary reflected on repugnant hypocrisy in our political class.

Here’s another example.

Last week most premiers and chief ministers, with Queensland premier Annastacia Palasczuk to the fore, forced the Prime Minister to cut international arrivals by half in return to signing up to a post-pandemic exit plan. Their hotel quarantine regimes can’t cope with current numbers, so they want to slash arrivals and keep more stranded Australians stranded overseas for longer because their governments are not up to the job – and let the Prime Minister wear the political opprobrium.

This while Australians at home are denied exit permits, even in the most compassionate circumstances. Reportedly, eleven of every twelve applications are knocked back by the Australian
Border Force.

Ms Palasczuk has been banging on about hotel quarantine caps for ages. Last Friday she got her way.

Now she wants to fly out to Tokyo to attend the blighted spectacle known as the Olympic Games.

“The reason that I would be going to Tokyo is to help secure the 2032 Olympics for Brisbane, Queensland, Australia,” she said pompously on the ABC’s Q + Aprogramme last week. “And upon return, I would do the 14-day quarantine in a hotel, not in my home, not at The Lodge”, she added, in a gratuitous dig at Scott Morrison.

It boils down to this. The Queensland premier wants an exit permit to go to Tokyo to brown-nose the IOC to accept a Queensland bid we’re told is in the bag anyway.
Then she wants to come home to take up one of the few hotel quarantine spaces that will be left after National Cabinet’s decision.

All this while almost all other Australians can’t leave the country, and tens of thousands of stranded Australians can’t get back in.

There is more than a touch of hypocrisy, arrogance and entitlement in Annastacia Palaszczuk’s determination to jump both the outcoming and incoming queues. It reeks of them.

Home Affairs minister Karen Andrews should prove her worth and deny her fellow Queenslander the exit permit she demands. In the words of the wartime poster, is Arrogant Annastacia’s journey really necessary?

And if Ms Palaszczuk and her entourage don’t travel, their incoming places can go to deserving Australians separated from family and loved ones for far too long by the Curse of WuFlu.

A online petition is circulating that highlights the Queensland premier’s hypocrisy. As the petition says:

Annastacia Palaszczuk should not be allowed to steal a precious hotel quarantine space from a more deserving Stranded Australian trying to return home. DENY her the ability to do so.

Please sign it.