Victoria will close its borders to New South Wales from 11.59pm tomorrow. Victorian Acting premier Jacinta Allan announced the decision in a late afternoon press conference. People living in border communities in NSW and Victoria will be able to use their drivers’ license or ID as a permit to travel between the two states.
“I’m here to advise that from 11:59pm 1 January 2021, Victoria will close its borders to the entire state of NSW,” Ms Allan said.
“This is not an easy choice, closing borders [and] putting in place restrictions is never an easy choice to make, certainly not one we wanted to be making and announcing on a day that is supposed to be about celebrating. As we have seen throughout the course of 2020, this has been a difficult year, with many difficult decisions to make, as a consequence of a virus that causes great damage to the health and wellbeing of our community.
“Unfortunately virus doesn’t expire at midnight tonight and we have to remain vigilant, we have to do everything we possibly can to lock in the situation we have here in Victoria, keep ahead of where case numbers might be, especially in light of case numbers coming out of NSW and to protect the precious gains we have achieved over the course of 2020 here in Victoria.”
They say there will be more details about the system announced shortly.
