NSW-Victoria border ban is deja flu all over again

More than 100 years ago, NSW unilaterally closed the border with Victoria. It was January 1919, during the Spanish influenza pandemic, and a soldier who had arrived in Sydney by train from Melbourne was diagnosed with pneumonic influenza. After he infected staff, patients and visitors at a military hospital, NSW officials closed the border without warning. People were stranded on both sides, quarantine tent camps were erected; the marooned had to rely on charities. More closures followed and the federal government, in charge of maritime quarantine to keep the virus at bay, threw up its hands, leaving it to warring states to sort out the messy border details. It’s deja flu all over again.

The abrupt decision on Monday by NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to close the border with Victoria from Tuesday midnight was based on advice from her state’s Chief Health Officer. The game had changed. “We’re hoping this is a temporary arrangement. I want to see this happen for the shortest time possible,” Ms Berejiklian said. The decision was taken because of the escalation in infections in Melbourne during the past week and fears the virus was spreading through the community. The daily number of new infections in the state hit a record 127. NSW officials are concerned COVID-19 cases will now spread beyond Melbourne. Yet for months Ms Berejiklian strongly had urged all states and territories to open their borders to interstate travel.

The closure of the NSW-Victoria border will stall economic recovery, disrupt supply chains and lead to job losses. It also will set back community confidence about the approach officials are taking. On Monday, the NSW Premier was working both sides of the border issue. She denied the new ban was in conflict with earlier calls to reopen elsewhere. “What is occurring in Victoria is not happening anywhere else in Australia. It requires a new type of response,” she said. Ms Berejiklian is right, up to a point. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has botched his policy and it requires others to step up to limit the fallout. His approach is part hubris, part incompetence, but the end result is telltale authoritarian Chairman Dan. His rhetoric throughout the crisis has been overegged, the responses veering to overkill. Yet even failure, such as the latest spike in cases, comes with “I told you so”. In this rigged game of spin and win, Mr Andrews can never be wrong.

As Greg Sheridan explained on Monday, Mr Andrews’s failure is broad and both political and technocratic. Perhaps his most shocking ploy was putting untrained security guards into high-stress, technically demanding roles managing distressed people in hotel quarantine, Sheridan wrote. All the way through this crisis, Mr Andrews has spoken in melodramatic terms about the life-and-death consequences of everyday decisions: if you go out shopping, people will die. Or “playing golf is not worth someone’s life”. Well, who can argue with that? Mr Andrews pulled the trigger on naming a school linked to an inactive case when it suited him to justify school closures. But he was awfully discreet about identifying the Cedar Meats abattoir, the site of a significant outbreak and, at best, half-hearted in warning people not to attend the Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

As the Big Man who greedily banks applause and the high personal ratings from a besieged citizenry, Mr Andrews is culpable for these errors. And now the entire country is dealing with the grim consequences. Scott Morrison has warned the last thing we want is a “go, stop, go, stop” rhythm to reopening the economy. It will kill confidence and confuse the public. Australia’s strategy has never been to eradicate COVID-19. Rather, the aim has been to suppress the rate of infection while building up the supply of medical tools and bedding down processes to deal with outbreaks. We’ve boosted supplies of masks, respirators and intensive-care hospital beds; ramped up testing across the nation; put in place an app-based contact-tracing regime to take pressure off the experts. As long as we operate in a COVID-safe way, in business and in social life, we can get people back to work, earning and spending money, and taking the weight off taxpayers.

The Melbourne outbreaks were avoidable and deeply regrettable, and are a reminder of the need for strong leadership and common sense. Sure, closing the border may stop Victorians hitting the road to head north. Yet a sense of proportion is also required. Australia has been successful in fighting COVID-19. Of 8380 cases, three in five came from overseas. Sadly, 106 people have died. But the mortality rate for infected people aged under 70 is below 0.1 per cent. Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd says Victoria’s outbreak is a reminder that “we are all at risk from a resurgence”. Still, we need to be both vigilant and measured in our behaviour. Community welfare is a broad measure of health, social and economic outcomes. A spike in community transmission, serious as it is, should not be an excuse to hide under the doona this winter or impose more draconian restrictions. We run the risk of losing the many gains we have made, while ignoring the lessons we’ve learned about living with the virus, being resilient and adapting to our vexed, if temporary, circumstances.