Steve Price: Premiers are acting like dictators and keeping families apart
Far too many elderly Australians have been battling away, almost completely alone thanks to egotistical politicians. Premiers need to stop acting like dictators and open up the borders — as far too many have lost precious time with family they’ll never get back, writes Steve Price.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
It’s been 257 days and counting since I have physically seen my 86-year-old mother, Margo.
To visit her in South Australia I would need to quarantine for two weeks — work commitments make that impossible — or apply for a visitor permit on compassionate grounds.
My mother would have to be critically or terminally ill, or dead — those are the regulations. I could cross the South Australian border to go to her funeral with a handful of people – a grim prospect to contemplate.
I’ve been locked up in greater Melbourne all this year thinking the only way I might see my own mother again is if she is dead or dying.
Think about that.
At her age, and I hope she won’t mind me saying this, the years, months and days are running out. Margo and her extended family, like so many other families, have had the better part of a year taken away from them.
Mentally that’s been tough for so many people and it’s simply not fair. I’ve been brought to tears over it on national television.
The Project’s Carrie Bickmore asked me out of the blue if I was I was coping with the Covid virus lockdown and restrictions.
Now Australian men aren’t supposed to cry – especially on live TV- but under the glare of the TV lights and with the genuine concern contained in the question I just lost it.
I wasn’t sobbing I just teared up at the thought that February 24 this year — that’s how long ago it was — might have been the final time I saw my remaining parent.
I told Carrie I feared I may never see her again and as of this weekend that remains a possibility.
In 2020 my mother has had to live alone, eat alone and be happy with a daily phone call from one of her children. She has been forced to remember the anniversary of my fathers’ death in September this year when he would have turned 90 — alone.
The mental toll that must take on someone at that stage of their life is huge and she will never get that time back.
I must point out here though that compared with so many of you I am lucky. My mother isn’t ill or dying, and she wasn’t one of those people trapped inside a Covid ridden nursing home forced to meet through a closed window.
She’s alive and I haven’t had to desperately turn up at the front door of one of those places demanding to be let in. I won’t have to go to court to find out what killed her and who was responsible.
Compared with many I’m lucky, but it doesn’t make me any less angry about what’s been lost and doesn’t make it any easier.
We will all carry the scars of 2020 no matter our personal circumstances.
And what’s the good reason for all of this mental torture of ordinary Australians? Why have they taken away months and months of our lives we will never get back?
The simpler answer: political egos.
Like five million other people I live in the greater metropolitan area of Melbourne and interstate Premiers acting like dictators thought it was a good idea to lock out Victorians, even healthy ones.
It started with Queensland and WA then spread to every state and territory as Victoria’s COVID cases spiked at over 700.
And still it goes on with the ex-furniture salesman who is now Premier of South Australia, a bloke called Steven Marshall — that most of us had never heard of before this — continuing his absurd lockout.
South Australia is the driest state on the driest continent on earth with not many people and lots of fresh air and open space.
To slam shut your border with Victoria and worse, keep it shut and enforce quarantine on visitors, is cruel.
It’s cruel on your fellow South Australians and you are smashing the mental health of the people you are supposed to be protecting.
Your ego and political survival instincts lead you to believe that come the next election you’ll be able to brag about how you protected your fellow South Australians.
The mental damage you have caused though — not to mention the economic carnage in a state that’s barely rust bucket status — will last several lifetimes.
Premier Marshall seems to exist in some parallel universe saying this week a change from hotel quarantine to at-home lockdowns for visiting Victorians is “great news for relatives in the lead up to Christmas”.
He’s got to be joking. Victoria had a run of zero cases and zero deaths this week and at one point was at 30 active cases to 49 in NSW.
The South Australian border is open to people from NSW as long as they drive through Victoria and don’t stop — how can any of that be common sense?
Melbourne has fewer cases than Sydney but we are still treated like lepers.
South Australia itself midweek had 12 active cases and their Premier continues his ridiculous border closure to Victorians.
I can’t fly into Adelaide, get picked up at the airport and visit my mother for a weekend, but on Wednesday night two rugby league teams from NSW and Queensland took over the Adelaide Oval for State of Origin.
For Australians of my mother’s generation who grew up in the shadow of World War II — often losing fathers and brothers defending their country — tough times are nothing new.
To lose near enough to a year of restrictive border closures though that have been commonly rorted to suit financial gain is criminal.
All of us who have been unable to hug loved ones and have heard their mental anguish over the phone should now be allowed to reunite — the time has come to let Australians in every state breathe again.
In support of men’s mental health I am raising funds this year by growing a moustache for the Movember charity. You can help by clicking here: movember.com/m/stevepricey
READ MORE: