Discrimination against regional travellers in quarantine regime

Mandatory quarantine is essential, but please produce more flexible policies for regional travellers. The requirements are capital city-centric.

My mother just died in a northern Victorian shire (zero cases). I live in Canberra (zero cases) and my brother lives in far-western NSW (zero cases). Neither my brother nor I were allowed to drive there and back for the funeral. It was mandatory to fly back.

Simple for me: collect rental car from Canberra airport, drive to northern Victoria, attend the funeral, drive to Melbourne, fly back to Canberra, quarantine at home.

Horrendous for my brother: get a lift to the NSW/Victorian border, then a bus to the Victorian town; attend the funeral, get a lift to Melbourne airport, fly to Sydney, quarantine in a Sydney hotel, then fly from Sydney to far-western NSW (or spend all day on a train).

His journey was more risky, costly and stressful.

Maxine Baker Handscombe, Canberra, ACT

As usual, Henry Ergas hits the bullseye (“Public health is one thing — basic freedoms another”, 28/8). The basis of our “democracy” is that politicians govern with the consent of the people and in their best interest. People have a right to know the justification behind certain actions and object if they disagree with them.

Plato warned that “failure to participate in politics results in being governed by your inferiors”, so when we get the next chance to give “consent to be governed” we need to be sure we are not just buying more turkeys.

David Bidstrup, Plympton Park, SA

The preoccupation of state politicians and the media with the number of COVID-related daily deaths in residential care facilities is dispiritingly lopsided. Are we so obsessed with safety, so blind to life’s inherent risks, so unwilling to acknowledge that nobody comes out of aged care alive, that we have lost all sense of proportion? Can’t we at least be given the number of COVID-19 deaths as a proportion of total daily deaths in aged care? And that it be made clear that the former refers to people who have died with a COVID-positive diagnosis, which may not be the same as the number who have died primarily from COVID-19?

David Palmer, Jamison, ACT

Albo’s sour grapes

One can only assume as a result of his recent criticism that Anthony Albanese still carries a big chip on his shoulder because he is not a member of the national cabinet that he in essence asked to join when it was formed. Probably he would find the majority of Australians think the government, in conjunction with the national cabinet, has done an excellent job dealing with COVID-19; the glaring exception being in Victoria where Daniel Andrews has gone his own way to the detriment of all Victorians.

Nick Bailey, Ngunnawa, ACT

The forgotten people

The biggest losers and the forgotten people in the disaster of COVID-19 are self-funded retirees. They have lost almost 100 per cent of their income, with companies now not paying dividends. These are the people who have chosen to save and go without all their lives so as not to be a burden on their country and its working men and women — the taxpayers.

These are the people who did not waste their superannuation on overseas holidays and new cars every year until the money ran out and then apply for the aged pension.

The people who did spend all their super considered they were entitled to do so and to receive the aged pension because as some have said to me, and I quote, “I paid tax all my life and I am entitled to the pension.”

Yet now when times are tough those who did the right thing receive no assistance and are expected to sell down their investments to survive. Does not seem fair to me.

C.H. Ainsworth, Kingscliff, NSW