Sydney — Cassandra Elliott can leave freely Australia For the first time in more than a year and a half, there is still no way for a Victoria state resident to meet his father in Western Australia.
This week, Australia began to loose control At its international border, which closed early in the coronavirus pandemic. Fully vaccinated Australian citizens, residents and their family members can now enter parts of the country quarantine-free, while those in Australia are now required to obtain government permission to travel internationally. Not there.
But states and territories have also restricted each other’s entry to the pandemic, and many of those restrictions remain. Internal border closures have prevented 32-year-old Elliot, a writer who lives in the state of Victoria, from seeing his father in Western Australia on the opposite side of the country.
“My dad is my best friend,” she said.
As Australia’s two most populous states reopen to the world, others remain firmly closed to fellow Australians as well. Western Australia says its internal border will not fully open until next year.
“So my dad and I won’t spend Christmas together,” Elliot said. “It was really disappointing to find out.”
reopen a split
Australia closed its international border to non-citizens in March 2020, requiring Australians to return to quarantine for 14 days, if they could return at all. When cases of the virus emerged, officials swiftly responded with lockdowns, while interstate quarantine requirements kept them from spreading across the country. Strict policies meant that, except one stateMost of Australia remained COVID-free until the middle of this year.
but again delta hit version. In June, an outbreak appeared in New South Wales, which includes Australia’s largest city, Sydney, before spreading to neighboring Victoria and its capital Melbourne. Both states entered lockdown, but cases continued to rise.
Other “Covid-free” jurisdictions, citing public health laws, completely close their borders to both states, threatening fines or jail time if people cross. Case numbers remain at or near zero in those states and territories.
Ian McAllister, professor of political science at the Australian National University in the country’s capital, Canberra, said the patchwork of internal borders is unprecedented for Australia and unique globally.
He said it is easier to close internal borders in Australia than in countries like the United States, because the population is more dispersed. With about 26 million people, Australia has a smaller population than Texas, but 11 times its size.
Many Australians, who have been largely shielded from the virus, are now reluctant to follow “Covid states” new South Wales And Victoria in accepting its spread. Both states recently ended months of lockdown after meeting their vaccination targets.
like the government New Zealand, which is also moving away from its “zero-Covid” policy, with officials in two Australian states saying the country will have to find a way to live with the virus, even if it means more cases.
“We need to rejoin the world,” New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrot told reporters last month. “We can’t live here in a hermit kingdom, we have to unwind.”
While states such as Queensland and South Australia prepare to reopen the country’s Covid hot spots at Christmas time, Western Australia has other plans.
Premier Mark McGowan said on Friday that the state would reopen across the country after 90 percent of residents age 12 and older were fully vaccinated, estimated at the end of January or early February.
“I accept that some people will be disappointed that they will not be able to be reunited with family in New South Wales or Victoria at Christmas,” he said.
“Doing early increases the risk and increases the damage,” he said.
For Elliott, Australia with rigid boundaries between “Covid states” and “Covid-free states” is bizarre, even laughable.
“I was actually laughing here that day with one of my girlfriends,” she said. “We were saying she would be able to travel to her home country of India, but I couldn’t travel to Perth,” the capital of Western Australia.
“She can go home and see her family, but mine is in Australia and I can’t see them.”
‘Extreme mental stress’
Western Australia’s border rules have been incredibly popular within the state, helping McGowan win a landslide election victory in March. a recent survey It was found that 82 percent of Western Australians favored keeping their state closed.
Supporters say the numbers speak for themselves: with a population of 2.7 million, Western Australia has had just over 1,100 cases and nine deaths during the pandemic. (Kansas, which has a similar population, has about 440,000 cases and about 6,500 deaths.)
Even Elliott said she could understand the government’s point of view.
“They want to keep people safe,” she said.
But some Western Australians say their state is going too far.
State officials recently reclassified both New South Wales and Victoria from “high risk” to “extreme risk”. It removed an exemption that previously allowed people to enter for “compassionate reasons” if they were to quarantine for 14 days in the first place.
Dr. Luigi D’Orsogna, a pediatrician in Perth, said the change was “totally unwanted”.
“I don’t see any medical evidence that says such extreme sanctions are necessary when we already had perfectly adequate ways to defend our state,” he said.
D’Orsogna said he is particularly concerned that people are not able to visit relatives who are sick or dying.
“You are taking people to their most vulnerable moments and now exposing them to enormous mental stress and anguish,” he said.
With cases declining in New South Wales, the state transitioned back from “high risk” to “high risk” on Saturday, but Victoria is set to remain in this category for the foreseeable future.
international criticism
Tensions around Australia’s response to the pandemic are not confined within the country, with leading US conservatives also targeting Australian leaders over lockdown restrictions, border closures and vaccine mandates.
Last month, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, accused Australia “Covid atrocity,” calling it “outrageous and tragic”.
reply on twitterChief Minister Michael Gunner informed that there have been zero Covid-19 deaths in the Northern Territory.
“We don’t need your lecture, thank you friend,” he said. “You don’t know anything about us.”
Conservative commentator Candace Owens jokingly asked when the United States military should invade Australia to “free the oppressed”. His comments were met with bewilderment and ridicule locally.
Amid the debate about these rules, McAllister said Australia should not look at how well it has done overall in the pandemic.
Overall, Australia has around 174,000 Covid cases and less than 1,800 deaths. This compares to more than 46 million cases and nearly 750,000 deaths in the US.
“Nothing like what’s happening abroad here,” McAllister said.
Meanwhile, Elliot and his father are trying to stay positive.
“My dad is building a really big truck for himself, and he wants to drive it across the country to see me,” she said.
“You know the saying ‘If you build it, they’ll come’? He keeps saying, ‘If I keep building it, the borders will open up!'”
Nick Baker is a freelance journalist based in Sydney.