Coronavirus Australia live news: South Australia restrictions eased again - ABC News

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian says Qld 'making stuff up as they go'

       

Ms Berejiklian on decision making in Queensland: 

I just don't even understand how they make their decisions up there. It's beyond my level of understanding. I really don't get it.

  
How do you feel being the only Premier in the country to open yourself up to the entire country?

    

 
Look, I feel very proud of that. But it's really due to the people of New South Wales. As I have gone around the state during this difficult time, I have heard about families being ripped apart, businesses having to sack people, and I think we need an extra level of compassion and even to an extent confidence in our own system to really make this decision. I'm incredibly proud of where we are in New South Wales, but as I always say, you never know what the next day brings in a pandemic.

    

But what I know is that as a state, as a people, we have learned so much in the last seven or eight months. We have come such a long way and that confidence allows us to move forward in the way we have and I hope it's an example to other states that if you trust your system, you trust the great people that work for you, you trust your own citizens to do the right thing, that you can live in a COVID-safe way with relative freedom and not have families ripped apart and not have businesses have to shut down.

  
Do you feel you have an understanding of how it's worked [on the Victorian-NSW border]? Do you accept that a lot of people feel your comments around the Queensland have been critical?

    

    
I don't accept the last point you made. But I certainly accept how difficult it's been for people and I hear stories everyday and unfortunately implementing policies in a pandemic is far from perfect. As the Police Commissioner said, we had 5 million vehicle permits - movements, I should say, 1.2 million permits have been issued on the border alone in 137 days and since July 9, it's been really difficult for border communities. And I accept that, in fact, I travelled down here recently to express my gratitude and apologise to the local community for the hardship they were going through. But I think in the long run, people appreciate that we were better off keeping everybody safe. I don't know what we would have done had we had 20 or 30 cases in the border communities that we weren't able to control. That was the 
alternative.

And I'm happy to wear the criticism. That's my job. I also have to make sure I'm making the right decisions for everybody and I don't regret the decision we took, as difficult as it was, because I do believe that it kept everybody safe and it also allowed us to build resilience and learn a lot for the future and again I never want to see this situation again in our lifetimes and hopefully we won't.

   

Two weeks without any cases in New South Wales. Do you expect Queensland to open their border to New South Wales soon?
   

Look, with all due respect, I don't understand the decision-making up there. They're making up stuff as they go. They keep changing the rules, they keep espousing advice I have never heard of. I can only make my position clear and all I can do is appeal to people's conscious - let's think of our people, our citizens, first, and certainly that's my head space.

I think all of us had a really difficult year and you don't want to see families not being able to reunite because they didn't have enough notice to get flights booked and things like that. We wanted to give people enough notice so they could make arrangements.

Lovely to see locals saying having people come up during the week because at least we know that by giving people notice, they can make those arrangements and I just wish that other Premier would think the same.

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2020-11-22 00:52:00Z
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