Dan Andrews’ freedom day is playing Melburnians for mugs, as retail and hospo suffer

When a huge, four-level coastal hotel can only serve 20 people inside and 50 out, opening is a loss-making, waste of time and makes “freedom day” a sick joke.

Steve Price

@StevePriceMedia

4 min read

October 22, 2021 - 1:30PM

Daniel Andrews 'wants to pretend his COVID plan has worked'

Opinion

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Daniel Andrews probably hasn’t been to Sorrento, at the tip of the Mornington Peninsula, since that unfortunate accident earlier this year.

You can’t blame him, given how nasty it was, but if he was planning to drop in on this first pretend “freedom” weekend for Victorians, I’d suggest maybe not.

The huge Sorrento Hotel – owned by a mate of mine – is normally licenced to serve about 1100 patrons. Diners and drinkers are spread over four levels and the hotel features an outdoor beer garden.

It’s the social centre for locals and like most regional communities, a generous donor to everything from football to golf and any needy causes that come knocking.

If Premier Andrews was to drop in, say, on Saturday afternoon, he’d be very lucky to get a seat, a meal, or a beer.

On “regulations-eased Friday”, with the capacity rules, my mate is permitted to serve 20 people inside the four-level hotel itself and 50 outside.

How crazy is that? Now, he doesn’t know I am writing this and will not really appreciate the attention, but I know for a fact that he has been paying local staff throughout our 18 long months of darkness.

Premier Dan Andrews could be well-advised not to visit Sorrento any time soon.

He’s even been riding around town dropping off meals — that’s the sort of person he is.

If you put only 20 people in that hotel you would lose them, and aside from the owner having to work for nothing, it would be a loss-making waste of time.

Let’s cut to the chase, though … the spin doctors trying to frame the changes that kicked in at midnight Thursday as some sort of generous “freedom” event are again playing the Melbourne public for mugs.

They are playing with our minds and, as usual, there is so much confusion and contradiction as to be laughable.

After six lockdowns over 300 odd days, spread across two years, who do they think they are kidding?

If they think allowing me to sit on a stool on a footpath in the rain under an umbrella having a pot is “freedom” then they better think again.

Freedom is not what Dan and his chief health officer Brett Sutton are giving us. What we really are getting, as an emailer to the radio said this week, is transfer from a small jail cell to a bigger one. From maximum security to a prison farm.

Thinking that allowing people to drive from Glen Waverley to the CBD and beg to find a table at restaurant able to fit them in — if big enough to seat 20 — is a sick joke.

As of this Friday — just after midnight — if you were living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Fitzroy, you were allowed by the Covid police to invite nine of your best friends over for a drink.

No one there has to admit their vaccination status and clearly there is no QR code on the front door.

Around the corner from your “freedom day” drinks party, that big old local hotel with a front bar, lounge bar and dining room can only have 20 people inside in total.

All the drinkers and diners will have to be double-vaccinated with proof, and check in with their Services Victoria app on their phone.

Melbourne restaurants will struggle to turn a profit under Daniel Andrews’ opening laws. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake

Seriously, what’s the safer option and less likely to spread Covid? And don’t for a moment think of sliding in 12 or maybe 13 drinkers — there is a squad of 100 teams roaming Melbourne to check if anyone is cheating.

The Covid-counting officers are armed with fines in excess of $100,000.

Our other “freedom” bestowed upon the Victorian public is the opportunity to go shopping after 10 weeks of click and collect and online deliveries.

This, too, has been tricked-up as some sort of breakthrough. Back to normality — until you realise the sort of shopping they are talking about consists of outside flea markets set up in the rain.

Melbourne people are banned from physically entering retail shops, even though vaccinated and masked. You can crowd into your local Woolworths or Coles and browse for odd stuff at Aldi but setting foot inside a dress shop makes you and the retailer criminals.

By comparison, in Sydney at the same vaccination rate, non-essential retail with square metre limits was reopened completely with nobody forced to try on some new pants or a shirt outside in the rain.

Truth be known, most retail will stay shut.

What a sad reflection on how beaten down we have become by overlong, onerous lockdowns that even most of the media has been reporting that what happened at midnight Thursday was “freedom”.

It was far from that, and the impatience of Victorians is causing major frustration and further economic destruction.

Dan Andrews’ ‘freedoms’ are really just moving us from a small prison cell to a bigger one. Picture: Ian Currie

To have Premier Andrews trying to tell Victorians, as he did on Monday, how proud we should all be, ignores the path of death and destruction those eighteen months have brought us.

While the rest of Australia – especially Sydney with its Covid outbreak – is back to normal with overflowing hospitality venues, CBD offices filling back up, sport with crowds resuming and haircuts and nails being done inside, we are conned into celebrating “freedoms”, many of which we should never have lost.

Not going out after 9pm or leaving home before 5am and not being able to travel more than 10 or 15km from home were over-the-top intrusive thought bubbles never based in any medical commonsense.

Enjoy your VB in the rain and pray your chicken parmigiana doesn’t get too cold before arriving at your table in the gutter.

That’s if you can score a reservation.