Perin Davey (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to let the chamber know that the Isolated Children's Parents Association and the Australian Boarding Schools Association have commenced a social media campaign hashtag #nobordersforboarders. They've been driven to do so by the farcical and inconsistent approach to border restrictions and the significant impacts they are having on the mental health and wellbeing of our students from some of our most remote and regional locations. These students are being kept virtual prisoners by these border restrictions and the dogmatic refusal to show common sense and empathy for their situation. We have the ridiculous situation where one school in Victoria, because of announcements by the Victorian Premier, had to close its regional campus, and students from New South Wales were told they had to fly back to Sydney to return home to isolate.

My office was inundated with calls. They were saying, 'Why would we make our children go into a COVID hotspot to fly as unaccompanied minors into another COVID hotspot and drive halfway across the state to return home to a COVID-free zone?' It made no sense to me, and it made no sense to these parents. Not one of these families has a problem with the need to self-isolate. In fact, in response to a survey by the Isolated Children's Parents' Association, they all said they could guarantee their children would isolate for the full 14 days. They are willing to follow the rules when the rules make sense. But it was the requirement to fly, which in some instance meant a two- to three-day logistical exercise, when picking up their kids directly would have meant a day trip.

I have to thank the New South Wales education minister, Sarah Mitchell, for helping me get some of these students home on a sterile bus via a more direct route through Albury. But I couldn't help all of them. Some parents, for whom Albury was just not an option, had to go to the expense of flying their children unaccompanied to Sydney to be picked up and driven across the state to isolate at home. But one family couldn't get their children home. Their boys, Barney and Charlie, in years 11 and 12, drive themselves the 900 kilometres to school at the beginning of term in their old farm ute and normally drive themselves the 900 kilometres home again. When the campus closed, the family applied for an exemption to allow the boys to drive, and they were refused. They were told to fly their boys unaccompanied to where the family would then have to drive 1,200 kilometres one way to pick them up, leaving the ute and the dog behind in Victoria.

At that point the family made the very difficult decision for the boys to stay on at the closed campus and remote school from their boarding house. Credit is due to the school for facilitating this and taking care of those boys, and they are doing a damn good job. But the boys can't go out, they can't leave campus, they can't go to school because the school is closed, and they can't go home. These boys have kept their chins up. Barney and Charlie, good on you. They're tough kids. You have to be when you live 150 kays west of Bourke, when you've been through years of drought and when you've seen the sacrifices your parents have made so that you can get a good education. These boys are tough. But when they heard that they couldn't go home for school holidays, it was too much. They are being sorely tested.

Barney and Charlie, I want you home, just like I want to help Victorian students who are at New South Wales boarding schools and are facing the reality of going home for holidays but then having to lose two weeks of their school term isolating on the way back. I want to help the students from northern New South Wales come home to their families from their Queensland boarding schools without having to fly back into Brisbane to quarantine and lose two weeks of the term in isolation. I want to help young Angus to go back to school in Adelaide from Far West New South Wales without having to isolate yet again with his mum, who had to leave the other kids on the farm and spend two weeks in a hotel with her son before he could start school at the beginning of this term. I want to help these kids get home for their holidays and see the improved conditions because we finally had a better season. I want them to see the tired relief on their parents' faces after the years of drought and I want them to be able to spend their holidays helping with the first harvest they've had in years, which is what they want to do.

Anyone who lives in these regions and anyone who knows these farmers knows that these kids see the stress and the strain that their families go through in tough times such as we've seen this year. They know how tough it is for their parents to send them away. Add to that the usual teenage angst and now tell them they can't go home for the foreseeable future. I can't stress to you enough the concern I have for the mental health and wellbeing of these kids, even though I know how strong they are.

This is not political. We have borders being closed by both sides of politics, but neither have produced credible evidence for this. I have asked the acting Chief Medical Officer, through the COVID select committee, on what medical basis it is better to advise families to undertake such a lengthy and potentially infectious round-trip when common sense would say that taking the most direct route from a COVID-free zone to another COVID-free zone would appear to be safer. And the answer? There is none. There is no medical advice to support the requirement to funnel people through hotspots.

I am told that border closures are very popular in the cities, and I get that. I understand that living in an area where there is community transition would make you nervous. The idea of a lockdown seems to make sense. But we are talking about families that live hundreds of kilometres away from any COVID infection and we are talking about kids that have been in schools which have the most stringent COVID-safe practices imaginable. The steps that these schools have taken to keep their students, their staff and their communities safe is to be commended and puts other sections of our society to shame. I commend the Australian Boarding Schools Association for the work they have done.

I fully support the #nobordersforboarders campaign, and I call on the states to develop a nationally consistent approach as soon as possible—before school holidays—to deal with regional and remote students who are being unreasonably isolated from their families due to border restrictions that are based on no sound medical advice. Do it for our children.