IT may be winning Annastacia Palaszczuk votes in the run up to to October 31 election, but Queensland's hardline COVID-19 restrictions are causing chaos for the cross-border Goondiwindi community.
Goondiwindi Acting Mayor Rob Mackenzie said residents on the NSW side of the NSW-Queensland border had been cut off from healthcare, groceries and other essential services by the Queensland Government's 'border bubble'.
And while schoolchildren have been granted permission to cross the border to attend school, teachers have not been given an exemption and some schools have been left to operate without their teachers.
Cr Mackenzie has written to Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young asking that the North Star, Croppa Creek and Yallaroi communities be allowed into the 'border zone', and permitted to cross the Queensland border.
There have been no reported cases of COVID-19 in the Goondiwindi region or in the wider community on either side of the border.
"We fully understand the need to keep people safe," Cr Mackenzie said.
"However, we cannot have the situation we have now where some teachers cannot get to school to teach our children, and businesses already hit hard by six years of drought have now had their client base cut off.
"There has to be a more practical and common sense solution that respects the way border communities actually operate, whether it be extending the bubble to include whole Local Government Areas, adding more postcodes, or extending the exemption criteria for all genuine border residents."
