Victorian residents stranded in New South Wales when the state government shut the border and tightened restrictions are furious over its decision to not issue a public apology or offer compensation.
Rex Grady and his wife Trish found themselves trapped in Albury for more than a month when the NSW-Victoria border closed during the height of the pandemic last year.
The couple had been in Yamba on the NSW North Coast when the government warned Victorians to return home or risk being locked out.
The journey would have taken them almost 19 hours to reach their home in Port Fairy in central west Victoria, which the retired couple deemed impossible.
They travelled as fast as they could safely, covering about 600 kilometres a day over a few days to reach the border.
"We had to get back to the border to have a chance of crossing," Mr Grady said.
"We [got to] Albury and then it all went to hell basically."
They had applied for several permits and exemptions to no avail before finding refuge at a caravan park in Lavington.
"There were people in the caravan park that literally lived an hour across the river. They could have got in the car, driven home, not seen anyone, and isolated. It wasn't going to do any harm to anybody.
"No-one would look at the common sense of it; that was the frustrating part," he said.
Investigation into scheme
In September last year, the Victorian Ombudsman launched an investigation into COVID-19-related travel permits and exemptions.
It revealed that of the 33,252 exemption applications received by the Department of Health between July 9 and September 14, 2021, only eight per cent were granted.
In her findings, Ombudsman Deborah Glass did not criticise the government's decision to close the border but labelled the exemption process "unjust" and "inhumane".
She recommended that the government publicly apologise and consider compensating those affected.
This week the Andrews government said it would not do either.
"An apology would be really nice," Mr Grady said.
"When you get something as badly wrong as the government got that, you'd think it wouldn't hurt to say look this will never happen again we went down the wrong path."
He said he had not calculated how much he was out of pocket but there were daily costs from the caravan park hire fee to other expenses.
Businesses seek apology
Border businesses significantly impacted by the checkpoints are also calling for an apology.
The checkpoint was set up right on the doorstep of Carlos Saliba's pub making it impossible for customers to dine.
"Victorians could not access my business from Wodonga," he said.
"[It's] a pub that was licensed for 500 people. It thrives on functions and large volume; it's not like we can operate with 20 customers."
Mr Saliba had just opened the pub in 2019, but was unable to recover from the impacts of the pandemic and was forced to close his business.
"The overheads of running the business was more than enough to put us out of business.
"I was supposed to make over $1.2 million in turnover [that year]. I didn't even make $300,000."
Mr Saliba acknowledged the severity of COVID but said the experience has caused him a lot of stress and anxiety and he's disappointed the government has refused to issue an apology..
"If someone isn't willing to apologise it means they're not listening.
"[The government] owes a lot of people a lot of apologies, particularly the border people," he said.
"I'm Lebanese, I've lived my life with checkpoints. Usually, there are different nations fighting … but we are Australians; it's Albury Wodonga."
In a statement, a government spokesperson said it stood by its decision to close the borders but acknowledged the challenges it posed.
"As a part of the overall public health response to a once-in-100-year pandemic — the extreme risk zone border restrictions addressed a significant public health risk posed to all Victorians by incursions from NSW of people with the highly infectious Delta variant," the spokesperson said.
"The restrictions were necessary to protect all Victorians from risk – particularly as only 17 per cent of Victorians 16 years and older were fully vaccinated at the time NSW was declared an extreme risk zone.
"We did everything we could at the time to remind Victorians of the risk we were facing — but we also acknowledge that it was a very difficult time for many Victorians interstate."
