NEW arrangements for the Sesame Street Circus Spectacular and Sunraysia Football and Netball League (SFNL) senior games, which were set to move across the river to New South Wales next weekend, have been thrown into chaos following an extension of NSW restrictions that prevent Mildura residents freely entering the border community.
On Sunday the circus began packing up its big top at Nowingi Place and announced it would instead set up at Wentworth Showgrounds and begin shows on Friday after previously deciding Victoria’s current indoor capacity limit of just 50 was not viable.
Following the announcement, a flurry of confusion began online over whether Victorian border residents could visit NSW.
The NSW move has also cast a shadow over round 9 of SFNL games, which had been rescheduled to NSW grounds to allow spectators to attend.
Despite regional Victoria coming out of the statewide snap lockdown last Friday, anyone who has been in Victoria since 4pm on May 27 and enters NSW — including Mildura residents — must abide by stay-at-home directions.
The directions state Victorian residents can leave home for only four reasons — for food, to travel for work and education, for medical care and for exercise.
The NSW Government will review the restrictions on Thursday.
Member for Mildura Ali Cupper said her “heart breaks” in the light of the NSW decision.
“To me it is inexplicable that NSW has made this decision to harden its interpretation of Victorian rules and to impose these rules on cross-border residents,” she said.
“Mildura Rural City Council, which is the bordering municipality, hasn’t had a COVID case for 13 months, we’re on lesser restrictions now precisely because of that incredibly low risk.
“We are one community with towns just across the border so to make life so unnecessarily difficult like this is to play mind games with fellow Australians and it’s disgraceful.”
She said she couldn’t see how the rules made sense, outside “political opportunism or political wins”.
“These rules can’t be justified on health grounds so it feels to me like political mind games,” Ms Cupper said.
“Totally unjustified and just a waste of everybody’s time and energy on a Sunday, when we could be doing other things, not worrying about reading up on NSW’s latest whacky iteration of border rules,” she said.
“My heart breaks for those businesses (who had adapted by taking their business to the other side of the river) … they’re doing what they can to follow the rules and survive, and they keep having these surprise barriers put in front of them.”
Mr Cupper reiterated her opinion the Federal Government needed to take a “much more active role” in Australia’s COVID-19 crisis.
“When the states are left to their own devices, it almost starts to feel like we are separate countries,” she said.
“It is truly inexplicable and there’s not much the Victorian Government can do about this, but there are things the Federal Government could do because they have over-arching authority on the way the states behave and for a very long time I’ve been saying the Federal Government needs to take a much more active role in this.
“The way to avoid that is for the Federal Government to come over the top and provide some common sense, some cohesion and leadership so if border closures happen between states it’s done on health grounds and on the basis of objectively measurable risk.”
The restrictions followed the Northern Territory’s refusal to accept Victorian residents into the state late last week.
“Despite the fact regional Victoria is in a lower restriction setting — precisely because of the lower risk, with areas like Mildura at a particularly low risk — we had more than 200 officials, drivers and spectators ready to head over to the Finke Desert Race, injecting money in the Northern Territory economy, that had the door slammed in their face at the end of last week,” Cupper said.
“The NT’s rules don’t make any sense — it’s almost like a race for who can be the toughest on Victoria because it plays well politically in those other states.”
