It also appears that Father Brendan has an aversion to public outcry. So I will remind him and his followers of some times where public protest wasn't ill-timed, it was necessary to democracy: In 1854, miners in Ballarat rebelled against an authoritarian and corrupt British system. Father Brendan may want to explain how a quieter method could have brought about change.

At the end of the 19th century, women took to the streets, protested, petitioned, lobbied for the right to vote. Men told them that most women didn't want to vote, or were not intelligent enough to. It was only in 1967 that Aborigines were given citizenship rights in Australia. This was after decades of protests, petitions, lobbying, and removing legislation which destroyed Aboriginal families and multi-generational dispossession. Even now, though, we have not Closed the Gap.

So when Father Brendan Lee says "now is not the time for revolution and pulling down statues" and "creating upheaval," he ignores the fact that the upheaval was already present, and that the death of yet another man was the catalyst for America to look at its history, and correct it.

COVID aside, I remind Father Brendan of the decades racial problems of America: "A riot is the language of the unheard" - Martin Luther King Jr.

While there have been many stories concerning idiots attempting to breach the border closure, it appears that many of them are 'locals'.

This raises a question that doesn't seem to be getting any attention. How many people from Melbourne are actually being turned back at the Victorian-NSW border?

Further, how many non local commercial/essential vehicles are actually crossing the border legally, in other words is the closure actually effective?

So on the one hand, one has to assume some number of people (not counting border residents) are being turned back, while many thousands of trucks are passing through the border without even a COVID-19 test being conducted. How does that work?

It would be particularly tragic if border residents are having their lives disrupted and their livelihoods threatened due to restrictions that are totally ineffective.

If that is the case then, surely the NSW government must be held accountable!

Your headline 'Not all Border residents eligible for extra mental health support' worries me. Do you poor sods, living in a wonderful place in a great country, really need mental health support?

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