Coronavirus: bureaucracy bordering on emotional cruelty

For more than a week, Mount Camel resident Carmen Barnsley has fought to get a NSW travel permit, first to visit her sister and now to arrange her funeral.

Carmen Barnsley, of Mount Camel, Victoria, has been unable to get a permit to travel to arrange a funeral for her sister Jane, top right, who died in NSW. Picture: David Geraghty

In just one week, Carmen Barnsley’s sister Jane saw a doctor for an infection in her foot, was diagnosed with cellulitis, hospitalised and died last Tuesday morning from septic shock.

For more than a week, Ms Barnsley, who lives in Mount Camel, 50km east of Bendigo, has been fighting to get a permit to travel to NSW, first to visit her sister while she was in hospital and now to arrange her funeral.

“My sister was my best mate. When I do it, I’m going to do the right thing by her,” Ms Barnsley said.

She sought letters from her sister’s doctors, hospital administration and more recently her sister’s solicitors in order to get a permit, providing personal medical and legal details without knowing who would be looking at them.

Ms Barnsley said she has dealt with public servants concerned she would travel via the ACT, as well as a demand that she quarantine in Sydney instead of self-isolating at her sister’s apartment in Newcastle, where she could start sorting out her sister’s possessions.

“I’m coming from a place that’s been zero [COVID-19 cases] for weeks now and you want to send me to Sydney?” Ms Barnsley said. “Right now, I don’t feel like I’m Australian. I just feel like I’m Victorian.”

Ms Barnsley said she had been unable to provide the same level of care for her sister as she does to the clients she works with in palliative care “I just feel everything’s become very political and compassion is gone out the window,” she said.

Ms Barnsley promised her sister she would see her in hospital. “I said to her ‘I’m on my way, you know I will be there’ … and I never got there,” she said. “I don’t know what more I could do.”

She has contacted the office of her local MP, Nationals Steph Ryan, as well as the office of independent Lake Macquarie MP Greg Piper for help.

“I’m willing to be a really squeaky wheel. My sister is worth every squeak,” she said.

“As soon as that permit comes in, my car is fully loaded and I’m out the driveway”

The last contact between the sisters was a doctor holding the phone to Jane’s ear. “She was unconscious by that point but I said my goodbyes,”Ms Barnsley said.

Victorian Nationals leader Peter Walsh said the case was the human face of the impact of cross-border restrictions: “It’s wrong, so wrong, the system should be able to work better.”

“Again, people in Sydney and Melbourne make decisions without any understanding of the ­geography and human impact of how much they actually hurt people and families,” Mr Walsh said.