Queensland is closed. Annastacia is showing us she knows how to deliver some serious borderline discipline. It’s a show of strength – perhaps, some might say, a borderline disorder. There’s a state election around the corner (31 October) and she’s not about to let a few hundred NSW cancer patients in need of treatment soften her public displays of tough love for her Queensland constituents.
There’s been endless stories of seriously ill people who have been severely affected by the sudden border closures and the quarantining requirements. I even heard the heartbreaking story of a very ill man who had received treatment at a Queensland hospital and was made to cross into NSW to meet his wife by foot. At a local doctors surgery as many as ten doctors can no longer attend. Is that a show of strength Ms Palaszczuk?
In the previous border closure earlier this year I knew of people who were able to get border passes for a day trip to IKEA. Just a few months ago we could print a pass and return home with a flat pack. Now we have to beg for chemo. That’s nuts. We don’t even have COVID here. In Northern NSW we’ve become refugees in our own country.
We are standing at the border knocking, ‘Hey Queensland, you’ve been coming down here every weekend for years now, clogging up our roads, swimming at our beaches, enjoying our kooky hippyesque charm… we don’t want to come in for a holiday, we would like to go to hospital.’
Until COVID, borders were something that only meant something in the State of Origin. Or if someone cut you off on the highway and had a Queensland numberplate you mused it was because of their statewide merging disorder. For over half the year they’re an hour behind us because of their silly reluctance to take on daylight savings. But now the Queensland border has been sealed shut. They’re sailing into the distance. Who knows how far behind they may be once the border reopens? Will we need passports to enter?
COVID has carved Australia into a quarantine pie, it has made us separate people. It has made Queenslanders distrustful of us. And here in NSW, it has made us suspicious of Victorians. Every time we see a VIC numberplate we hit down hard on the hand sanitiser. State premiers who previously seemed a tad irrelevant in the big game of politics have become the major players. They get to play Big Daddy or Big Mummy to keep their state safe. I’m not sure what’s happened to Scott Morrison – he appears to have gone to sleep. Every time I turn the telly on, it’s not Scotty’s face I see, it’s Daniel Andrews. And I have to admit I really feel for him. He has to bring the COVID-19 outbreak under control, otherwise the rest of Australia will blame Victoria for their financial ruin. He does look very tired.
The pandemic has ugly impacts. It has made us territorial. We are one country – at least we used to be. Our lockdown has sent us to our burrows – it has made us conspiratorial and suspicious. It is causing us to lose trust. When Annastacia created a travel bubble between Queensland and NSW, she cut Mullumbimby and Byron Bay out. I doubt that was an accident with the protractor in the planning department. ‘We ran out of arc’. It’s because people from Sydney come here. It’s because we’re perceived as loose – after all we’re famous for immunising with a turmeric poultice.
So, farewell Queensland. We’ll see you on the other side. Or perhaps, we won’t.
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Thats a bit over the top, “endless stories” of cancer patients unable to access treatment. Those people have all been given passes once an application was made.
Well… what else can we expect from the woman
who supports ADANI. I wouldn’t go back to Qld
if you paid me. All that’s missing is the ‘hammer
& sickle’ . Who do these ‘cancer people needing
people ie; doctors & chemo’ think they are!
Wimps, the lot of them. Daylight savings; forget
it. Time to live in the dark, Miss Prem. Just stay
put.
Mandy. Your article seems seriously out of date wrt people seeking medical treatment. Also, today Qld sensibly included further areas into the ‘bubble’ area.
We have to head of the disasters happening overseas. Having 1000 health workers quarantined in Vic. tells you how serious their problem was.
Unfortunately, it only takes one infected person to start a new cluster. Watch the BBC 1918 doco film “Contagion”
Qld just fined and jailed a man for having too many people at his house. I think any person evading quarantine should be fined and jailed as a deterrrent. We have to change our thinking, and teach children how cough and sneeze responsibly.
Thanks for your laughs Mandy but this one is still serious leaving families short changed and many people economically, socially, medically and mentally vulnerable. It was probably the demands of people I won’t mention that demanded to another state that we were all in or out that put us further in this position than required!
I agree with everything that was said above. As a border resident and living in the bubble I have medical treatment and appointments across the border along with many other people who are doing it tough. It’s a power play and all about getting votes, she won’t even talk to NSW Premier. Let’s hope commonsense and care about fellow Aussies eventually prevails
Thank you, Mandy !You’re spot on once again. Definite borderline disorder. Power has gone to Palaszczuk’s head.
Her recent comment (‘NSW has its own hospitals, our hospitals are for Queenslanders’) is outrageous. Using that logic, she should opt out of the federal Medicare system we all benefit from as Australians. She should then make Queenslanders pay full fees for medical care in her state’s public hospitals, or create her own state system of health cover (Canetoadcare, perhaps?)
For a Labor premier (especially from the party which brought us our first federally funded public health benefits system) to behave this way is absolutely disgraceful. She should hang her head in shame.
‘ Hey Queensland, you’ve been coming down here every weekend for years now, clogging up our roads, swimming at our beaches, enjoying our kooky hippyesque charm… ’ so true Mandy and they kept coming across right through the outbreak on the Gold Coast and especially when they closed all the beaches over Easter. It seemed Annastacia was quite happy for her crowd to bring whatever they had down here but we weren’t allowed to take whatever we had up there. Slightly illogical with a contagious disease; it seemed there wasn’t a worry about what the Queenslanders now might take back with them. But there you go – maybe it was all about the polls.
Now there’s suddenly a much harder line – literally and figuratively. You can’t half blame AP though, being a bit edgy about Byron Shire. If we are to believe the press it is now the playground of Sydney socialites confined to the state, particularly those locked out of the annual festivities of the Whitsundays sailing season. Then, from the sublime to the ridiculous, there’s Mullumbimby and other hinterland strongholds of Covid denialism. A bit of a powder keg on the doorstep!
Well ! I must say Mandy your talk of DISCIPLINE is highly arousing But….
I think this is a clear case of “borderline personality disorder”. I believe it is a common mistake to think all the states are merely a random grouping of what is a collective, being the Australian nation.
I was disabused of this fallacy in the early Seventies, when I found that the hostilities reserved for those ‘south of the border’ was as overwhelming as inexplicable . Signs on the highway trumpeted this inferiority complex, in terms of “as good as anything south of the border”. There is no Nation, there are ‘stake holders ‘
‘vested interests ‘ and ‘us and them’ and if you can ‘stick it up ’em ,’ it makes voting for scumbags like Joh more understandable. Still alien but in parallel with denying health care to the “Mexicans”.
Cheers, G”)
Yay no Queenslander’s filling up the surf during the day and brawling in Byron at night. Woohoo! But seriously why are they so unable to merge?
Totally agree. What happened to we’re all in this together. Qld Premier has lost the plot. I think she has her head buried in the sand, a not so nice sand as ours here in northern NSW. Does she not truly realized how intertwined the two states are? Could she be so ignorant or is it arrogance. Here at Black rocks there is regularly 50+qld cars enjoying our beautiful beaches and lifestyle. There are more xQlders living here than from anywhere else. Yes, we do use QLD hospitals, shops and businesses but many of us have family we’ve been cut off from. But likewise northern NSW supports many QLD businesses who have spread their net to NSW to keep afloat in Qld. Qld premier says she is keeping Qlders safe, but northern NSW people have also contributed to keeping QLD safe as well as our own region. Wake up QLD and join the real world.
The Qld Premier will be voted out and the sooner the better ! Its all political !! And the suggestion
That the Qld Premier is a supporter of the Adani
Or the Resources industries is far fetched !!
Queenslanders are forgiving but dont have short
Memories.!! . the last federal election labor were
Absolutely smashed at the polling booths partly
Because of labors stance on the Resources industries. Also hard to fathom the state of Qld
Are in more debt than any state in Australia
Its the tourist capital of Australia how is this so !!
And God help Qld if the Greens were to get anymore
Power !! No resource industries.
No capitalism of any sort , so there gos your
Tourist industries.. !!! And the opposition the liberals, have not a good leader either ..
So good luck Qld …
Stake [steak] holders, no doubt about that.
Jo-supreme is just doing what comes
naturally to her. She’s just keeping up with
the Jo wonders of fore. Hospitals are for
Queenslanders… yeah! And death is for
dying. Canetoadcare: good one. To the
Cane-toad Manor reborn. What goes up
must come down. Give the lady a whip.
I say it again……. The Queensland Premier’s
partner at the time was the man who worked
for – & with – Adani. Go check it out.
Still on the line of stupidity, it’s nuts to hear
Hanson & One Nation seriously expecting
the NSW PM – Glad – to consider uranium
mining after a 33 year old ban on the ‘rot
gut’ stuff. Look what ‘Uranium’ did to the
N.T. Is there anyone of sanity left in this
country?
I’m so tired of hearing misinformation &
I am no supporter of the QLD Premier
Annastacia or her so-called x-partner
who worked on the Adani ‘loan’ affair.
Seeing as how there’s no bad feelings
between the exes, I’ve found Shaun
Drabsch listed as ‘part time contractor
supporting Santos’ engagement with
the NT Government’s Onshore Shale
Gas.’ Could it be history repeating
a similar situation all over again?