GONE A BIT YES MINISTER
IT all got a bit Yes Minister on Wednesday, on a number of fronts. Granted, the announcements by Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Tuesday that the state’s borders would reopen on July 10 and Stage 3 relaxations would be fasttracked by a week to Friday created plenty of buzz and attracted a lot of support.
And so they should have, even if the border certainty and eased restrictions could have come a lot sooner.
Better late than never.
But as the shifting sands — something everyone has rapidly become accustomed to with this virus — sunk in and it was time to digest the detail, plenty of headaches started emerging.
Many relate to the impractical ramifications of the new state government advisories and rules. Among them is a cap of 50 patrons at one time on smaller hospitality venues of less than 200sq m. Let’s think about that — straight off the bat the cap seems galling, given that you can host a house party for a 100. Yet licensed venues and restaurants are taking names and numbers for contact tracing. Not sure about unit knees-ups.
Further, under existing one patron per 4sq m rules which many operators found too limiting, a 200sq m venue could have 50 patrons. Ms Palaszczuk is bringing in a relaxed one patron per 2sq m rule from Friday for venues of less than 200sq m. But there is a cap of 50.
So many operators will be in the same position and capacity as they were prior, except, as one points out, with even more patrons they’ll turn away due to anticipated visitor influxes.
When the Bulletin put that to the government, it explained: “By placing the limit at 200sq m, we ensure that businesses between 100 and 200sq m are not disadvantaged. A business at 200sq m gets 50 patrons, a business at 204sq m gets 51, so it’s an increase.”
Then there is the new border headache. Despite reopening to all but Victorians from July 10, the border roadblocks causing commuter wait times and headaches at the Tweed-Coolangatta coalface will remain.
And the already stretched thin blue line of the Queensland police who are patrolling it will have to figure out how to beef up those patrols to boost checks to guard against Victorians coming over — or anyone who might have been in Victoria.
The Bulletin has revealed police patrols were getting catered meal deliveries at a cost of almost $9000 a week and mobile heating for the night shift, while volunteer firefighters have been smouldering about being asked to also help out.
As of yesterday, the solution to the requirement for even more police to man the barriers remained unclear — but top brass appeared to be so desperate for a way forward, a police source told the Bulletin one options was closing stations: “Police have no idea how they are going to do this. It’s a response from a bureaucrat. It’s just a debacle. Police are saying we can stop each car, but traffic will be from the border to Newcastle.”
Decisions are being made on the fly in response to the ever-evolving and fluid coronavirus pandemic out of necessity. But the impracticalities of some of the rules are starting to fuel already existing frustration.