Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Once again, we've seen the Queensland health minister, Queensland's Darth Vader, make an attempt from the dark side to send out into orbit the space junk that the state government has created with vaccination mandates and testing confusion to enter the great state of Queensland. During this pandemic, we've seen the Queensland government, time and again, do what they do so well: deflect from their own failures and their responsibility to provide Queenslanders and those who seek to enter Queensland with a clear pathway when it comes to testing and travel.

The tourism and small business sectors, who have suffered blow after blow, have now suffered further due to the confusion caused by the Queensland health minister and the Premier around resident and holiday access restrictions to Australia's favourite playground, the Gold Coast. The Queensland government created this confusion around testing requirements to enter Queensland so that the Premier could position herself to ride in on a white pony—nothing against white ponies—and be seen to rescue Queenslanders from the peril of paying for testing every time they cross into the Tweed to go to work or enter Queensland.

I reject that this confusion was caused by the federal government. The truth is that the Queensland Premier signed an agreement with the Commonwealth on 13 March 2020 to meet the Commonwealth 50-50 to split the difference for PCR testing with the states and the territories. Has she forgotten? Did she forget that national cabinet meeting? The arrangement has not changed. It remains in place; there's no new agreement on testing regimes with the states and the territories. What changed? What changed was the Premier decided—or perhaps she didn't decide—that travellers, returning Queenslanders and border workers maybe had to provide a certificate for their testing status. To produce a certificate, a pathology request form is required from an issuing GP. The cost of the results were reportedly $145 per person per test. How much is that for a family of six?

That's why the tourism sector went into unnecessary meltdown on the Gold Coast. They went into further angst and damage control for our key economic pillar on the Gold Coast. Then, the Premier once again moved the goalposts. She said during a press conference, 'Yeah. An SMS would be fine. Yeah, that'd be fine.' Just like that. Just like that, the rules all changed. This is the power the premiers have.

The tests are free. They're free due to the agreement that I just outlined. They've been free for 18 months. As anyone who has been tested knows, these come from testing centres, not via a GP's request form. For clarity, the Commonwealth and the states together pay fifty-fifty for testing of people with COVID symptoms who attend mass testing clinics without seeing their doctor, people who require a test as a result of a state or territory public health order, including for domestic travel as a result of a state border restriction, and close contacts without symptoms, and for testing where there are workplace testing requirements in high-risk settings. It's very clear. The rules were already very clear and in place. The Commonwealth, through Medicare, funds tests for people who have COVID symptoms or are suspected of having COVID. These tests are ordered by a doctor, and the patient will have a pathology request form from the doctor for this service, and there is a cost associated with that.

My point is that it's absurd that the Queensland health minister and the Premier stood up and said that the Commonwealth should pay, through Medicare, for all the costs of testing due to state imposed border restrictions on travel when there is already an 18-month-old agreement in place, which they would have been well aware of. You can see where I'm going with this, Mr Deputy Speaker. It's all about the politics. A pathology test will be charged to a patient only when they are required to obtain an official certificate, rather than using the text message system that is in operation in every state and every territory. It's the Commonwealth that has spent over $1.87 billion on pathology testing throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. It's the Australian taxpayer—the Queensland taxpayer—who has funded testing, and it's the Australian taxpayer who, rightly, should not have to pay to enter the great state of Queensland.

So I wish to be crystal clear when I say that the federal government does not mandate COVID-19 vaccinations except in the case of those working in aged care and with vulnerable people. Vaccination is free and encouraged, and it should be businesses on the Gold Coast, the entrepreneurs of the Gold Coast, who decide who comes into their business, not the state government.