'It looked inevitable': How the NSW border to Victoria was closed | Rabe9 rachelclun
A week before it was announced Melbourne would be thrust back into lockdown amid a second wave of coronavirus, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian already knew a hard border between the two states was becoming inevitable.
Sue Harrison, a rural GP and board member of the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine, works in Echuca on the Victorian side of the Murray River. She says she has been concerned about what holiday-makers may be bringing with them. Victoria's community transmission was continuing to accelerate and several cases were being detected close to the border. Less than a week after reaching 50-odd daily cases, by July 4 the number of daily confirmed cases began surpassing 100. Six days later that figure would reach 288, the highest new daily total Australia had seen since the start of the pandemic.
Having spent weeks prosecuting the case for open borders, Berejiklian left it to Andrews to make the announcement later that morning. While some in NSW believe Berejiklian wanted Andrews to own the call by announcing it, a Victorian government source said the simple fact his press conference was scheduled first meant he took the lead.
As late as June 30, he had blasted Queensland and Victoria for their border closures, but had more recently been at pains not to be perceived as criticising Andrews and his government's handling of the emerging crisis. On Tuesday, daily Victorian cases reached a new record of 191. Andrews announced the whole of metropolitan Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire would re-enter lockdown, starting at the same time as the border closure.
"We can control things on our side of the border, we can't control things on that side of the border," she said. A government source adds that Wednesday's "fire and brimstone" rhetoric from Berejiklian was in part aimed at slapping NSW back into the reality that it was on the precipice of another outbreak.
Infectious diseases expert Professor Mary-Louise McLaws says Berejiklian may have changed her rhetoric because Victorian authorities had been able to track the source of most of the cases and outbreaks. Nevertheless on Friday, with 288 cases confirmed in Victoria and two "troubling" cases of community transmission detected in NSW, including one man who had driven his caravan from Melbourne to a caravan park in the Sutherland Shire tested positive, Hazzard said "everything is on the table" when it came to stopping the spread of COVID-19.
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