Reason abandoned in a senseless COVID-19 panic

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

Road safety guidelines for long-distance motoring is consistent between states, including Victoria: Stop, revive, survive — for 15 minutes every two hours. We would much rather serve you a cup of tea than cut you out of a car. If you experience feeling sleepy, tired or exhausted while driving, you need to stop. Get out of the car, breathe fresh air, stretch your legs.

Unless you’re heading for Victoria in a mild COVID -19 outbreak, apparently. The state’s COVID response commander, Jeroen Weimar, suggested on Tuesday that Victorians stranded in Queensland drive home.

“You stop twice on the way, you stop for 15 minutes, you have a mask on, you keep your social distance,” he said. “It is a long way, but having done Cameron Corner (close to the Queensland-NSW- South Australian border) to Mildura in a day, I don’t think it’s an exceptionally impossible drive to do.’’

Most of those returning, however, would have much farther to travel, from the Sunshine or Gold coasts to Melbourne. Much also depends on the driver, the vehicle, the road, passengers and prevailing conditions. For many, breaking the journey overnight, or taking longer and more frequent breaks, would be safer.

Not for the first time during the pandemic, the Andrews government’s autocratic heavy-handedness is undermining the wellbeing of Victorians. At a glacial pace, a team or 30 or 40 is processing applications for exemptions to the state’s disruptive and unnecessary border closure with NSW. At last count, 295 exemptions had been given with 3452 waiting. That is the tip of an iceberg. Many others have not applied. Some do not consider themselves special cases; others have found it impossible to make contact by phone.

Janet Yarrington (right) and her mother, Gwen. Picture: John Feder

Janet Yarrington, 60, from Neerim East, east of Melbourne, is one. She went to Sydney in late November when her 90-year-old father was dying. When Victorian Acting Premier Jacinta Allan announced on New Year’s Eve that the state’s border would close to anyone coming from NSW from 11.59pm on January 1, Ms Yarrington, like many Victorians, was not in a position to return home. Her 90-year-old mother could not be left alone. But now Ms Yarrington needs to return to mind her grandchildren so her daughter can resume work. She deserves better than being answered by a machine, told to press “2”, and then cut off.

Those stranded in limbo are sitting out the wait in NSW, incurring expenses as they worry they will not make it home in time for work or the start of the school year on January 27. Victoria’s sclerotic bureaucracy will be tested further as the end of the holidays draws closer. It remains to be seen if Scott Morrison has been able to persuade Premier Daniel Andrews, who is on holiday, to see reason and open the border or smooth the situation. It is a faint hope.

While it would be tedious but at least understandable during a real emergency, the imposition of such restrictions on movement within a sovereign nation is intolerable. It is wrong on principle, and in the present situation is ludicrous. In the 24 hours to Wednesday morning, the number of locally acquired COVID-19 cases across Australia was not in the thousands, the hundreds or even double digits. It was four in NSW, and one in Victoria. One person from each of those states was in hospital; nobody, anywhere in Australia, was in intensive care with COVID-19.

As was the case with Victoria’s draconian lockdown and curfew, accompanied with spying drones, the Andrews government’s approach will create social, medical and economic problems. As Liberty Victoria president Julia Kretzenbacher told Rachel Baxendale, the policy is causing real stress and problems for people stranded away from home. Other options, such as testing followed by home quarantining, need to be considered. That is, if thousands of people who have not been in known hotspots need to be isolated at all.

While the economy is recovering well from the pandemic, unreasonable border closures are costing business and jobs in sectors such as tourism and hospitality. The longer the closures continue, the greater the disruption to these and other sectors when the nation is already facing a budget deficit of $197.7bn this financial year and gross debt of more than $1 trillion later in the decade.

While Commonwealth Bank chief economist Stephen Halmarick is optimistic about the economy this year, he says a continuation of border closures after the Australia Day weekend, when normal business travel should resume, would be problematic. Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley says the border will not reopen for weeks. Not good enough.

Last year, politicians and health officials agreed that until a vaccine was in place, ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks were inevitable. Containment rather than elimination was seen as the best strategy; it was important to avoid panic. That, unfortunately, is what the latest border fiasco by the Andrews government is creating, as well as anger and anxiety. Despite long queues, testers and contact tracers in all states are doing a sterling job. Members of the public have repeatedly shown they are prepared to be sensible. They deserve better. This shambles must be resolved and attention switched to a far more serious issue: strengthening international travel processes as more people arrive with the highly infectious super strain that has shut down Britain.