Two high court cases seeking to overturn the Queensland border closure backed by Clive Palmer and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation have been dropped.
On 17 July Mineralogy Pty Ltd, Travel Essence and the other plaintiffs filed notices discontinuing the cases, a move consented to by the lawyers for Queensland, with both sides agreeing to pay their own costs.
The cases were launched by Palmer’s mining company and tourism businesses eager to restart interstate travel and tourism in late May and early June, when Queensland’s borders were shut to all states and territories despite declining coronavirus case numbers.
But when Queensland reopened its borders on 10 July to all states and territories except Victoria due to rising case numbers there, plaintiffs in both cases dropped the challenges after talks with the Queensland government.
On Thursday the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, said the state would not bar visitors from New South Wales for now, but was monitoring the extent of Covid-19 transmission there.
“If there is an outbreak of community transmission in NSW, like we have seen in Victoria, we will not hesitate to take quick and swift action,” she said.
“If we have to declare further hotspots, we will declare further hotspots.”
The Queensland deputy premier and health minister, Steven Miles, told Guardian Australia the government had stuck by its decision to close the border “even while copping criticism from the prime minister, Peter Dutton, Matt Canavan, [state opposition leader] Deb Frecklington and the Queensland LNP, the NSW premier and even a Palmer-Hanson high court case”.
Miles said the border closure had “kept Queenslanders safe” and he was glad the cases had been dropped.
Both court cases had sought to argue the Queensland border ban infringed the constitution, which guarantees that interstate trade, commerce and intercourse “shall be absolutely free”.
In May, Hanson urged Australians to donate to a gofundme campaign which raised $23,074 towards the Travel Essence case.
On 1 June, the organisers of the campaign said funds had gone towards a $10,150 court filing fee, with the rest of donations held in a trust account by Mahoneys, the solicitors for the plaintiff.
The One Nation-backed challenge drew the ire of Clive Palmer, who had already launched challenges against both the Queensland and Western Australian border bans, which he said would cost about $1m.
Palmer accused Hanson of diverting attention to herself for “political gain”.
“Our challenge does not need her support, which is only confusing the issue and wasting the court’s time,” he said on 29 May.
On 16 June the attorney general, Christian Porter, said the commonwealth would intervene to argue the border bans in Queensland and Western Australia were unconstitutional.
Porter has since softened his language, explaining on 8 July that the commonwealth was “not assisting Clive Palmer, we’re assisting the court” by “providing a view” about the border bans.
“Now, the analysis isn’t like a fixed point in time, so the question is whether or not each state is properly adapting its rules and its border restrictions to the problems that it’s facing,” he said.
“And obviously, Victoria represents a new problem, both in interstate travel but in terms of the pandemic and its management.”
The Western Australian premier, Mark McGowan, has called for the commonwealth to withdraw from the WA case.
Guardian Australia has contacted Mahoney’s, Travel Essence and Pauline Hanson for comment.
