Anxieties grow over loss of liberties in pandemic fight

I AM contemplating the implications associated with returning to Australia and what that means!

With no criminal convictions, no pending warrants, being hard working (which is what I am doing overseas), probably in the most vulnerable age group for COVID-19 and fiercely jealous of my rights as a citizen of Australia (or citizen of the world for that matter), I am displaying the classic symptoms of anxiety for the first time in my life.

It appears I can arrive directly into Brisbane (at this stage anyway) in 10 days’ time, which at least alleviates concerns about double-barrel quarantine by having to be quarantined in state of arrival (which was probably Melbourne), then flying or driving to my home on the Gold Coast, a place I have been away from for nearly two years aside from returning for a family funeral.

What am I anxious about?

I am anxious that I get put into some hotel that I would not normally book into, I am anxious about the meagre $90-a-day allowance if you have to buy hotelpriced food and use a hotel-priced laundry, I am anxious about the trouble I will get into having a cigarette, I am anxious about no opening windows (I suffer from a claustrophobic condition when I cannot get fresh air), I am anxious about no balcony.

But what I am most anxious about is having committed no crime, travelling from a place with better management of the COVID-19 virus (less cases, less deaths by far), that I lose my liberty and my rights to same.

After all, at my age I am responsible enough to self-isolate and at home I have at least a garden to play around in.

What I fear most though is my inability to “bite my tongue” when officialdom offers no rhyme nor reason for day-to-day decisions that affect my wellbeing and encroach upon my civil liberties to suit their “one-size-fits-all” policies. I am afraid that my complete dismay and even disgust of the incompetence of Australia’s response to COVID-19 will get me in trouble.

Don’t get me wrong, I am happy to isolate, one of the reasons I am returning is for my mother’s 90th birthday and she is in Adelaide and I will happily isolate in Adelaide before that event.

So please, don’t tell me that my liberty has been lost on the grounds that “I am a danger to public health” (very flimsy legal grounds to detain a person in breach of the constitution) and then treat me (all travellers) as lepers.

Judging by the cruise ship debacle and the escalating rate of infection in Australia, those domiciled in Australia are actually more likely to infect those travelling from where I am departing.

Scott Morrison, get a grip. You are supposed to be a leader, especially in times of catastrophic events. Your bushfire, flood and now health disasters do not a pretty picture paint.

As someone once said, if you “put barbed wire around the Ritz Carlton Hotel and were told you could not leave, it is not the surrounds and comfort that would bother you, it is simply one’s loss of freedom that would”.

Please get a better plan that actually assigns some responsibility to the returning Australian citizen and do not judge all on the actions of a few.

BARRY G CUMMINGS, GOLD COAST