Premier defends trip
ANNASTACIA Palaszczuk insists she will cancel her trip to Tokyo on Sunday if Queensland was plunged into a Covid-19 emergency “like NSW”.
The Premier ensured her Olympic Games sojourn would be a modest endeavour in which she would lead the final presentation for Brisbane’s bid to host the 2032 Games.
“I am essentially flying in, doing the requirements of quarantine in Tokyo, I am presenting in Tokyo with the Lord Mayor (Adrian Schrinner) and also the federal minister,” she said. “Then we have meetings in that same hotel – I am not attending any events whatsoever.
“Can I just make it clear that if we were in a situation like NSW, I would not be going.”
Ms Palaszczuk said she would then return to Queensland after about a week away and complete hotel quarantine – a detail that has infuriated many given the Premier’s recent demands to reduce international business travel.
This month, she blasted the federal government for allowing Australians to travel overcial
seas for work and creating unnecessary stress on hotel quarantine. An online petition to lobby the federal government to deny Ms Palaszczuk a travel exemption attracted tens of thousands of signatures, but Ms Palaszczuk has continually defended the decision as crugiven the spruiked $14bn hosting rights windfall.
“It has been made very clear by John Coates (Australian Olympic Committee president) that it would be a disaster if the head of Queensland did not go to make the pitch … and to come back and spend 14 days in hotel quarantine,” Ms Palaszczuk told Q&A this month.
Queensland recorded one new case on Friday.
Lockdown-hit NSW recorded 97 new cases on Friday.
In Victoria, the number of Covid cases directly linked to the “incursions” from NSW ballooned to 24, Daniel Andrews said on Friday.
Victoria is in a snap lockdown until 11.59pm Tuesday.
There are now 126 exposure sites across the state, with 1500 close contacts and 5000 secondary contacts identified.
A further 10 cases were announced in the 24 hours to Friday morning, four of which were announced late Thursday.
And fears the virus has further leaked into regional Victoria are growing after sites near Phillip Island were listed on Friday morning as Tier 1 exposure sites.