THE PM MUST END BORDER CLOSURES

I don’t need a polling company to tell me that the community mood surrounding Covid-19 has changed.

Vaccinated Australians are rightly starting to ask: where are my rights?

Businesses across the country, small and large, are rightly starting to say: it’s time to live with Covid, not pursue some mystical elimination plan.

And Gold Coasters, who I care most about, are seriously starting to question the continued impost on their lives – and livelihoods – through emotionally and financially draining border closures.

The community’s mood is shifting fast. The overwhelming sentiment today is: once we hit 80 plus per cent vaccination of the eligible population (aged 16+) nationally, any state leader daring to try to pull on a border closure will be faced with huge resistance. I’d even suggest absolute defiance as people have had enough.

Aussies can smell the politics behind border closures and the current political tit-fortat over national plans and national targets is only confirming their suspicions.

The public won’t forget, or forgive, any leader using border closures as a political lever once we hit 80-plus per cent.

This gives the Prime

Minister one shot at being reelected in 2022. To do that, he needs to constitutionally end any opportunity for a state leader to close borders once we hit the 80 plus per cent target.

The PM must effectively open the entire country up, knowing the overwhelming majority of people who will get Covid will be the unvaccinated population.

Unvaccinated Aussies made that choice, just as I chose to be vaccinated.

Let’s be clear, I don’t want anyone to get Covid-19 but the statistics show around 90 per cent of people ending up in ICU have not been fully vaccinated.

The PM needs to dispel the critics and remind everyone that we are at war with a global enemy. When war was declared by PM Menzies in 1939, the entire population rallied together. Our fearless Anzacs have fought across the globe to protect our nation, not to protect individual states.

Whatever weapons the PM needs to draw on, including legal ones – do it.

In my humble opinion, when we reach the 80 percentage target, I believe the federal government will then have good reason to be able to rely on section 92 of the Constitution to ensure all Australians can exercise their right to freely travel throughout Australia, including across state and territory boundaries.

The message I hear on the streets is compelling – the national plan set the target and Aussies are rolling up their sleeves in droves to meet it by November.

Vaccinated Aussies rightly want the freedom to move about not only this country but internationally. Their fellow unvaccinated Aussies also have rights and sadly, for some, it’ll be an ICU bed or ventilator.

Let’s be clear: this Covid pandemic is the disease of the unvaccinated. Everyone knows the risk.

For critics who may say I should “stay in my lane”, just remember that freedom of speech is the right of every Aussie.

Believing in a cause and having the courage to speak one’s mind is far more honourable than staying silent.