Victorians originally from Queensland, who managed to escape the Sunshite state, often risking their lives in homemade air balloons and makeshift tunnels before traveling across the wastelands of New South Wales, have breathed a sigh of relief upon discovering they have a valid excuse to ignore pleas from elderly relatives remaining in Brisbane suburbia or the sweltering tropics of the far north.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has said today that when the state reopens it’s borders on July 10 Victorians, or anyone who has recently visited Victoria, will not be welcome. Fines of $4,000 will apply to false declarations at the border.

Nairb Peanut, born a plumber in Brisbane but who escaped the Bjelke-Petersen regime in 1984 in the back of a laundry truck, eventually making a new life as a gender-neutral neo-beat performance poet in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick, welcomed the announcement.

“Mum and dad are always hassling me to visit and I have to come up with ever-more outrageous excuses to avoid it. With my mum’s birthday coming up as well as a school reunion this couldn’t have come at a better time for me – I honestly am not allowed by law to enter the state, great!”

However, sources say the Victorian Government fears that the fact that the order covers native Queenslanders returning home means that they may receive a rush of cultural refugee claims.

“I can’t go home, and I can’t tell you how happy I am,” said Sharon Streetsweep of Woolloongabba. “I’ll be filing a cultural refugee claim first thing tomorrow morning, or at least I’ve had a decent coffee or two.”

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has yet to respond to Streetsweep’s question, put to his office by The Chaser, as to whether or not decent-espresso-addiction or ability to play a musical instrument will count as grounds for asylum.