Queensland hospitals are for Queenslanders. I had thought this moment was the floor. The bottom of the dry well. It has been almost a year since Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the state’s hospitals were “for our people” and a woman pregnant with twins became tragically caught up in the politics of hard borders.
We all shook our heads. We all knew then and know now how unnecessary, how deeply wrong, how cowardly it was not to grant this woman an exemption and therefore access to the urgent medical care that everyone agreed at the time that she needed.
Just when you think we can’t fall any further, down we go again.
A Victorian family was refused an exemption to hold a proper funeral for their son. His name was Cooper Onyett and he was eight years old. Cooper drowned while on a school camp.
Losing a child defines tragedy. Losing a child who has barely had a chance to live? That’s a life sentence.
Cooper’s family asked for an exemption from Victoria’s fourth round of lockdown restrictions so they could bury their son properly. The answer was no.
Nameless, faceless, unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats said no.
To make it a more unconscionable decision, the funeral was to be in Warrnambool. Three hours from the drama and disarray of Melbourne. There had been no Covid anywhere near this regional town for nigh on a year. Cooper’s parents had offered to hold his funeral outdoors, with people distanced and in masks. But still the answer was no.
Plenty of us were distressed at both cases. Surely not. SURELY not? We asked each other. But plenty more tacitly and overtly shrugged their collective shoulders and mumbled something about being kept safe.
These two episodes in Australia’s Covid-19 story represent the worst of us. The worst of government and the worst of a community that’s been bludgeoned with fear to the point that this kind of stuff seems normal. It should never be normal.
I lost my father in June 2019 and have spent probably too much time wondering what I would have done had it been 12 months later. Had it have been me that was being denied being able to hold his hand as he slipped away. To cry worthy tears as the soft skin of his hands began to cool in mine when he had moved to heaven.
What would I have done if they had have said we couldn’t give him a proper funeral? He was a man who lived a full life. Was blessed with years. Cooper was a little boy whose life was stolen from his parents and those who loved him. The insult of denying them the chance to say goodbye properly, given the context, given where and how they wanted to do it? Indefensible. Shameful.
Worse still, nobody owns these decisions. If it were you or I or anyone in the private sector, you’d not only have to own the decision, but be accountable for it. What a concept.
But when news of Cooper’s story emerged, it was a broken record. The Victorian government’s greatest hits. The Acting Premier James Merlino offered “It’s a particularly tragic case” backed up by “every parent’s worst nightmare.” Chief health officer Brett Sutton said he wasn’t personally involved, because it would not be appropriate for him to have a role. Nobody owned this decision. Just like nobody owned the decision not to send a desperately unwell pregnant woman to the closest hospital. The Premier of Queensland said she didn’t get involved in individual cases.
I believe the term is, stunning and brave?
Australians have been spared the worst of this pandemic by sensible policy at a Federal level and you can almost forgive the overreach of the initial stages because nobody was the wiser. But months, and now more than a year, on there are no excuses to trying to defend the indefensible.
As leading infectious diseases specialists this week harshly rejected the Victorian government’s assertions that this lockdown was necessary because of a “beast of a strain” that was “spreading exponentially”, the lunacy goes unchecked.
Decisions that mark our lives. That ruin lives and livelihoods. Rob us of the moments and experiences that are the difference between living and existing. They’re based on “medical advice” that’s never open to genuine scrutiny. The famed ring of steel? Ineffective by the admission of Victoria’s police union. Don’t even get me started on South Australia’s ridiculous don’t touch the footy episode.
This pandemic has shown that fear is the killer of empathy. How quickly this stuff can become normalised. It has shown how deep and wide is the chasm between those who are leaders, and those who simply get the most votes.
Meanwhile, Cooper’s parents didn’t get to say goodbye in the way they wanted and needed to. Countless scores of others didn’t get to say goodbye at all.
Read related topics:Coronavirus