Perspective One
Queensland
is closed. Annastacia is showing us she knows how to deliver some
serious borderline discipline. It’s a show of strength – perhaps,
some might say, a borderline disorder. There’s a state election
around the corner (31 October) and she’s not about to let a few
hundred NSW cancer patients in need of treatment soften her public
displays of tough love for her Queensland constituents.
There’s
been endless stories of seriously ill people who have been severely
affected by the sudden border closures and the quarantining
requirements. I even heard the heartbreaking story of a very ill man
who had received treatment at a Queensland hospital and was made to
cross into NSW to meet his wife by foot. At a local doctors surgery
as many as ten doctors can no longer attend. Is that a show of
strength Ms Palaszczuk?
In
the previous border closure earlier this year I knew of people who
were able to get border passes for a day trip to IKEA. Just a few
months ago we could print a pass and return home with a flat pack.
Now we have to beg for chemo. That’s nuts. We don’t even have
COVID here. In Northern NSW we’ve become refugees in our own
country.
We
are standing at the border knocking, ‘Hey Queensland, you’ve been
coming down here every weekend for years now, clogging up our roads,
swimming at our beaches, enjoying our kooky hippyesque charm… we
don’t want to come in for a holiday, we would like to go to
hospital.’
Until
COVID, borders were something that only meant something in the State
of Origin. Or if someone cut you off on the highway and had a
Queensland numberplate you mused it was because of their statewide
merging disorder. For over half the year they’re an hour behind us
because of their silly reluctance to take on daylight savings. But
now the Queensland border has been sealed shut. They’re sailing
into the distance. Who knows how far behind they may be once the
border reopens? Will we need passports to enter?
COVID
has carved Australia into a quarantine pie, it has made us separate
people. It has made Queenslanders distrustful of us. And here in NSW,
it has made us suspicious of Victorians. Every time we see a VIC
numberplate we hit down hard on the hand sanitiser. State premiers
who previously seemed a tad irrelevant in the big game of politics
have become the major players. They get to play Big Daddy or Big
Mummy to keep their state safe. I’m not sure what’s happened to
Scott Morrison – he appears to have gone to sleep. Every time I
turn the telly on, it’s not Scotty’s face I see, it’s Daniel
Andrews. And I have to admit I really feel for him. He has to bring
the COVID-19 outbreak under control, otherwise the rest of Australia
will blame Victoria for their financial ruin. He does look very
tired.
The
pandemic has ugly impacts. It has made us territorial. We are one
country – at least we used to be. Our lockdown has sent us to our
burrows – it has made us conspiratorial and suspicious. It is
causing us to lose trust. When Annastacia created a travel bubble
between Queensland and NSW, she cut Mullumbimby and Byron Bay out. I
doubt that was an accident with the protractor in the planning
department. ‘We ran out of arc’. It’s because people from
Sydney come here. It’s because we’re perceived as loose – after
all we’re famous for immunising with a turmeric poultice.
So,
farewell Queensland. We’ll see you on the other side. Or perhaps,
we won’t.
Perspective
Two
Yes
this border closure can be hard on individuals, families and
communities.
For those living in the Northern Rivers region who need to access health services in southern Queensland and medical personnel who can no longer cross the border to work in our hospitals and clinics unless they leave their families and don't return until the border opens, it is more than hard.
However,
the Northern Rivers is part of a state, New South Wales, which
allows its residents free movement within its own borders during this
global pandemic.
This
means that people can freely travel from local government areas where
COVID-19 infection growth is active to areas where infection growth
is low or where there are no known cases of the virus.
New
South Wales has a premier who appears to be in thrall to a prime
minister whose constant push to prematurely ease public health order
restrictions put in place by the states destabilised the national response to the pandemic.
So here in New South Wales we remain one of
only two states with a high cumulative number of confirmed of
COVID-19 cases, a relatively high death toll and active community
transmission of the virus.
Currently the other six states and territories are managing to keep infection rates very low.
Additionally,
we have people travelling within our state who crossed into New South Wales from
Victoria which is in the middle of an infection surge and, we are not
sending them home. Because quite frankly the Berejiklian Government
has no idea where these Victorian travellers are.
Even within our state trust in the 'experts' engaged by the NSW Dept. of Health has taken a battering - given the release of the Commission of Inquiry into the Ruby Princess Report on 14 August 2020.
It
is no wonder that the Queensland Government does not trust any assurances
given by either Scott Morrison or Gladys Berejiklian that new cases of the
virus are unlikely to cross the border if Anastasia Palaszczuk were
to reopen Queensland to people from New South Wales right now.
