About a month ago, the NSW government decided to close the border between NSW and Victoria, to help stop the flow of COVID-19 from Victoria to NSW. Disturbingly, this has been a popular move in some quarters, with some calls to extend the border closure. Already this has been devastating to border communities, with an estimated 5,000 – 10,000* people unable to cross the border to work in the Albury-Wodonga region alone, even if their workplace remains open.

(* All my estimates are based on spatial analysis using 2016 census data, including meshblock populations and SA2 (Statistical Area 2) tabulations of Place of Work and Place of Residence. Because the data is 4 years old, the numbers are likely an underestimate.)

There has been a significant second wave of COVID-19 cases in Melbourne, with some spread to parts of regional Victoria. In a bid to stop this spreading to NSW, the NSW government announced the border would be closed, but that residents of border towns would be able to move freely within their community. The border between the states is the Murray River, which functionally, means nothing – Wodonga and Albury are neighbouring suburbs of a single community, on either side of a river. We have never had any reason to consider whether our home, work, school, grandparents, doctor, dentist, hairdresser, or friends are on one side of the river or the other. So to suddenly find an invisible, but quite solid, wall between us and them is huge.

So, this closure was a bit of a pain, but we were assured we could still go about our daily lives, so we were on board, on the whole. Stop long-distance travellers, let the local community continue to function. But then, after a couple of weeks, those in charge realised the workload was just too high – unsurprising with about 20,000 people needing or wanting to travel between Albury and Wodonga alone on a daily basis.

The solution was to tighten up the border, with fewer reasons to travel, and to shrink the border zone. This had a devastating effect on the community surrounding Wodonga, with over 2,000 workers suddenly barred from work – even though their workplace remained open, and even if they cannot work from home (except a very small number of critical workers). Oh, and no JobKeeper either, because the workplace is open as normal. Was this tighter border to further curb the spread of COVID-19? The people who are now prevented from going to Albury are all from communities with zero COVID-19 cases, and nowhere near any hot spots. So no, it seems as though the sole reason was to reduce the headache of checking 20,000 people a day.

There are individuals in the border regions (Stage 3, zero community spread) who are disproportionately affected by the border closure – their reality is a far harsher lockdown than Melbourne (Stage 4, relatively high community spread). In Melbourne, you are still permitted to see your intimate partner. If you live on the wrong side of the river here, you can’t – there’s no permit for that. In Melbourne you can shop at your closest supermarket – if you live in Bethanga, even though your closest populated centre is just across the lake – there’s no permit for that. You’ve got to go 30km out of your way. In the rest of Victoria, if you have bought a house in the next suburb over, you can move into it. If you have sold your house in Wodonga, but not yet moved into the one you have already bought in Albury, then you are homeless, because there’s no permit for that. If your horse is injured and the only equine vet within 50km is across the river, you guessed it, there’s no permit for that. If you want to keep training at your sport – the one that is still open, and all your peers are still doing, but the training happens to be across the river – there’s no permit for that. If you want to go on your uni placement in Wodonga, well, you can do that, but to get home afterwards you will have to drive to Melbourne, fly to Sydney, quarantine at your own expense for 14 days, then drive to your home 30km north of Wodonga. I wish I was joking.

But also, the permit system is incredibly difficult to navigate. The rules change every few days. Permits that people thought were valid turn out to have been revoked with no notice (did you hear about the region’s two infectious disease specialists who got turned around at the checkpoint on Friday and told to try again on Monday? Again, not joking. I’ve also heard of a cancer patient who was denied access to cross for cancer treatment). From one day to the next I’m not sure whether my kids can go to school (we live in Victoria, school is in NSW). If you can get through, it’s time-consuming, demoralising, and anxiety-producing. And if you can’t, it’s isolating, bewildering, soul-destroying and incredibly harmful to mental health. The whole thing is an emotional rollercoaster, and people are breaking.

And then there’s the extra workload! I’m not talking about the border guards (although I’m sure they’re mightily sick of it by now), but just our school principal trying to make sure all his students can attend school – endless lobbying, documentation for permits, updating us each time something changes. Multiply that by all the schools, all the workplaces in NSW that have students and staff from Victoria. And oh my goodness, just thinking of the sheer number of hours wasted in working out the rules, updating the rules, policing the rules, fixing all the stuff-ups – can we see a balance sheet please of how much this exercise has cost vs how many cases of COVID-19 it has stopped?

I am all for measures to reduce the movement of people. I can even accept that many regional Victorian communities, with zero cases of COVID-19 ever, are in stage 3 restrictions. It doesn’t feel particularly fair, but at least the whole community is in the same boat. If a business is forced to shut, its employees can access JobKeeper. All students in Victorian schools can access remote learning.

In contrast, on the border, the workplaces and schools that people are trying to get to are still open. There is no remote learning for my kids if they are denied border passes. We don’t want to go anywhere in NSW, except our workplaces (if we can’t work from home) and schools. We’re not trying to escape Victoria or its lockdown. We certainly don’t want to go to Melbourne (not now – we’ll be back when it’s safe!).

We don’t want a free pass. We just want to function in our local community, while staying home as much as possible. Yes, we know that there could be COVID-19 out there, but then all other communities with zero cases should be put under the same restrictions as us. Yet Sydney, with scores of active cases, still has nightclubs operating!

I would argue that with Melbourne in Stage 4 lockdown, there should be no need for the border to be shut. No Melburnians should be coming within 300km of the border. The rest of Victoria also shouldn’t be travelling under Stage 3. So the only people who want to cross are people like truck drivers (they are waved through the checkpoints anyway) and locals. And therefore the only people getting stopped are locals. Trying to get from one COVID-free suburb to another COVID-free suburb. If NSW citizens also stopped travelling unnecessarily, then there would be no reason at all to have a closed border.

But for argument’s sake, say we do have to have a final line of defence. Well for goodness sakes, why on earth would you put that through the middle of a community of 100,000 people? And then be surprised that 20,000 of them routinely cross on any given day? (In fact, when this was first suggested, we laughed – what a ridiculous idea! – that would never work – and it hasn’t.) If the checkpoints were, say, just north of Albury, then the Albury-Wodonga community could continue to function, and instead of 20,000 people wanting to pass the checkpoint, you’d maybe have a few thousand – much more manageable – you could even let them go to work! Or even daily life.

But, then there’s nothing stopping someone from Melbourne driving to Albury for a burger! Well, there is. That’s illegal at the moment under public health orders. Are you saying it was ok for this person to have their burger in Wodonga, but we must keep Albury safe? There are plenty of things that are illegal, but we don’t check every single person – drink driving for example. We have blitzes, spot checks and hefty fines. We could do the same here.

I’ve created a couple of maps to illustrate this. The first map shows the proportion of working population in each SA2 (roughly suburb) who cannot work or who need to apply for a permit (not guaranteed) to go to work. The second map shows the same proportion of the people who cannot go to work in any circumstances. This data is based on the 2016 census data for Place of Work. I’ve corrected for population within the “border zone” for SA2s that cross the border zone. The border zone is as close I could get using meshblocks as the unit building blocks. There will be a small number of critical workers who are not accounted for, but this is a very small fraction of the working population.

In most of the region surrounding Albury-Wodonga (i.e. outside the border zone), at least 20% of the population is affected. Again, despite living in COVID-free communities. At least 3,500 people cannot cross the border despite working across the river, with another 10,500 requiring permits, if they can get them. And this is only workers – then there’s the school children, the people from outside the border zone needing medical treatment, etc. – so the true number impacted is likely much higher.

I hope you understand a bit more about what my community is going through. I haven’t seen any analysis like this yet, of exactly how many people are impacted, so I thought this could be useful. If you find this interesting, please share!

(disclaimer: this post is my personal opinion but is informed by my work in spatial analysis)