Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk hasn’t ruled out fighting the Morrison government in the High Court to defend Queensland’s right to close its borders.
The strong stance comes after emboldened state leaders grew increasingly defiant against the Prime Minister as debate rages about domestic border policy, with Australia edging towards its desired vaccination coverage threshold.
“Clive Palmer had the support of the Commonwealth when he challenged the Western Australian government and lost,” they said. Gladys Berejiklian agrees, desperate for her state’s soaring crisis to be saved by vaccine protection, but Queensland and WA both reserved the right to lock down residents even when jab coverage reaches 80 per cent.
“Under the Constitution there’s meant to be freedom of movement between the states for the purposes of trade but when Clive Palmer sued WA, the High Court considered border closures then and they said, essentially, that as long as it was proportionate to the health threat or a reasonable response, then the states could shut their borders under that section of the constitution,” she said.
“But now you might be able to say, ‘do they have to have hard closures if there’s only a few cases in one particular place or one particular part of the state?’ “Alternatively, it could rely on its external affairs power to legislate to give effect to a right of ‘freedom of movement’ as a means of implementing Australia’s obligations in human rights treaties,” she said.
If the stoush were to progress to the High Court, agreements and discussions from national cabinet about forecasting a vaccination threshold to resume life to normal could be used as an argument.
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