So we have all been told… we are one and free! Bollocks.
It was New Year’s Eve and Victorians were (rightly) preparing to celebrate their hard earned ‘freedom’.
After a debilitating year during which Victorians endured one of the harshest lockdowns in the world – courtesy of the Victorian Government’s ineptitude in handling hotel quarantine – many Victorians had organised a modest home party or a simple get away into neighbouring states.
The bungling of hotel quarantine was defined by the Federal Treasurer as “the costliest public policy failure in the history of the Commonwealth”.
Consequently, hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost, small businesses had been mauled and individual savings raped. And Government debt was off the charts.
On the whole, the Victorian public buckled down and responded admirably.
By Christmas, Victoria had enjoyed in excess of two months of double doughnuts – no new cases of COVID-19 and no active cases.
At the same time, NSW was wrestling with a limited outbreak which was confined to suburban Sydney.
Then suddenly, at 3.30pm on NYE no less, the acting Premier, Ms Jacinta Allan, announced the immediate closure of the Victorian border and home get-togethers were to be limited to 15 people.
Whilst shopping centres were able to continue to host unrestrained hordes, my wife had to inform our koumbaroi, at no notice, that their family of four was suddenly deemed pariahs and not welcome!
The Trak night club was able to throw a NYE Greek Glendi with hundreds of cavorting partygoers, but our respective homes were deemed an unacceptable risk.
After ten months and having been the beneficiaries of possibly the best resourced response in the world, respective Governments across Australia had plenty of opportunity to develop a coordinated response, a Plan B, to the odd (eventual) outbreak.
I am no epidemiologist, but couldn’t the Government say, “OK, there has been an outbreak in Sydney, so Victorians returning over the next twenty-eight days would be required to present a negative test within the preceding 48 hours and would be subsequently required to test within 24 hours of arriving in Victoria and maintain home based quarantine whilst results were pending?”
Evidently not. Instead of a planned response that respected Victorians, the Government panicked and went nuclear.
It’s as though they suffer from an acute affliction of RDS (relevance deprivation syndrome).
Tens of thousands of Victorians were immediately forced to pull up stumps from all over regional NSW and beyond and clamour back to within Victoria. And half were (understandably) already ‘on the piss’.
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My 21-year-old son and his girlfriend started NYE at 7.00am at Batemans Bay in southern NSW. After their morning swim, they drove 150km and visited Canberra with the view to see in the New Year at the Hellenic Club. They didn’t find out about the border closure until they went to check in at their accommodation at 6.30pm. At that point they immediately cancelled their stay and drove all night and arrived back in Melbourne at 3am.
As I said, I am no epidemiologist, but I do know that a twenty-hour day on the road, unannounced, is absurd and unsafe. In fact, they reported witnessing a dozen or so accidents on the way home. That is sheer madness.
Overnight, border towns like Moama (which is 750km from Sydney and only 250km from Melbourne and dependent on Victorian tourism) were left deserted.
Moama’s long awaited summer trade was turned to dust in an instant.
Three weeks on, there are still Victorians – who are also Australians – still stranded beyond the Murray. And those Australians that are still overseas may as well be shipwrecked on Gilligan’s Island. Back for Christmas you say. Yes, but which Christmas?
Our Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, only a few months ago had proudly pronounced that “we are ALL Victorians now” – that is, Australia was one and united.
Our aim was to “flatten the curve, contain the virus, not overwhelm the health system and to pull together and look after our fellow Australians.” All meaningless platitudes, forgotten the day after they are declared and blasted across social media.
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The way the respective Premiers of Victoria and Queensland in particular, have played with border closures has been as though they exist on Planet Pluto and are indifferent with the impact on people’s lives and livelihoods – all for populist appeal.
We seem to no longer be Australian but rather, Victorians, News South Welshmen, Queenslanders etc pitted against each other. The concept of a unified and proactive response in the national interest has proven as elusive as consistent summer weather in Melbourne.
The exception to this has been Premier Berejiklian who has kept NSW open and has battled successfully to contain local outbreaks without asphyxiating whole swathes of the State economy.
Pregnant women losing babies at birth because they are unable to cross State borders to access hospital facilities that are a stone throw away and kids unable to visit dying parents are not enough for our many of our bungling bureaucrats and senior pollies to ‘read the room’ and ‘get it’.
All the while, they remain on full salary and anyone in people movement dependent businesses – airlines, hotels, tourism operators, restaurants, accommodation, taxis, rent-a-cars and chauffeur car businesses like my own – continue to cop it right between the eyeballs.
As a wealthy and privileged country that is an island and in an ideal position to weather the plague of 2020-21, Australia’s political leaders have demonstrated that they are fractious, parochial, self-motivated and small minded.
We do not need to visit Trump’s America to witness fearmongering and divisive populism.
Our wartime Prime Minister, John Curtin was guided by the ‘light on the hill’ (fairness of access and equality for all). Many of today’s modern-day pollies seemed to be characterised by an opposite ethos, “I’m ok Jack, bugger you Charlie”.
Australian democracy is too precious to be allowed to be played like a ‘komboloi’ (worry beads) by each passing State leader.
As migrants and descendants of migrants from all over the world, over decades, we have been asked to show allegiance to Australia and be proud of our Greek, Italian, English, Vietnamese heritage etc.
We have been asked to respect the indigenous inhabitants of this land and laws that apply fairly to all.
Above all, we are expected to value our citizenship and pledge allegiance – to Australia.
Sadly, as a country, we are far from resolving our Australia Day/Invasion day differences and a long way from being one and free.
George Kapnias is a Melbourne businessman.