Coronavirus: Tragedy that should end the border debate

Kimberley and Scott Brown lost an unborn child, after being told they couldn’t travel to a Queensland hospital for emergency surgery.

Queensland hospitals are for Queensland people?

No.

That is not what hospitals are for.

Hospitals are for treating the sick. They are for people who need help in an emergency.

Oh, but the Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters last week that this was no longer the case.

“People living in NSW, they have NSW hospitals,” she said. “In Queensland we have Queensland hospitals for our people.”

It’s wrong, and it’s cruel, and of course we know what happened, just after she said it.

The life of an unborn child was lost.

Ballina’s Kimberley Brown and her husband, Scott, were until last week expecting twins. They live far closer to the Queensland border than to Sydney, but when Kimberley needed help, her doctor spoke to experts at the nearest hospital – in Queensland – and he says that he was told that she should go to Sydney.

Why?

Because the message was clear: the border is closed. Queensland hospitals are for Queensland people.

Kimberley had to wait sixteen hours for the flight, and the operation. One of her babies died.

Queensland‘s Health Minister Steven Miles now says there was a “communication problem” south of the border.

He says an emergency medical flight carrying Kimberley and her unborn twins would not have been turned away.

But you can’t erase those words – “In Queensland we have Queensland hospitals for our people” – so easily.

And why is the border closed anyway?

NSW is not overrun with Covid.

Queensland is not overrun with Covid.

We can’t therefore pretend it’s for health reasons. Covid is quite simply not rampant in the Australian community anymore.

It is in quarantine hotels, where security guards and guests and staff are sharing lifts and coffee machines and ashtrays (such hotels should immediately be closed, with tracking for travellers made mandatory) and it’s in aged care centres, where the frontline staff and the elderly are bearing its brunt.

Are the borders a voter-winner?

That is what people say, but here at The Australian, and everywhere across the Australian media, journalists are being been swamped by heartbreaking stories of people separated from those they love in times of desperate need.

There is the mother who can’t be with her two-year-old while he has cancer treatment.

There is the daughter who could not attend her father’s funeral, because he lived his full, joyous, wonderful life in Queensland, while she raised her family in Sydney, never imagining that her father would therefore have to die alone.

The border closures are cruel, but what’s worse is they are unnecessary.

The idea that a young mum carrying twins might somehow set off a deadly wave by travelling from northern NSW to Queensland for emergency surgery to try to save the life of her unborn child is ridiculous, and the outcome is absolutely devastating.

And for what? Because, Annastacia Palaszczuk made plain – no doubt about it – that Queensland hospitals are for Queensland people.

No, they are not, and furthermore, that’s not who we are.

Darwin’s hospital did not turn away the burnt from Bali.

Victorian firefighters did not refuse to attend the recent infernos in NSW; on the contrary, they stormed up the freeway.

Emergency personnel from across the nation would never – have never – refused to put boots on the ground in Queensland towns devastated by cyclone, or drought, or flood. And why? Because we know who we are. We’re Australian.