Sunday Mail-YouGov poll: Strong support in SA for keeping borders closed

Plenty of people – including the PM – want states to begin reopening to each other. But in SA, a majority of voters want to defy his wish, fearing the huge risk of community transmission.

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Closing state borders to prevent coronavirus outbreaks is strongly supported by South Australians in defiance of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s push for restrictions to be lifted by Christmas.

An exclusive Sunday Mail-YouGov poll reveals almost two-thirds of respondents want the SA border closed to all residents of a state with active community transmission of COVID-19, such as Victoria.

The Prime Minister’s preferred model to open up the nation, based on restricting movement from defined coronavirus hot spots rather than imposing hard borders, was supported by just 31 per cent.

The overwhelming backing for tough border controls will test Premier Steven Marshall’s resolve in supporting the PM’s bid, revealed on September 4, for “a sustainable set of arrangements where Australians could move around” using an agreed hotspot model to be locked in by Christmas.

National carrier Qantas is spearheading a push to reopen domestic borders in time for Christmas holidays and already has more than 54,000 signatures on a petition endorsing the hotspot model.

If implemented, this would allow travel from western Victoria, where case numbers are low or zero, but exclude people from Melbourne while it remains a hotspot.

Asked after a national cabinet meeting on Friday if all states except WA would have borders open by Christmas, Mr Morrison declared “tremendously good progress” was being made but conceded the hotspot model had not been discussed further.

“I think we’re making tremendous progress. I mean, Queensland has opened up to the ACT … It’s good news. South Australia has opened up to the ACT and I’m sure New South Wales won’t be far behind,” Mr Morrison said.

Mr Marshall again said NSW border restrictions could be completely removed within days, this time by Tuesday, after ACT air travellers were allowed in without quarantining from last Wednesday. He has flagged the next step for a Victorian reopening would be to introduce a 14-day quarantine for travellers, as per current NSW restrictions.

The Sunday Mail-YouGov poll of 810 people from September 10-16 found a surge in support during the pandemic for Mr Marshall and his Liberal government, which led Labor 53 per cent to 47 per cent in two-party preferred stakes.

Border closures, particularly with the virus-ravaged Victoria, have been a linchpin of SA’s thus-far successful suppression strategy and helped enable substantial easing of community restrictions.

Mr Morrison’s preferred model involves restricting movement from COVID-19 hot spots, defined as a metropolitan area (with) the rolling three-day average (average over three days) of 10 locally acquired cases per day, equating to 30 cases in three consecutive days.

The poll found substantial support for border closures across regional and metropolitan SA but also among both Liberal and Labor voters.

Almost three-quarters of Labor voters backed border restrictions, compared with 61 per cent of Liberal supporters.

Backing in Adelaide was 64 per cent, compared with 69 per cent in the rest of SA.

Latest police figures published on Saturday show a slight spike in the number of border crossings last week - up 730 people to 17,901 travellers.

The number of Victorian border crossings decreased 140 people to 7639 travellers in the previous seven days.

But the number of NSW crossings increased 139 people to 2177 travellers.

Mr Marshall has repeatedly said border closures were based on public health advice and controls would be eased as soon as it was safe to do so.

Qantas’s petition urges “domestic border closures to be risk-assessed against an agreed set of medical criteria and a shared definition of what constitutes a COVID hotspot”.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce in August called for a clear framework to allow state border reopenings to drive economic recovery and give certainty to the tourism industry.

“Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory, Queensland. Tasmania, we’ve got closure there still with very low cases, no cases and it’s been like that for a while and we don’t have any determination of when the borders will open,” he said after the release of Qantas results.

“ … We know that we have to start that tourism industry again, the economy is depending on it.”

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