Andrews intensifies border chaos

WA Premier Mark McGowan (left) with Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: AAP / File

Being spoiled with beautiful beaches within easy driving of most cities and towns, too few of us, when holidaying in Australia, venture far afield.

Today’s three-page Life & Times Feature, “Wish We Were Here’’, could change all that.

With COVID-19 making overseas travel impossible, the spread covers some of the extraordinary experiences this country has to offer. There is heli-camping in comfort in the Flinders Ranges, “on a dramatic rocky ridge, fire blazing, wood stacked, Clare Valley wine chilled. The view is astonishing … after dark, stars dance like fireflies, the full moon is so near it appears to balance on a rock just over our left shoulder’’.

Another option is Kittawa Lodge on King Island in Bass Strait, “opened in late 2019, blending off-grid luxury and wild environment’’ where “sunset gathers itself into a fiery oil painting” and wallabies bounce around outside. Or, for a different perspective on our largest city, the Shangri-La offers a luxurious staycation, with soaring glass windows giving “the illusion of floating above Sydney Harbour’’.

Enjoying Pinky Beach at Rottnest Island are (from left) Shay Kiriakidis, Kendall Irving, Kayleigh Kimber and Erin Whitehead. Picture: Colin Murty

Rottnest Island, 24km across the Indian Ocean from Perth, is car-free with “perfect beaches, rocky coves and lobster-riddled waters’’. Holidaying in Australia is also an opportunity to discover Arnhem Land, a region gently opening up — a Top End wilderness teeming with 60,000 years of continuous living culture.

Holidays such as these would be great escapes, especially after the annus horribilis that was 2020. Tourism is also vital for the economy as it recovers. But senseless, frequently changing border closures by some state leaders, red tape, long queues at checkpoints, anxiety about being stranded interstate and unable to get home for work and school, and the prospect of expensive quarantining in hotels have made domestic travel too daunting for many.

There are few certainties, apart from the likelihood that Premier Mark McGowan’s fortress Western Australia will be a no-go zone. Mr McGowan’s ridiculous scolding of NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Monday for managing the COVID-19 pandemic rather than taking a “crush and kill the virus” approach was out of step with national cabinet’s agreed position. Business leaders rightly slammed Mr McGowan’s criticism as “laughable”. Trying to totally eliminate COVID-19 is impractical for a trading nation. Attempting to do so will only crush and kill investment and job creation.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews added to border confusion on Monday, inflicting his state’s battered citizens and struggling economy with a new “traffic light’’ permit system. It will apply to all Australians entering Victoria, with travellers from different zones to face different testing and quarantine requirements. The system will be like a “permanent Checkpoint Charlie”, as Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox said. Mr Andrews had bad news for Victorians anxious to avoid a repeat of the New Year’s Eve border chaos, which left thousands of people distressed and stranded in NSW, saying he would not hesitate to repeat the exercise. The “traffic light’’ system, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said, could leave Victorians retrospectively locked out of their home state if they visited a “green zone” that was reclassified to a “red zone” while they were away.

The extreme approaches of Victoria and WA are out of all proportion with Australia’s COVID-19 caseload. The nation had four new cases of community transmission on Monday, all of them in NSW. Nobody is in intensive care. The maze of confusing, costly, job-destroying over-regulation by some states is now intolerable.

National cabinet has failed to avoid the fiasco. The commonwealth lacks the constitutional power to force states to open borders or abandon their ludicrous red tape. But the Morrison government must seek alternative solutions. Australia has done far better through the pandemic than most nations. But some premiers are exacerbating a situation that is already economically and socially fraught. For now, unfortunately, many Australians can only dream of the “healing, almost surrealistic silence’’ of Lord Howe Island’s coast and other such adventures.