QCCL opposes proposed Extension of Emergency Powers

QCCL President Michael Cope said today. “The QCCL opposes the Government Bill extending the Covid emergency powers until 30 April 2022. The QCCL would support an extension of the powers until 31 December 2021, when the question of whether they should be further extended can be considered.”

At the start of the pandemic, the QCCL accepted that the following circumstances justified the emergency powers introduced by the government to deal with the public health emergency declared last year:

1. the community was threatened by a novel highly infectious disease for which there was no vaccine or effective treatments
2. the disease threatened to overwhelm the health system, resulting in the death of many people from both the disease itself and their inability to access other essential medical treatment.

Our position has always been, that the emergency powers should not continue for any longer than is absolutely necessary.

The facts have of course now changed. There are now a number of safe and effective vaccines, which prevent serious illness and death ensuring that our hospital systems do not face the threat of being overwhelmed.

In 2017 1200 people died of flu and in 2019 902 people died of the flu and 3915 were hospitalised in this country . Those figures were not used to justify large scale civil liberties restrictions.

“Whilst we accept that covid19 is more harmful than the flu, effective vaccines for covid19 enable us to cope better with the disease and must lead to a more proportionate response, which in our view means the end of large restrictions on the fundamental rights of Queenslanders”

Currently of course, the vaccination program is in its early stages. This means of course that we accept that currently the state of emergency remains justified.

The Council has repeatedly called on the government to publicly identify the criteria which it will use to decide that the state of emergency is no longer required. We note it has again failed to do so.

We are pleased to note that for the first time, on 2 July 2021, the Premier articulated a position on this issue, which would appear to be the same as ours that restrictions should go once “everyone is offered a vaccine”

“Our position is that the emergency should only be extended to 31 December, which is stated to be approximately, the time by which the vaccine will be made available to all adult Australians who want one. If at that time, the vaccine has not been offered to every adult in the country, a further extension of the emergency powers can be considered.”

Any extension should come with the following limitations:

1. Immediately pass legislation making law its promise that information collected by the Check in App will only be used for contact tracing and most particularly not be accessible by law enforcement
2. The government should establish a select committee to oversee the use of these powers, as was done in the Senate, with representatives of all parties in Parliament, chaired by a non-government member.
3. It remains our view, it is fundamental that a person who is detained in hotel quarantine should have a right of review before a Court