“If you thought last year was hard, you should see the next three!”

If your child received this text from a bully at the school “Break Up”, you’d be concerned.

But this was from a 44 year old father of three. This was the Deputy Premier of our State, sneering at the cross-benchers in our Queensland Parliament on Wednesday.

My best description of parliament this week is hysteria and “Hail Marys”.

Give Us Some Divine Intercession

A “Hail Mary”, in American football, is a long, forward pass made in the last minutes of a game in a desperate attempt to win. It is named after the beloved Catholic prayer for divine intercession because it needs a bit of that too.

It seems to me like we could all use some divine intercession this week.

Today, the Chief Health Officer told Queenslanders, “We are all of us going to end up being infected with COVID.”

She went on to say that getting vaccinated is the best way to protect yourself and your family. She could have added – and your community and your local hospital.

This morning’s headlines have the nation shaking their heads over the brazen use of COVID19 for political point-scoring by the Queensland Premier.

It is infuriating. It is absolutely disgraceful and worst of all it treats Queenslanders with utter disrespect.

This week Australia has watched anxiously as the outbreak of the Delta strain in NSW continues to expand. With daily case numbers touching Melbourne’s peak of 700 a day, and still too many infectious in the community, there are now serious concerns about how the NSW health system will cope.

Meanwhile in Melbourne, their lockdown keeps getting extended week by cruel week, for the same reason – too many infectious in the community before they are picked up with testing.

COVID19 Lockdowns

As I am writing this morning, NSW is still recording hundreds of cases daily – 291 locally acquired today.  Sadly, there have been deaths as well.

Nine days after coming out of lockdown, the whole of Victoria went also back into lockdown last night.

Our borders are closed to both of these states and to South Australia as well.

In Queensland,  the southeast corner is also in lockdown, but we look like we are winning – at least for the moment.

Please read this important information for all local businesses.

New COVID check in requirements come into force at 1 AM on Friday, July 9, 2021.

These have not been very well communicated, but failure to comply comes at the risk of steep fines – 100 penalty units – or six months imprisonment.

Sometimes you’d think the weather gods have a wicked sense of humour. This week’s budget sitting in Brisbane was marked by mornings of peasouper fogs.

This was the last week before Treasurer Dick presents Parliament with the next Queensland budget. It was a strange week. On Tuesday afternoon the Callide C power plant blew up, as the week unfolded Victoria’s latest COVID outbreak took off and Parliament House was lit up to promote National Palliative Care Week.

I’m sorry this is a week overdue, but I had to travel straight from parliament to attend the Western Queensland Alliance of Councils in Richmond.  I’ll try and give you double the value this week. First to last week’s sitting.