Caleb Bond: Border reopening is long overdue, despite poll support for closures
SA has reopened to NSW – but polling shows South Australians would prefer we keep locking out interstaters. We can’t afford to destroy our economy for the sake of xenophobia, writes Caleb Bond.
Opinion
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- Steven Marshall says NSW border to open to SA
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Common sense has prevailed – the borders have opened to NSW.
The fact it has taken this long to let the poor New South Welshmen back into South Australia without having to isolate – and South Aussies, for that matter – is a joke.
But we should, at least, take small victories.
The economic and social damage caused by this border closure can be felt right now and we’ll feel it for years to come. Better that we stop it now, though, than continue needlessly locking people out.
But – according to a YouGov poll – this should never have happened. Apparently South Australians want to keep the borders closed until there’s no skerrick of coronavirus left in the whole country.
The poll found two-thirds of respondents wanted borders closed to any state with evidence of community transmission, no matter how small.
One Queenslander gets COVID-19 at the pub? Shut the whole joint down.
This has clearly been the reasoning of many premiers – including Steven Marshall – to keep the borders closed for so long.
It is electorally popular to lock out people from other states right now, so that’s what they’ve done. It’s been especially effective for Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and West Australian Premier Mark McGowan, who are both staring at elections in the near future.
It has never been as much about science as it has been about making a blatantly political ploy for votes.
SA, admittedly, led the way in opening up to most states. But our blatant xenophobia towards NSW was ridiculous. That’s what it was. Xenophobia. Despite all this “we’re all in this together” nonsense, states have been pitted against each other. People developed a genuine dislike for other states and their inhabitants, even though the vast majority never have and never will come into contact with coronavirus.
And despite the border restrictions being lifted, it would seem that sentiment still exists.
As I have written in this column before, there has never been any good reason to lock out people from rural NSW who have never come within cooee of coronavirus.
They were always as safe as you or me – but we locked them out of our state because they happened to be on the wrong side of a line drawn over a map of our country.
They’ve been prevented from visiting their families or working, unless it was “essential”. Two weeks in isolation is a lot of lost income for someone who can’t work from home.
The only way forward, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said, is to move to a hotspot model whereby people who live in or have visited a coronavirus hot spot are banned from travelling anywhere.
It will prevent the spread of the virus outside those hotspots and not preclude people who are perfectly safe from travelling around the country.
It would rely on every state agreeing to adhere to this model. The opening of our border with NSW is a strong indication that SA will play ball on this model.
There is no other way. We cannot maintain unfair restrictions simply to appease paranoid members of the public when they have no basis in science or medicine.
It’s easy to say we should close our borders when you don’t have to travel regularly or you don’t have family or spouses interstate.
It’s also easy to say when your job is relatively safe.
Small South Australian towns near the NSW border will now have life breathed back into them. They will start to make money again.
The flow-on effects of that money being spent and people visiting is important for the economy. It’s part of the reason we are now in recession.
Mental health is just as important as physical health to many people. Reopening the NSW border will go some way to balancing that line.
SA appears to be jumping off the merry-go-round of border closures.
We’d better hope so – because if we do this again, the economic and social damage will be profound.