Confusion always precedes greater understanding, and a state of clarity is only achieved when we ask the right questions.

Overwhelmingly up to now, Queenslanders have gone with the flow and followed the government covid-19 measures, but after more than two years of giving it a go, the promise of returning to normal continues to shift.

 

In a regional and tourism-focussed region like Far North Queensland, we have suffered greatly from border closures and then forced to segregate members of our own community.

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Is the government right to interfere with our lives to this extent?  Is it fair and reasonable to place additional burdens on struggling small businesses to enforce mandates, including the additional administrative requirements that go with this?

 

There are still lots of unanswered questions and many in the community are concerned about the future. 

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We are being told by the government and the media that the only way out is to get "vaccinated". However, our international borders have been closed to unvaccinated people, and Delta and now Omicron variants have still landed on our shores. How could this happen, you might ask. This is just one of many demonstrations that these injections have failed to offer the protections promised.

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In light of this, why are we being expected to enforce locking out parts of our community and placing strain on large sections of society?

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What we are being told in the media is not stacking up, because even those fully vaccinated can catch and spread the virus, meaning they too are subjected to the same isolation measures, even if they are just a close contact. Nothing has changed and many believe that the solution being introduced now, to progressively segregate members of our community, is seriously flawed. It was fine when borders were open previously, so why now?

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Good relationships are built on trust. Trust is formed through honesty, morality, authenticity, integrity and transparency. Where hesitancy exists, it would seem natural to address this through building trust. Instead, our government has used threats, force and punishment in their attempts to achieve their goal.

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Alienation and retribution do not address hesitancy, but instead create mistrust, hostility and isolation. This is not a relationship built on trust, but rather on abuse.

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Blanket measures are the instruments of an ideology and an ideology that uses mass formation to achieve its goals is totalitarianism.

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Our government is there to lead us, not to control and dominate, yet instead of listening to valid concerns and using full transparency and cooperation, which is a democratic process, they have opted to use force.

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This system of control and force has been applied in this country before, on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people, where government laws, policies and practices said to “protect” their children, saw the forced removal of generations of children from their families and communities.

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This level of hostility and abuse has broken trust to such a degree that our First Nations people have remained largely estranged since. They know more than most what abuse, mistreatment and cruelty looks like, and most see right through the veil of deception these covid measures present, for what is being done today to all Australians, echoes their past. We should be paying attention and acting to confront this now.

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Our First Nations people can teach much in this moment, in what is possibly the greatest opportunity for understanding, reconciliation and building trust and unification.

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Unique to the rest of a highly urbanised Australia, more than half of Queensland's population live outside the greater area of Brisbane. Around one third are migrants, or children of migrants, with an increasing number of new settlers from South-East Asia, and many indigenous communities throughout our beautiful State. 

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Our uniqueness has vested in us a fiercely independent mindset, and is the reason Queensland has always been the swing state of Australia; often holding the balance of power, showing that when we work together, we are a force to be reckoned with. 

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We watched in horror at the treatment of Victorians as they endured the world's longest lockdowns. Their desperation to avoid further restrictions has turned the "vaccine" into an instrument of division, destroying relationships and changing the very fabric of their society. here, with our fellow South-East Queenslanders displaced at the border, with entire families having to seek asylum elsewhere - some in tents - after being locked out of their own State, the situation is neither reasonable nor humane.

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This is not what we want for our future. If you want to be an agent for change and help stop this un-Australian behaviour, we must unite now and let our collective voices be heard and remind our government that it’s we the people who get to choose how to live our lives, it's we who hold the balance of power and we will not accept this intrusion any longer.