A memorable line from Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 comes when lead flight director Gene Kranz learns that the CO2 scrubbers for the Command and Lunar modules use different-shaped cartridges. “Tell me this isn’t a government operation,” he mutters in exasperation.
The Australian and New Zealand responses to the Wuhan pandemic have been plagued with such “government operations”.
But, for pure, Kafka-esque bureacucratic pettifogging, it’s hard to go lower than one Victorian sheep farmer’s experience.
So today we telephoned Service NSW to enquire about getting a permit to enter NSW to take our sheep from our address which is a few hundred meters out of the border zone, to Corowa sheep yards, which is over the river and in the border zone. What ensued has left a very bitter taste in my mouth.
The Corowa sheep yards are literally over the border from Victoria: less than a minute’s drive from the southern bank of the Murray river. But, so far as NSW bureacrats are concerned, it may as well be half a continent away.
It went as follows…
Us: “We are sheep producers and need a permit to take sheep to Corowa Sheep Market.”
NSW: “your address is outside the zone, you will need to enter the state via Sydney Airport.”
Us: “We are farmers on the border and you want us to take a load of 40 lambs by plane to Corowa?”
NSW: “Yes.”
Where, exactly, the farmer is leaving from Victoria is not specified. “Drive six hours to Melbourne” is mentioned, but that seems unlikely. To drive six hours to Melbourne from anywhere in Victoria would place them in the remotest corner of the Big Desert national park area. Which is also six hours drive from Corowa. I’ll grant them the leeway of confusing it with the drive time from Sydney to Corowa (roughly six hours, as it happens).
Us: “You want us to put 40 sheep on a flight from Melbourne to Sydney and then transport them from there to Corowa Sheep Market on the border.”
NSW: “Yes.”
I shit you not, this is for real.
Tell me this isn’t a government operation, indeed.
While we’re quoting Gene Kranz, it seems pertinent to quote another of his sayings, which has become known as the Kranz Dictum: “tough and competent”.
The numpties running lockdowns and quarantines have got the first part in spades; the second, competence, is as far away from their thinking as the Moon.
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