Opinion: NSW drags rest of nation into post-pandemic world

The Queensland Government has been dragged kicking and screaming from its inflexible border policy, writes Mike O’Connor.

If you only send one Christmas card this year, send it to NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, for if it wasn’t for him, we would still be waiting for a coherent plan to open our borders.

Perrottet applied a blowtorch to the Palaszczuk body politic with his unilateral decision to open up his state, and the result was not long in coming.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews had also sniffed the wind and decided weeks ago that the lockdown game was up, and started crab walking towards lifting restrictions.

The Queensland Government, which has been dithering and procrastinating for months, was suddenly feeling the chill wind of isolation.

The “keeping Queensland safe” mantra had become a one-line joke and indecision the Government’s trademark.

Queenslanders, long suffering and more tolerant than perhaps they should have been, have endured irrational lockdowns, hypocrisy, clumsy Canberra-bashing diatribes, blatant double standards and media conference stunts that could most kindly be described as bizarre amid ongoing warnings of an apocalyptic future, and still managed to get on with it.

Apart from shaking our heads at the transparent political games, we really didn’t have a lot of choice.

Suddenly the pathway, while still conditional, is at least discernible as it should have been some time ago and now only because it became obvious that the Government would suffer unacceptable political damage if it didn’t copy the southern states.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announces Queensland’s reopening plan yesterday. Picture: John Gass/NCA NewsWire

The Premier and her team will try and suggest that this master plan is the end result of the combined genius of Cabinet and evidence of a forward-thinking government that is ahead of the game. It is no such thing.

It’s not long ago that Deputy Premier Steven Miles was bagging NSW as a rogue state.

Last weekend Treasurer Cameron Dick dismissed the NSW border openings as “a curveball”.

Health Minister D’Ath has for months been beating the drum of “Delta is coming” doom.

We were warned that the pressure on the hospital system that would result from opening our borders and tearing down the wall would be unsustainable.

More money – lots more money – was needed from Canberra before this could happen or chaos would befall us.

There was no mention of rogue states, curveballs and collapsing hospital systems yesterday. What we saw instead was the result of the government’s realisation of what many of us have known for months which was that people had finally had a gutful of being played for mugs and had woken up to the fact that they were pawns in a political game.

What we have seen is panic driven by the threat of electoral damage.

The Government can spin yesterday’s announcement any way it wants, but the reality is that it was dragged kicking and screaming away from its position that the greatest political advantage lay in keeping borders closed and infection rates artificially low.

One of the many sad truths to be revealed by all this was that when it came to choosing between politics and people, politics won every time.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet yesterday. Picture: Gaye Gerard/NCA NewsWire

There’ll be plenty high-fiving and back slapping in Government ranks following this announcement, as they celebrate what they think is their successful escape from the corner into which they had backed themselves with their fearmongering rhetoric and state-against-state, mate-against-mate tribalism.

Let me say that it’s not over yet. Not by a long shot. How many tears have been shed, how many hearts broken, how many futures destroyed and how many people driven into the depths of suicidal despair by the blind belief of government that it stood a better chance of winning the next state election if it ignored the human and economic cost of its policies?

We will all now be expected to put these tragedies behind us, cry “hosanna!” and thank the State Government for delivering us safely to the Promised Land, that place where you walk from Tweed Heads to Coolangatta without being thrown into the back of a police van.

Much is being made of the timing and how families, hitherto separated by the politics of power at all cost and bureaucratic stupidity and incompetence, will be united for Christmas.

That’s lovely, but the Christian principles that underpin Christmas revolve around compassion, caring and selflessness and we’ve seen precious little of these traits displayed by our government in recent times.

It would be its fond hope that the memories of what we experienced and witnessed will be washed away by the Christmas spirit and the passage of time but the dark stain left by a sense of betrayal and misplaced trust in government for many will remain.