Very convenient moment Qld-NSW border closure put in place

How convenient for Queensland that within 24 hours of NRL families touching down on our soil, the drawbridge with NSW was once again raised, writes Mike O’Connor.

We ventured south of the border down Brunswick Heads way recently against the advice of our friends who all questioned our sanity.

“You’re mad,” they chorused. “Palaszczuk will lock you out. If you try to get back you’ll have to quarantine for 14 days. She’s warning Queenslanders to reconsider any travel to NSW.”

“We’ll be right,” I assured them. “There is no way they’ll close the border until they’ve got all the NRL footballers and their families tucked up into their hotel rooms on the Gold Coast. Once that happens then suddenly the health advice will miraculously recommend a border closure.”

And so it came to pass, for within 24 hours of the footy families touching down on Queensland soil, the drawbridge with NSW was raised.

After three days, we drove back from Brunswick Heads, which was all but deserted, stopping at Byron Bay with its now empty shops and vacant carparks where not a Queensland number plate could be seen, and crossed back into the Sunshine State unchallenged.

“We know that putting in place a physical, hard border is very logistically difficult, but also impacts significantly on these border towns,” Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said. “We will only do this if we absolutely have to.”

That was before the footy players got settled. How quickly things change.

Health Minister Yvette D'Ath. Picture: NCA NewsWire / John Gass

At least we have the Tokyo ­Olympics to distract us and while there won’t be much cheering in the stadia in Japan given that they will be all but empty, chants of “Aussie, ­Aussie, Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!” are sure to reverberate in living rooms throughout the country.

We’ll be cheering on our national teams, but the great irony is that we have ceased to regard ourselves as members of the Australian nation.

Driven by the policy agendas of state premiers and their whispering advisers, any notion of a commonwealth has been abandoned and ­replaced by state paternalism.

“We’ll lock all those nasty nonresidents out and keep you safe. Don’t you worry about that,” is the infantile, self-serving mantra repeated ad ­nauseam by premiers without any skerrick of proof that placing cement blocks on a line visible only on a map makes any difference to Covid ­infection rates.

If you seek further proof of the erosion of our national identity, look no further than the sad joke, which is the national cabinet, hijacked by the premiers and used as a platform from which to attack the federal government and shift blame from their own failures.

Did someone once seriously ­suggest that we’re all in this together? It’s appalling to see the base depths of parochialism to which the premiers have descended in their desperate battle for popular approval.

Lockdowns are one thing, but ­border closures preventing travel to areas not classified as hotspots and the misery, heartache and financial disaster that accompany these ­closures are another.

If there was an outbreak of infection in North Queensland would a line be drawn across the middle of the state and cement blocks put in place across the Bruce Highway and all other access roads from the south?

To do so would be to commit political suicide, but shutting off Victoria from New South Wales and Queensland from you-name-it is fine because of those dotted lines on the map.

We’ve been manipulated, all of us, throughout this and fed the line that we can be protected by hiding ­behind our invisible borders and placing all our faith in Queensland-for-Queenslanders rhetoric and police manning Checkpoint Charlie road blocks. Barbed wire and watch towers anyone?

How about Australia for Australians? That, of course, would require the premiers to surrender the power that they have so blatantly abused under the guise of secret “health ­advice” and act as one in the interests of all citizens and the nation.

The expression “I’m all right, Jack” has fallen from popular usage, but those of a certain age would recall it was used to describe a person whose interests were self-centred. It means that I’m fine, mate, and I don’t care about the rest. Sadly, there are too many “I’m alright Jacks” now.

The macho, tough leader stances that have been part of the border closure strategies are starting to wear thin. It’s time the premiers – ours and the rest that make up what could most kindly be described as a motley crew – took another look at their ­secret health advice.

The next time you see a politician on TV telling you that you need to be locked behind your border to be safe, stick your head out the window and yell “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!”