OPINION: Why Australia needs to open up its borders?

It has been half a year since the Australian government closed the borders for basically everyone. Yes, immediate family members and de facto partners can apply for a travel exemption, but from what I saw, barely anyone gets it.

For comparison, Europeans can travel almost everywhere they want. ‘They have a lot more cases than Australia’ you may say, but why are we still counting the number of infections rather than fatalities, or just severe cases?

No matter what we believe in, these safety precautions were made for prevention of front-line healthcare service providers at overwhelming hospitals and ICU departments, as the virus spreads the most in a confined space. From what I have gathered, most hospitals around the world (and especially in Australia) have been emptier than ever.

After seeing Tigerair shutting its doors after 13 years of being in business, something changed in me.

Not only are travel businesses in danger, but so are the Australian citizens whose health and safety are always discussed.

This shutdown is also a threat to so many things connected to it, such as the real estate, hospitality, tourism and transport industry, as well as the Australian mental health and wellbeing.

The property market and tertiary education

Since international students are not allowed to enter the country, property markets are suffering significant losses from the lack of demand. Do not let me start about how much money universities are losing due to this situation.

While it is undoubtedly unfair that international students are seen as cash bearers, they are, in a way, pillars of Australian tertiary education. Without them, Australia’s A$3 billion business is hurting. The current situation may even impact young Aussie students if universities come under so much pressure and raise fees for everyone.

Moreover, travel and tourism businesses are expected to lose about A$55 billion in total this year. Due to closed interstate travel, Australia is yet to lose around A$23.2 billion, while international borders that are still shut will most likely cause a loss of A$31.4 billion. And that is the travel industry only. Do closed borders sound like a good idea? Opinions might have been different in case someone from the family lost a job at Tigerair or Qantas.

Democracy and freedom

Probably one of the most frightening things I have gathered after having several discussions with older Australian generations is, they do not think these measures are blown out of proportion.

Most of them would agree that health needs to be restored to help boost the economy. While that may be true, are we seriously experiencing consequences as severe on the Australian continent, or are the media so powerful that they completely changed our perspective about this virus?

Many of those same people would often use the argument ‘where is your degree in immunology’ after asking the same question. At the same time, they would not have one themselves but would think their opinion is superior to anyone else’s.

As a journalist and a human being whose closest family did contract COVID-19, I wonder if we would know of this disease if we turned off our TVs and shut down the Internet – something to think about, anyway.

Moreover, people here do not seem very fussed about travel restrictions because Australia is so far from other nations. Most people were not travelling as much as someone from Europe did. I guess you cannot travel to Amsterdam for a weekend getaway. Still, would not self-isolation while working from home be sufficient if the COVID tests are not adequate?

What I tried to stress at this point is that Australia is the only democracy in the world that forbade its citizens of any leisure travel (unless it was domestic travel). However, many would be happy to take the risk and self-isolate post-arrival. Not everyone wants to travel to eat pizza in Verona, but to see their overseas families and attend weddings or even funerals of their closest members, which are now everything but allowed.

Mental health and wellbeing

Finally, many have suffered severe mental health consequences due to these travel restrictions. It is heartbreaking to read so many stories from people that got strained overseas while their wives were giving birth in Australia and still have not met their children six months later.

So many people died without saying their last goodbye to their loved ones because their sons and daughters did not get a piece of paper that clears them out for leaving the country for a funeral. Even after attaching more than sufficient evidence regarding the disease, the answer was still no in most of the cases. Imagine that pain.

Suffering from any mild disease (even just a cold), became a sign of walking away from a person. Before the pandemic occurred, it was normal when people coughed or blew their nose on public transport or sneezed several times due to allergies or hay fever. In nowadays world, they are stigmatised as potential coronavirus bearers and have been urged to stay away from everyone else. After all, humans are still social creatures, and in need of close contact, so it probably does not feel comfortable to be left out because of a runny nose.

It seems to be okay to sit but not stand in the bar (the virus prefers standing people?), affects gyms the most (but there were no significant gym clusters?) and most importantly, the virus seems to hate aeroplanes the most.

Well, hopefully, the government takes all things highlighted above into consideration and decides to introduce measures that would bring our lives back slowly. Or one could keep dreaming about it, we shall see.