There’s a meme doing the rounds of social media, with Star Trek’s Captain Kirk asking Dr McCoy when the pandemic will end. “Dammit, Jim!” snaps Bones. “I’m a doctor, not a politician!”
In memo veritas, we might say: Queensland government documents show that the premier of that state relied on secret polling, not “the science”, to guide Queensland’s pandemic restrictions. And she flatly lied about it.
Annastacia Palaszczuk has relied on secretive monthly polling of Queenslanders to help her decide on the scope and duration of Covid-19 restrictions since just after the pandemic began.
Despite insisting border closures and lockdowns are based solely on health advice, Ms Palaszczuk’s office is receiving “waves” of focus group and polling research intended “to shape the government’s approach” and messaging for its strategy.
This was not just gauging whether the government was riding out the popularity of restrictions – the Queensland government was directly sounding out which restrictions they could get away with.
Under the ongoing polling, Queenslanders have been asked about their views on the economic impacts of lockdowns versus health risks, the triggers that should ease restrictions and the merit of border closures.
It has even asked “what advice would you give” to leaders on how to manage the virus and whether the state government should try lifting restrictions on a “region-by-region, or sector-by-sector vs all-of-Queensland basis”.
The Australian
Just to underscore that naked, ugly politics has been the Queensland government’s guiding compass in its pandemic response, the polling specifically targeted marginal seats.
Annastacia Palaszczuk’s office conducted taxpayer-funded polling into the government’s Covid-19 strategy across a regional, Labor-held marginal seat targeted by the opposition ahead of last year’s state election.
Intensive “qualitative” interviews were commissioned with hundreds of residents of the Livingstone Shire – almost exclusively in Labor’s seat of Keppel – just days after a newspaper poll showed it was in danger of falling to the Liberal National Party.
The shire, which also includes a small stretch of the One Nation-held seat of Mirani, was the only region set aside for special attention in a series of monthly “waves” of statewide polling ordered by Ms Palaszczuk’s department into Covid-19 restrictions and her government’s handling of the outbreak.
The Australian
Palaszczuk blatantly lied about the polling, and kept it hidden away from public scrutiny.
The Australian reported last September, just weeks after the Premier flatly denied her government was polling on Covid-19 restrictions, that Ms Palaszczuk’s office had hired market research and polling company Ipsos Public Affairs to run a “COVID-19 Key Insights Project”. Ms Palaszczuk has since repeatedly refused to release the research.
She also lied about “following the science”.
On June 27 last year – after she had received her polling report – Ms Palaszczuk stressed she was acting only on health advice when asked about lifting restrictions and border closures.
“It’s not about feelings here, it’s about listening to the health advice and making sure we take on board that health advice,’’ she said after announcing the opening of the borders[…]Last September a spokeswoman for the Department of Premier and Cabinet declined to say whether voters were being asked about the border shutdown.
About the only thing she’s told the truth about is that she’s not the only one doing it.
A spokesman for Ms Palaszczuk on Monday said Queensland was not only the government that had polled residents about their Covid-19 strategy.
The Australian
Of course, they weren’t. In fact, we know that the Andrews government heavily polled Victorians to inform its Covid policies, as well.
If we know that one government is guided by politics, not “science”, why on earth should we be so gullible as to believe that the rest are any different?
It’s never been about “the science”.
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