THE need for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to intervene on the border issue is well overdue.
For about six months, border communities have been dealt blow after blow by ad hoc border closures, implemented by state premiers desperate to placate their large voter bases in the cities.
Sunraysia Daily has told countless stories of how border policies and draconian city-based COVID-19 restrictions have impacted on this community.
From a local woman who had life-saving cancer surgery in South Australia cancelled on the basis of where she lived, to Victorians not being able to fish in the Murray River, to people unable to get access to health care or to fill up their petrol tank, to those separated from family or unable to bury loved ones.
The policy-making from the various state premiers has been wildly inconsistent and certainly disproportionate to the virus numbers in border communities, which have largely sat at zero throughout the pandemic.
The hypocrisy of state premiers cannot have escaped Mr Morrison.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has been outraged at Victoria for closing its borders to NSW residents, just as she was outraged at Queensland for doing the same, despite implementing her own hard border on Victoria for months.
And don’t get me started on Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, WA Premier Mark McGowan or the completely unreasonable SA Premier Steven Marshall.
But if Mr Morrison was in any doubt as to whether he should step in on the border issue, then surely Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ treatment of his own people over the new year holiday period laid it bare.
That Mr Andrews indefinitely blocked Victorians stuck in NSW from returning to their home state on the back of a relatively minor virus outbreak in Sydney remains one of the more shameful examples of policy-making we have seen during this crisis.
That he did so while making expensive compromises to accommodate 1200 international tennis players and officials for the Australian Open merely added salt to a gaping wound.
What Australians need now after dealing with such harsh measures during the pandemic is for some consistency in policy. We need to move beyond the tit-for-tat between state politicians and get on the same page, understanding that COVID-19 is not going away any time soon.
If it is a traffic-light system between regions, so be it, but it needs to be consistent.
It’s never made sense to me why the George Chaffey Bridge heading into Mildura needed to be shut in the first place, let alone now.
At any point, did state premiers honestly believe Sydneysiders were going to pack up the car and drive 1000km west to cross the border at Buronga and then drive a further 600km to get to Melbourne? It would be a three-day quarantine inside a car if that were the case.
Our state premiers have demonstrated that, when it comes to borders, they will be completely self-serving in their decision-making.
To remain popular in the cities, they have sacrificed the lives of people in the country who have been unable to get access to essential health services or specialists from across the border.
It has to stop. Those decisions need to be taken out of the hands of our premiers, for they have lost our trust. We can’t keep this open-shut-them policy going every time there are a handful of cases in the cities.
Mr Morrison, for months, people in border communities have been pleading for your intervention.
So please, step up and bring our divided country back together. We need you to lead.
