How do empathy and COVID coexist? With great difficulty, it seems

The case of Melbourne nurse Maddie Newton is a heartbreaking reminder of how law-breakers have the upper hand in the COVID-19 crisis. And unless they can be held to account (and exemptions to rules be kept for genuine cases, not footballers) calls by authorities for the rest of us to stay home and wear masks will be ignored more generally.

Just for a moment put yourself in the shoes of 26-year-old Newton. She’s a health professional; a nurse. She’s been vaccinated. And all she wants to do is return to Queensland to be with her seriously injured brother.

Her dad, who raised her and her siblings after her mother’s death a decade ago, died in a car accident last week. Her brother is listed as stable. And her place, she believes, is by his bedside.

She’s right.

So shouldn’t her vaccine be the ticket for an exemption to return home? Shouldn’t our public policy around COVID allow for carefully crafted exemptions based on empathy? And why has it taken until yesterday, and the intervention of the federal health minister and local Queensland MPs, for authorities to finally let her board a plane?

Ignore the headlines saying she’s been given a free pass. This “free pass” simply means she will go into hotel quarantine in Queensland, and authorities will nut out how she would see her brother before that ends if his condition worsens.

Be thankful for small mercies? Rubbish.

This comes in the same week that thousands of sports fans have packed football stadiums in the sunshine state to cheer their favourite teams, and a few days after chartered flights of footballers descended on Queensland to play their next few games.

It comes as Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk zipped off to Tokyo for a 45-minute presentation in a bid to clinch the 2032 Olympic Games.

It comes after revelations some business operators have travelled freely between Australia and other countries, such as Indonesia, while Australian families remain stuck abroad.

It comes after removalists have carried the virus across the New South Wales-Victorian border and from Sydney up to the top of the state, just below Coolangatta. And on the same day police announce that spot checks found 83 freight vehicles crossed into Queensland ar the weekend without appropriate paperwork — almost 30 of them had come from a hotspot!

Ask a Queenslander, anywhere, and they will have stories of friends who have “slipped in” via a back road for a funeral — or a party — or popped down to Byron Bay when they knew it was forbidden. Others have navigated back roads between Queensland and Melbourne, without being questioned.

So what message do the constant rule breaches send to Newton and everyone else who sticks to the letter of the law and navigates their heartbreak through a maze of unfair and discriminatory decisions? What would you do if denied entry to a state for your father’s funeral, your child’s life-threatening operation, or your mother’s final kiss?

Perhaps if Newton was married to a footballer she might have had a better chance? Or perhaps it would have paid to hitch a lift with a truck driver last weekend. 

The problem with decisions devoid of compassion is that, eventually, the unfairness is no longer tolerable. It won’t be acceptable that some are given leave passes and others not. Or that the risk-takers are rewarded more than those who toe the line.

And that will become a bigger challenge for Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Palaszczuk than a few isolated and distressing cases that should focus all of us.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt, who offered to take up Newton’s case at the weekend, has signalled that a nationwide approach to exemptions is being planned. It needs to move up his priority list.

Are the rules being broken too often? How do you see this playing out in the coming weeks and months? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au, and don’t forget to include your full name if you’d like to be considered for publication.