Qld election 2020: Politicisation of border closure must end today
Whoever wins the Queensland election must dispense with the politics when it comes to our coronavirus response, writes the editor.
Opinion
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Yesterday’s decision by the Queensland Government to throw open the borders to New South Wales residents, providing they don’t happen to reside in Sydney, has highlighted just how absurd the politicisation of the coronavirus has become.
It is indisputable that politicians across the world have ruthlessly followed the old adage “never waste a crisis’’, and used the coronavirus to ramp up their media profile.
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They have claimed credit for falling infection rates, then deftly deflected criticisms when infection rates have risen.
They have denigrated political opponents in jurisdictions where death rates have been high, and heaped praise on “fellow traveller’’ leaders where infection rates have been low.
All the while we have listened to our elected leaders chanting the mantra that “the science’’ is always uppermost in their minds when making crucial decisions which will have wide-ranging economic implications over the decades ahead.
The reality (and most of us are mature enough to accept the reality) is that while politicians and even well credentialed medical experts are doing their best fighting a highly contagious disease in a highly mobile world, they are simply making the rules up as they go along.
We know this to be true simply by observing how things have played out ever since the virus got its teeth into this country last March.
We saw internal division between federal and state health authorities, with the federal arm insisting schools were safe while the state insisted they were not, and shut them down.
We listened earnestly early in the year to uniform agreement among politicians and medical experts that no large gatherings could possibly be permitted.
Then we saw that hard line soften into equivocation over whether people should attend Black Lives Matter rallies.
We are all well aware that the rules are very much open to negotiation and even interpretation.
But yesterday’s decision by Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on the eve of the state election to open the borders on November 3 to NSW residents, but close them to Sydney residents on the basis of a few cases in the NSW capital, shows just how blatantly politically motivated these decisions have become.
Ordinary Queenslanders are fully aware that regional NSW residents will mix with Sydney residents in much the same way a Gympie resident might come into contact with a Brisbane resident in the course of a normal working week. That a regional NSW resident can get the tick at the border while their city-based cousins cannot is taking us into the realms of the ridiculous.
We can only express the hope that, following today’s election, whoever is in power will dispense with the politics when it comes to coronavirus responses, especially involving crucial border decisions.
Queenslanders have shown a determination to co-operate with our leaders in dealing with this challenge which, it now seems highly probable, will still be very much part of our lives in 2021.
But that co-operative spirit will quickly dissolve if Queenslanders suspect they are being played for political purposes.
