It’s a failure to prepare

While I can understand the anger at both China and the airlines/cruise lines for bringing COVID-19 to Australia, suing them (Ruth, CP, 1/4) is unlikely to achieve anything beyond keeping lawyers in pointless employment. None of them had a legal responsibility to warn us about what was happening in Wuhan. The virus is here because of multiple failures of Australia’s quarantine barrier — a Commonwealth responsibility since 1901.

We should recognise the sterling efforts by both State and Federal governments to contain this virus once it got here. But it is increasingly clear that the Federal Government’s view that border security meant stopping boat people caused them to pay little attention to the threat of viral pandemics from overseas. The warnings provided by the SARS and MERS epidemics should have been heeded — we should have had more masks, temperature guns, and ventilators; a plan to immediately put all new arrivals into isolation; and an intensive and clear public information campaign.

Sean McGinn, Clifton Beach 1958: Last load of bitumen on Pacific Highway between Sydney and

Brisbane is laid 18km south of Taree, NSW.

2005: Pope John Paul II, (above) who led the Catholic Church for 26 years, dies in his Vatican apartment.

2007: A tsunami up to five metres high washes villages away following an underwater earthquake in the Solomon Islands.

2009: The world’s financial powers pledge more than $1 trillion for emergency loans to combat spreading economic chaos.

2019: A 61-year-old woman gives birth to her own granddaughter in the United States after serving as a surrogate for her son and his husband.