LettersCovid: the ugly truth is Australians stand divided on the pandemic
- Recent state elections show that metropolitan residents favour parties that support sealing borders, while rural voters are less enthused by harsh lockdowns
The ugly truth is that Australians are divided on the pandemic – along geographic and cultural lines.
State premiers in Western Australia and Queensland recently won landslide re-election victories on platforms comprising little more than the promise to seal state borders. Metropolitan electorates swung in favour of the incumbents, but the rural electorates showed their displeasure by swinging toward opposition candidates.
In one sad case last year, a pregnant mother in northern New South Wales lost her baby after being told it would take too long to get an exemption to access nearby Queensland hospitals, on the basis of the parochial declaration by the Queensland premier that Queensland hospitals were for Queenslanders (despite receiving federal funding), thus forcing a mother in need to travel the much greater distance to Sydney.
Barnaby Joyce’s comments did not “divide” Australians; they merely reflected the frustrations of the oft-overlooked demographic which lives outside the politically correct inner-cities.