Fed up Tweed residents want Premier to front up to traffic chaos and fix it fast

Gridlock traffic and border wait times are causing the Tweed region daily headaches and now they’re demanding a solution.

Tweed region residents are fed up and want a solution to the border chaos gripping the community.

And they want NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk to stop squabbling and fix it fast.

Tweed mum-of-three Susie McCarthy is pulling her hair out over border chaos. The Tweed region native has spent up to three hours in traffic following school pick up with her 5, 10 and 12-year-old.

Ms McCarthy said the daily school run caused her family great anxiety each day and was affecting her ability to earn a living as a health and wellness professional.

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“I have had to cancel my afternoon appointments in preparation for the unpredictable daily pick up,” Ms McCarthy said.

“I think we get forgotten up here because we’re so far north. [The Premier] needs to come here and see for herself and listen to the residents of Tweed.

“The sad things is we’ve always acted as one community – the Tweed and Coolangatta community – and this is beginning to create a divide that has never been there before.”

Mother of three Susie McCarthy is fed up with fighting traffic to take her children to and from school. Picture: Steve Holland/NCA NewsWire

Gridlock traffic and wait times at the border are causing daily headaches and locals are begging for someone to do something about it.

But it seems a stoush between premiers Palaszczuk and Berejiklian over moving the border is no closer to an answer.

Retirees Derek and Lorraine Mendieta moved to Tweed Heads in December from Sydney to be close to family living at the Gold Coast and Ipswich but are finding it very hard to reach that family under the border controls.

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“It’s just terrible, my wife sat for an hour in traffic just to reach the border checkpoint so she could meet her three-month-old grandchild for the first time,” Mr Mendieta said.

“Once you cross the border, the traffic flows – we need to move the border south,” Mrs Mendieta said.

“If you move it north – it just causes an even greater domino effect.”

And the Mendietas have even graver concerns about the placement of the border checkpoint in their community – a community that has been relatively untouched by the virus.

Derek and Lorraine Mendieta at home in the Tweed. They are angry retirees fed up waiting for hours to get to grandchildren in Qld. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Steve Holland

“Prior to Queensland closing its border, Victorians were trying to cross and now they’ve infiltrated the caravan parks here – there are a lot of retirees in this community and if an outbreak happened here it would be devastating,” Mr Mendieta said.

But the Tweed grandparents have some advice for the premiers of both states: one – move the border south to just north of Ballina on the M1 and two – the political stoush needs to come to an end.

Their message: “Stop the power struggle. Pick up the bloody phone and have a chat – they need to sort it out.”

Ms Palaszczuk said she had asked the NSW premier to move the border checkpoint further south in an effort to make life easier for residents of the Tweed regions.

“She’s not at all inclined to move the border – I’ve tried,” Ms Palaszczuk said

The NSW’s Premier’s office has been contacted for comment.