Commenting on the story: Richardson: Marshall’s ‘roadmap’ raises as many questions as it answers

It’s all very well to have a so called roadmap out with 80 or 90 per cent of adults double vaccinated. However, what about children under 12 – especially those with pre-existing respiratory problems.

How many of our vulnerable children will be hospitalised or even die once we open our borders? Where is our duty of care to those who have no voice in this debate? Parents keep asking this question and no one is answering.

Do we as adults say, it’s ok, we are vaccinated, so all should go well? When are we going to get an answer to this question? – Christine Williams

Tom rightly points out so many confusing things about this roadmap, but for me the worst is the requirement to quarantine if you’re coming from an LGA that’s less than 80% vaccinated.

The City of Melbourne is currently at 74.1% single dose, 62.7% fully vaccinated—on paper, at least. Marshall was quoted as saying he expects all LGAs will hit 80% by the 23rd, but I just can’t see that happening. I’m not sure it’ll ever happen, since the percentages are based on 2019 population numbers, which include students and migrants that aren’t in the country this year, and city workers that have migrated out to the suburbs. The City of Sydney is in a similar situation.

Even if you’re not travelling to or from the inner city itself, how do you get around Melbourne and Sydney’s hub-and-spoke public transport networks without passing through the inner city and subjecting yourself to quarantine? The Melbourne SkyBus and the Sydney airport train both go more or less directly to the city, so it’d be a challenge to even get out of the airport without passing through a LGA that triggers the quarantine requirement!

Even besides that, why even have per-LGA restrictions? Lockdowns on the east coast have lifted, and locals are back to moving between LGAs regularly anyway—there’s no containment happening at the LGA level, so it all seems a bit pointless.

As a recent Melburnian who moved from Adelaide in June and hasn’t seen her Adelaidean girlfriend in six months, I was desperately hoping for something to look forward to out of Tuesday’s announcement, but all I’ve got is more uncertainty.

To borrow from the Twitter lexicon, it looks like on the 23rd, the South Australian borders are clopen. – Leigh Brenecki

It is still not clear if Australian international travellers who are vaccinated need to isolate at home or in hotel quarantine.

We need to know this as we would like our daughter who we have not seen for two years to come to SA at Christmas. I feel that this is a government who are unclear, lack transparency and compassion  in their decision making. – Clare Economides

As a South Australian still stuck in London waiting to be allowed to come home without hotel quarantine, I would also like more clarity around the proposal for seven days quarantine and restrictions on the number of international arrivals.

Will the current cap of 265 arrivals per week be increased? If so, will that be by permitting vaccinated travellers to quarantine at home? And in that case, will apartment dwellers be permitted to use their homes for quarantine?

Only freestanding homes were accepted for quarantine during the trial of home quarantine, which seems unnecessarily restrictive – what is the difference in practical terms between an apartment and a hotel room? Apartments have windows that open, and can be stocked with a week’s food in advance, so that no deliveries are required, making them much safer than hotels. These questions needs answering so stranded South Australians can know what the roadmap means for them. – Susan Churchman

A considered and balanced response from our state’s Covid Response leadership at this time, given the many variables and permutations that may present themselves moving forward, and the flexibility that may be required to manage these.

I am particularly pleased to see our leaders not following the example of leadership in UK, US and other countries where rigid ‘roadmaps’ have been announced early, and bound leaders to a course of action, regardless of subsequent circumstances. The result in the UK of binding political leaders to a single roadmap, come hell or high water, has been a disaster.

It seems the media really struggle with the dynamic management approach required by this pandemic, and want to dilute down to rigid, simple, lowest common denominators so that they can communicate and commentate. I do not share its anxiety. – James Sage

If there is one thing I learnt in 15 years of law-making in State Parliament, it’s how often rules can create unintended consequences or illogical outcomes.

One unfairness that is likely to result from the conditions attached to the opening of our State’s border to NSW and Victoria is in relation to locally dodgy population data. Some Local Government Areas have seen a major exodus of residents and will find it almost impossible to reach 90 percent vaccination. Leaving aside the small number of die-hard (I hope they don’t) anti-vaxers, some inner suburban areas in Sydney and Melbourne have seen their populations drastically shrunk by the absence of overseas and domestic students.

Overseas students are still overseas and with classes online, many domestic students are also back with Mum and Dad or living in cheaper digs well away from campus. Add to this those universities with large and now empty residential colleges and the LGA population data no longer reflects reality.  That means ongoing testing and isolation if residents of those areas want to come to SA for Christmas, even if the true rate of vaccination where they live is over 90%.

Hopefully some allowance will be made for places where official population records no longer reflect reality. – Mark Parnell