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'I thought there would be more compassion': battling the bureaucratic maze of Covid-19 border restrictions

<span>Photograph: David Gray/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: David Gray/Getty Images

When Harry Halstead’s father died on Monday last week, the 26-year-old immediately applied for a permit to travel from Melbourne to New South Wales to care for his grieving mother.

Under the permit rules, exemptions could be granted for people caring for family members in “significant need”. Halstead arranged for a letter from his mother’s doctor and produced a document explaining he would self-isolate at a granny flat on his family’s southern highlands property upon his return.

Then, on the Wednesday, the NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, announced tighter restrictions on border movement. The “significant need” clause was removed, and exemptions for compassionate grounds were limited to funerals and caring for family members in ‘their last days of life’.

Halstead immediately called Service NSW, the agency responsible for the border scheme, and was told it was unlikely his application would be affected.

“They said ‘You’ll still be able to get in because of the ‘significant need’ thing,” he told the Guardian.

“They caveated that by saying they hadn’t received official guidance yet, so I guess they didn’t know what they were talking about, but their interpretation was that given the extreme circumstances I’d still be able to come in – I’d just have to travel through Sydney airport.”

Related: 'A nation divided': how Covid border restrictions have intensified Australian state rivalries

The next day, though, he was told otherwise. He would no longer be eligible to enter NSW on compassionate grounds, other than to attend his father’s funeral.

“It’s incredibly frustrating, and I just don’t think it’s right,” he said.

“It’s quite demoralising. There’s the isolation of Australia basically shutting out Victoria and Melbourne, working from home, and then another layer of anxiety wanting to be there to support my mum through this.

“I’m sure there are other people in my circumstances and I appreciate how extreme everything is at the moment but I’ve just always believed that when things get hard governments are there to help us. Governments are big institutions, but on a human level I thought there would be more compassion or a bit more understanding.”

Halstead is not alone. Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, border closures are now in operation across Australia for the first time since the first world war. The steps taken to stop the spread of the Victorian outbreak across state lines have caught thousands of people in a bureaucratic maze with a convoluted and ever-shifting rulebook.

The NSW health department did not respond to questions about the specifics of Halstead’s case, but said the decision to further limit the exemptions had been taken to “protect the wider NSW community from the escalating Covid-19 situation in Victoria”.

“NSW Health has a rigorous process for considering applications for compassionate
permits. This includes an assessment of the risk to the community, the risk to carers of those in palliative care, the ability of others to provide care and the ability of a person from Victoria to adequately self-isolate.”

The government was also unable to say how many border permit exemptions had been granted, or refused, throughout the border closure. While it said that “in the majority of cases” those who are eligible for a permit will receive theirs “immediately” in the case of exemptions, applications were considered “on a case-by-case basis”.

Much of the pain has been felt on the borders, in communities where state lines have, until now, been largely irrelevant. This week, the Albury Wodonga Health chief executive, Michael Kalimnios, raised the alarm about a shortage of doctors in Albury’s only emergency department.

We’re ignored by Victoria and unwanted by South Australia, that’s how it feels

Toni Domaschenz, West Wimmera Advocate

Albury hospital, on the NSW side of the border, relies heavily on locum doctors who travelled up from Melbourne and usually worked on a six-week rotation. With that resource gone, the hospital was unable to properly staff the only emergency department in the twin towns.

“This is the sort of stuff that gets in the way of delivering good health care,” Kalimnios said at a press conference.

By Friday, the Guardian understands the hospital had been able to secure two locum doctors, including one from Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred hospital, to fill the shortage for the next five to seven days. But, a source said, “we’re not out of the woods yet”.

On the border between South Australia and Victoria, remote towns have also found themselves caught in a bureaucratic maelstrom.

This week, the SA premier, Steven Marshall, announced harsher border restrictions, meaning people in western Victoria who previously had permits to enter the state for a host of reasons including employment, education, and obtaining things such as food, petrol or medical supplies, must reapply under other essential traveller categories.

Related: Australia’s state by state coronavirus lockdown rules and restrictions explained

Toni Domaschenz, who owns and edits the West Wimmera Advocate, a community paper that serves the small townships and rural farming communities that dot far-west Victoria, says the people in the state’s far west feel betrayed.

“We’re ignored by Victoria and unwanted by South Australia, that’s how it feels,” she said.

Domaschenz, who lives in the tiny town of Edenhope, said many people in that part of the state did not necessarily feel like Victorians. Despite living in Victoria, Domaschenz, for example, has played representative field hockey for SA.

The West Wimmera Advocate is printed in the SA border town of Naracoorte. Each Wednesday, Domaschenz’s husband drives to the town to pick it up, delivering it at newsagents and customers along the way. When Marshall introduced the tougher border closure, she made an emotional post on the newspaper’s Facebook page explaining it may not be possible to continue operating.

“We’re not Rupert Murdoch, we’re not a big corporation. Things have already been extremely tough, we’ve had no advertising, and it’s certainly not a commercial decision keeping us open, but this just made it harder. I’ve felt so traumatised. We all have, for months.”