NINE days after South Australia’s tougher border restrictions were announced, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said he would speak to his SA counterpart Steven Marshall about the effects on small towns.
Mr Andrews said the two premiers had agreed to discuss the new border rules on Friday afternoon.
The restrictions, which deny entry to South Australia for most residents of cross-border communities, were raised at Friday morning’s National Cabinet meeting.
Mr Andrews said there were “eight or nine communities” along the border on the Victorian side that required a “proportionate set of rules”.
He said there were not any coronavirus cases in these communities.
“We have one carve-out,” he said, likely a reference to an exemption announced for Lindsay Point earlier this week.
“But we’re going to work towards doing the same thing with a number of other smaller communities who shop, get their fuel, all of those things, just over the South Australian border.”
He said in these communities, to access equivalent services in Victoria meant travelling “hundreds of kilometres”.
Murrayville residents who would ordinarily travel a short distance to Pinnaroo for many supplies are among those who now face much longer trips to get what they need.
The town was this week forced to arrange its own fuel supplies, despite efforts to draw attention to its lack of a petrol station last week.
Mr Andrews insisted there was “goodwill” in dealings with South Australia.
“I understand why these borders are shut — it’s not a criticism of that, that’s a decision that’s been made and if I were in their shoes I probably would’ve made the same choice,” he said.
A pair of active cases previously linked to the West Wimmera municipality, bordering South Australia and the southern end of the Mildura municipality, were this week found to be located elsewhere.
West Wimmera no longer had an active case attributed to it, while Mildura remained on one active case, understood to be a person isolating in Melbourne.
