David Penberthy: The way things are going, Victoria almost looks like a failed state
Dan Andrews and his ramshackle outfit haven’t just wrecked Victoria but now threaten to wreck things for Australians everywhere, writes David Penberthy.
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For all his many failings, Dan Andrews can list one towering achievement to his name. The Victorian Premier achieved something always thought impossible – he united the people of South Australia, which has long been the most insecure state in the Commonwealth, with an unyielding sense of pride at being so damned lucky to live here.
To use a coarse turn of phrase, karma’s a bitch, and since the precise moment Dan Andrews mouthed his juvenile sledge against SA, his state has been setting terrible daily infection and death records – with the 723 new COVID-19 cases recorded on Thursday the worst so far – and with no end in sight.
Whatever pride we feel as South Australians does not equal any callousness or smugness about the horror unfolding in Victoria. You would not wish Victoria’s situation on your worst enemy, and Victorians most certainly are not our enemies.
For all the superficial niggle between our two states, our lives are intertwined. The historic brain drain from SA means so many of our families have kids and grandkids living and working in Melbourne. Our shared border means that towns such as Mount Gambier and Pinnaroo rely on an ability, now impeded, to zip back and forth across that arbitrary divide.
But most of all, what’s happening in Victoria is just a heartbreaking human tragedy, from the terrible death rate, to families being forced apart nationwide. I know people who have not seen their parents since Christmas, and whose parents have in some cases not even met their new grandchildren who were born in SA this year.
It is made more heartbreaking by the fact that so much it seems to be avoidable. It is here where the Andrews government deserves nothing but condemnation for the manner in which they have managed the pandemic and endangered the rest of the country by allowing this virus to spiral out of control.
Barracking for and bagging the Andrews government has become something of a sport for ideologues on social media. Speaking as someone who doesn’t really care who runs the joint, so long as they’re competent, I have less interest in the ideology than the outcomes, and the outcomes in Victoria speak for themselves.
The best way to get a bead on what’s gone wrong over the border is to look at the policies that are in place in a state where things have gone right, namely ours.
No one should ignore the fact that managing a large-population, high-density state such as Victoria comes with a higher degree of difficulty than managing a less populous, less crowded state such as SA.
But there are seven key differences which show that our approach has been more professional and Andrews just plain amateurish.
The biggest of these was hotel quarantine, managed in our state by SA Police with the transfers and surveillance of returned overseas travellers run with military precision. In Victoria, it looked more like a frat party, with untrained private security firms fraternising with people who were suspected of having or even had the illness.
The second issue goes to housing density. Again, Victoria struggled due to the proliferation of those infernal public housing towers, where in SA Housing Trust accommodation brings with it some green space, no lifts, no shared corridors.
But the difference was that in Victoria, infected public housing tenants were left at home, while in SA they were removed. Victoria also has more migrants who, due to language difficulties and social isolation, did not get the message about symptoms and need for testing. But it’s questionable whether the Victorian Government addressed that challenge early on.
It’s also doubtful that some of the language Dan Andrews used – such as telling Victorians he didn’t want them to “get on the beers” – served as a well-crafted message for elderly women who have arrived here as refugees from Afghanistan.
The fourth issue went to the lifting of restrictions. South Australian Premier Steven Marshall held the line when hoteliers and tour operators and business groups were demanding their swifter removal.
In Victoria, which was initially in the strange position of having the most draconian lockdown in the land, the Andrews government lost its nerve more quickly and rolled back all restrictions at a faster rate than SA.
The fifth issue was the Victorian government’s bizarre decision to make PCR COVID testing – which detects the actual antigen – optional as opposed to compulsory, as it has been here.
The sixth was the fact that there was no hard direction for people to isolate after they had been tested and were waiting for results, as was the case in SA.
The seventh and final problem was that, compared to SA, contact tracing in Victoria was not adequately resourced.
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These are all huge, avoidable differences in the way the Andrews government approached the pandemic. I would throw in one more – the state also provides reversed-living proof of the maxim that you get good governments when you have good oppositions. The Victorian Liberals still look like an unelectable rabble and have used much of the pandemic as little more than a vehicle for student-politics-level put-downs of Andrews on social media, such as dopey quizzes as to whether he should be called Comrade Dan or Chairman Dan.
The way things are going, Victoria almost looks like a failed state. The really troubling thing is that Dan Andrews and his ramshackle outfit haven’t just wrecked Victoria but now threaten to wreck things for Australians everywhere.
His refusal to answer questions about the quarantine scandal and to hide behind the skirts of an inquiry, his attempts this week to sheet blame to Canberra for the standards of aged care homes – all these things are the actions of man who appears more interested in political self-preservation than acknowledging and reversing the mistakes his government has made. It is a total shambles.
And as long as Dan Andrews is in charge, why would you want to go to Victoria?