Steve Price: COVID border wars a national disgrace

Our COVID border wars are a disgrace. Our state premiers must understand we’re Australians first and Victorians and Queenslanders second.

ON a two night and three-day train trip back in 1977, between Athens in Greece and Vienna in Austria, we were stopped at the border with then Communist Yugoslavia.

Armed Yugoslav troops boarded and inspected our passports as we headed toward Zagreb in what’s now Croatia.

Across Europe back then, border stoppages between sovereign nations were mandatory. This predated the European Union and it wasn’t just borders that caused you to stop, but a change of currency from country to country was required.

Greek Drachmas into Austrian Schillings or Italian Lire into French Francs.

Without being too dramatic, the current border wars between Australian States reminds me of those queues and visa anxieties as you approached a new country more than 40 years ago.

Back in 1977 it didn’t seem that unusual that the Spaniards wanted to know you entered through France and exited into Morocco, but in 2021 these COVID border wars are not only ridiculous, but economically destructive.

That these closures are driven by political ideology and not Commonwealth health advice is a national disgrace and those involved in slamming the gates on their fellow citizens should be ashamed of themselves.

Police officers patrol and check for entry permits to Victoria at a border checkpoint in Mallacoota. Picture: Getty

Using State police forces to act like those Yugoslavian storm troopers is a stain on the way Australia, as a nation, has handled COVID.

This week I was still forced to obtain a permit to cross into South Australia at a remote crossing, headed for Penola in the Coonawarra.

Sure, it was granted almost instantly, but why is it required given I’m travelling from COVID free rural Victoria to Adelaide that has all but been virus free.

Going West is a doddle compared to the tortured crossings between Victoria and NSW and NSW and Queensland.

Out of this national medical tsunami that has laid waste to so much of Australia’s economy — especially the tourism sector — we must have a national conversation about States’ rights and the role of Canberra in changing the constitution with a free borders referendum.

Never again should we live through snap border closures ordered at the whim of egotistical State Premiers with their eye firmly on not only virus threats but the next State election.

Labor Premiers have been the chief villains with WA’s Mark McGowan, headed to the polls on March 13 this year, still playing tough guy on border access.

When is someone from Canberra going to tell this bloke if he continues to want to close his State to the rest of the Commonwealth, then he better start building his own navy.

Queensland’s Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk set the standard on her way to victory at a State election at the end of October last year — a two percent swing to Labor in a locked down Sunshine State.

That victory by a Premier that had all but destroyed the Queensland tourism sector, set a dangerous precedent and sent a signal to her State Labor colleagues that telling people you are saving them from those evil COVID carriers across State lines works politically.

The border uncertainty has piled more misery onto the tourism industry. Picture: Toby Zerna

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was watching this all very closely, as the one State out of step with the others — because until just before New Year’s Eve he had left Victoria open.

Of course, this had nothing to do with economic sensibility and everything to do with the fact that hotel quarantine incompetence killed more than 800 people, and no-one wanted to come here.

That all changed the day before New Year’s Eve. Premier Andrews was on leave but on the end of the phone to Acting Premier Jacinta Allan. Spooked by a returned traveller from NSW, and a COVID scare, Victoria — or should I say the Andrews Government — slammed the door shut.

Victorians in NSW were told to get back before Midnight New Year’s Eve or face being locked out, as happened to some 3000 people.

Even if you got back before the deadline but after the day of the announcement a two- week quarantine was forced on you.

This of course caused a stampede south and a friend of mine in Gundagai this week at the servo was told they served 1600 cars that day and virtually none the next.

We have all heard the dangerous and crazy long distance driving sagas attempted that day and it shouldn’t happen again — EVER.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison needs to lead this debate and use Australia’s outstanding results fighting COVID to gauge the mood for Canberra to have emergency powers to overrule border shutdowns.

I’m not sure what more evidence he needs. Airports around the nation have called for certainty, senior business figures like Qantas boss Alan Joyce have slammed border uncertainty and anyone trapped behind a closed border in a COVID free rural part of Australia would surely agree.

State parochialism — whether it be feral football supporters or food and wine snobs — has always annoyed me greatly. I’ve lived and worked in three States and love them all for different reasons.

At the end of the day, we are all Australians. In this COVID world we need each other like almost never before and we need to be able to freely travel between all states and territories all the time.

Business needs borders open and the travel industry, already on its knees, will be permanently crippled if Australians are forced to keep cancelling trips Interstate because of political egos.

Australia needs to be as one, to be nationally strong and solid.

Can someone please send these state premiers the memo we are Australians first and Victorians and Queenslanders second.

FOOTNOTE

My suggestion last week of a one-off Anzac Day march paying tribute to frontline health workers and CFA volunteers went down like a lead balloon. Clearly the ANZAC DNA runs deep, as it should, and I was wrong to make the suggestion. I’d welcome any ideas on what date we can make this happen.

Originally published as Steve Price: COVID border wars a national disgrace