Fair play over Victorian border

Problematic as it is, the diagnosis of a fourth COVID-19 case linked to the Australian Open tennis tournament will be handled sensibly by Victorian authorities. A total of 62 close contacts are now in hard quarantine in their hotel rooms, including 47 players. And COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria Commissioner Emma Cassar has warned there is “zero tolerance” for players breaching hotel quarantine rules.

Amid serious concerns about training restrictions, two-time champion Victoria Azarenka showed the right spirit: “Made it to Melbourne! Thank you everyone so much for making it happen. I can only imagine how many hours of work and compromise it took for us to be here! Thank you.’’ Staging the Open, from February 8, is another step in the nation’s COVID recovery.

That said, after allowing more than 1000 elite tennis players and their support staff to fly into Melbourne, there is no excuse, as NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian says, for Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews to delay Victorians stranded in NSW from returning home. In the interests of consistency, he should lift restrictions on Monday morning, after easing constraints for travel between Queensland and Victoria on Saturday.

Australia now has “no remaining coronavirus hotspots”, Health Minister Greg Hunt said on Sunday. There is no justification, then, for hard borders. The fact that thousands of Victorians remain trapped in NSW, at heavy personal cost and inconvenience, because they are in areas designated as red zones by the Andrews government, is onerous and disproportionate with the COVID caseload in NSW. It’s time for fair play on borders.