Wednesday, 23 December 2020, 6:23 pm
Australia has various advantages as an island continent.
It is monumental and only accessible in the most impractical
ways. It is discouragingly far and almost impossible to
invade without a huge investment of personnel and material.
The decision to place convicts on the island by the British
was audaciously cruel and illogical, setting a precedent for
future decisions by Australian governments to send
undesirables to distant, inaccessible outposts, at
cost.
But distance has not spared the country from the
COVID-19 pandemic. Assisted by human error and misjudgement,
quarantine defences were breached as they will no doubt
continue to be. In Victoria, it proved most costly, leading