Dan Andrews has compromised our most important line of defence.
Victorians are pissed right now.
Of course we are. We’re going into another six weeks of lock down.
Six weeks!
I’m not going to be able to get coffee at my favourite dive for six weeks. I’m very grumpy about that.
And I’ve got it easier than anyone. What about the café owner? She was gearing up for a steady reopening. Now she’s throwing everything into reverse, and she’s really wondering if she’s got the guts to last it out… or the pockets.
And it’s a massive blow to the Victorian economy. Gareth Aird at Comm Bank reckons the lockdown is going to cost $1-2 billion…
… every week!
There’s a lot of businesses that were really banking on things getting back to normal. But that’s not going to happen, and I can tell you, a lot of them are wondering whether or not they’re just better off cutting their losses and walking away.
So it’s a huge blow. And after making so many sacrifices for so long (remember what I was saying about my coffee?) it’s a bitter blow.
But then what do we get?
A premier whose point fingers at the people – people who ‘didn’t do the right thing’. Victorians who had become ‘complacent’.
But then you look into it, and it seems that our latest outbreak – and here’s the chart in all its hideous glory:
It seems that when you look into it, it all comes down to our failed quarantine program.
Specifically, travellers returning to Australia had to do two weeks quarantine in a hotel. In other states, that quarantine was enforced by the police or the Australian defence force.
Not in Victoria though. We out-sourced it to an under-trained and under-resourced private security company.
But that strategy created a bunch of problems. Namely:
- Security companies were being paid for workers who didn’t actually exist, or for shifts they didn’t actually do.
- Under-staffed quarantine enforcement because we were effectively paying for ghosts.
- The guards that did show up didn’t follow proper procedures – they shook hands, shared lighters, didn’t wear masks etc.
- Some guards were sleeping on the job.
- Some guards were sleeping with guests (rumour has it).
- Guards switched shifts between hotels.
- Some guards were moonlighting as Uber-drivers.
What a joke.
As an island nation with almost no community transmission, the hotel quarantine was our most important line of defence.
And it was compromised.
And now we’re paying the price.
But what’s worse, rather than just fess up and say that they messed up and that they shouldn’t have trusted the nations bio-security to a bunch of Uber drivers, Dan Andrews is trying to duck the issue altogether, palming it off to an Inquiry that’s due to report at the end of bloody September!
C’mon. Grow some balls would ya?
It’s an epic cock up, but just own it. If you said, “Look, we knew Corona was going to cost us a heap of money, so I just thought I could save a few bucks by getting some traffic controllers in to do the job,” I’d maybe be like, well, yeah, fair enough.
That’s a bit stupid, but I can see what you were trying to do there. You probably had a lot on your plate at the time.
But when you just try to sweep it all under the carpet with an Inquiry that’s going to take two months to tell us what we already know – that you f$%ked up – it’s pretty poor form.
And when you start pointing the finger at Victorians who have been doing a pretty bloody good job of towing the line if you ask me, then it just gets a bit disgusting.
Because the consequences here are massive.
The only thing between us and a full-blown health crisis is the public’s willingness to make sacrifices and do the right thing.
That requires a lot of good will. It requires a sense of fairness.
But when people are going into lockdown – and when businesses are shuttering – because the government muffed it and won’t own it, then that good will starts evaporating.
And that puts the state, and the nation, at incredible risk.
I think you’ve blown it Dan.
The community needs to be honoured for the sacrifices it’s made. It needs to feel that things are fair.
I think you gotta step down.
Dan Andrews has to resign.
JG.