The Queensland border will open to Victoria on December 1, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says, after the state recorded another day with no new coronavirus cases.
"Can I congratulate Daniel Andrews, their Chief Health Officer and all of Victorians because this is just such fantastic news," Ms Palaszczuk said.
"So it means on 1 December, Victorians can also come to Queensland and, of course, Queenslanders can go to Victoria as well. So very, very good news."
It follows a similar announcement for the Greater Sydney area yesterday.
There's no decision on Adelaide yet with 20 local government areas still declared hotspots at this stage.
"[The Chief Health Officer] is still concerned about that cluster, but we will make further announcements about that at the end of the month," she said.
It is expected border checkpoints will remain in place until there are no declared hotspots and means everyone coming into Queensland will still have to fill out a border declaration.
Ms Palaszczuk said Victoria had now passed the requirements of 28 days without community transmission as well as high enough testing rates and good results from sewage testing.
She said she expected the easing of border restrictions to boost tourism, in particular on the Gold Coast and at Cairns where the loss of international visitors had a major economic impact.
"A lot of the businesses still have not returned to those inner-city high-rise offices … so that shopping and even the restaurants haven't been doing their normal trade," she said.
"I think what we'll see now, with extra confidence, more and more people will be coming back to work and coming back to spending."
Ms Palaszczuk said the delay between the announcement today and the border opening had always been part of the road map and would allow tourism operators to prepare.
"[It] now gives families time to book, to make sure that the airlines can put on some extra flights," she said.
'I can't predict the future'
The Premier would not say what the threshold would be for future border closures but said any decisions would be based on advice from the Chief Health Officer.
"The threshold will be that we will go to a hotspot regime, which is what we have done in the past," she said.
"Let's hope, fingers crossed, that that won't happen, let's absolutely hope that families can get together with families over this Christmas period.
"We have to make sure that we manage our international borders.
"If Australia's going to open up to Australia, the last thing we want to see, to put Australians at risk, is for a whole scale opening of our international borders — that would be catastrophic.
"Our hotel quarantine across our nation — now that we're opening up Australia to Australia — needs to be even tighter.
"We still have to live in a COVID-safe world, unfortunately things are not normal, and what we're seeing overseas in the northern hemisphere, you only need one outbreak in hotel quarantine and you're back to square one," she said.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMia2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTExLTI1L2Nvcm9uYXZpcnVzLXF1ZWVuc2xhbmQtYm9yZGVyLXJlc3RyaWN0aW9ucy12aWN0b3JpYS1yZW1vdmVkLzEyOTE0OTU40gEnaHR0cHM6Ly9hbXAuYWJjLm5ldC5hdS9hcnRpY2xlLzEyOTE0OTU4?oc=5
2020-11-24 21:47:00Z
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