Terry McCrann: How Chairman Dan’s curfew call was utterly useless
Premier Daniel Andrews’ decision to remove the curfew restriction for Victorians was the single most useless thing he could change — with zero benefit to the virus fight or to jobs and the survival of tens of thousands of businesses, writes Terry McCrann.
Terry McCrann
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Victorian Premier Chairman Dan chose the single most useless thing to change in his Fake opening up move last Sunday — useless, not just for 6.5 million Victorians, but indeed for the other 19 million Australians as well.
The 9-5 curfew — so generously eased from 8-5 at an earlier date — was quite simply the most useless of all the measures that have been mandated by Chairman Dan and his team to fight the virus. Indeed, if anything it was even arguably slightly ‘virus-friendly’.
Victorians were already imprisoned in their homes for 21 of every 24 hours — again, previously and so generously eased from 22 hours at that earlier date — able to leave only for the infamously fabled four reasons. And then only to travel within a 5km radius.
So what did the curfew add? Zero. Zip. Absolutely nothing. It only meant you couldn‘t take a late-night jog, whip down to the 7/11 for a litre of milk or take that midnight swim.
Indeed, by concentrating all movement to the other 16 hours in the day — especially those pesky non-mark wearing CO2-pumping joggers — it slightly increased the risk of COVID community transmission.
But on balance the curfew or its absence makes close to zero difference to the virus fight. It was also the most useless thing to change in terms of the economy — and not just the Victorian economy but both directly and indirectly the rest of Australia as well.
So Victorians now can go out after nine — to jog, to visit the supermarket, if they haven’t gone earlier in the day, or to visit someone in very limited circumstances. There is zero extra economic activity in any of that.
Any of the other things that Chairman Dan could have done would have helped businesses, jobs and economic activity and again, not just in Victoria. Easing the 5km limit; increasing times allowed out; allowing bigger — ‘COVID-safe’ — groups; opening up more — ‘COVID-safe’[ — retail, etc.
So Chairman Dan chose the single most useless thing to do. It makes zero difference to the virus fight; it is of zero benefit to jobs and the survival of tens of thousands of businesses.
Sort of sums up the government of Chairman Dan, doesn’t it?
Or to put it another way, as I did on Monday: Victoria, its Premier and its government are holding the budget and the entire nation hostage to some bizarre personal paranoia.
Two other important points. Chairman Dan has totally rejected the suggestion by former health minister and former ‘mate’ Jenny Mikakos that the government is embarked on an ‘elimination strategy’.
But as an occasional correspondent of mine points out, aiming for a 14-day consecutive period of zero cases — not, zero deaths — before allowing any significant relaxation of its brutal lockdown, is exactly an elimination and not a suppression strategy.
Only Tasmania and SA have done it, with total border closures; Queensland got close; but NSW has barely managed the occasional single day of zero cases.
Further, everything we’ve done this year in relation to the virus has been on the assumption of 14-day cycles — especially the time it takes to surface.
If we did get 14 days in a row of zero cases, that would be definitionally elimination. So why does the Premier deny It? It’s certainly way beyond anything remotely reasonable in terms of achievable suppression.
Second point: while it might deliver a certain — utterly deserved — schadenfreude to see ministers and public servants being threatened with the very charges of industrial manslaughter and potential — real, not Dan-imposed — imprisonment, I do not believe it is a good or appropriate development.
It must ultimately lead to bad governance, not accountable governance. Ministers and public servants should not be threatened for actions and advice in good faith, by 20-20 rear-vision.
But exactly the same applies to businesspeople. The legislation was misconceived in the first place. Chairman Dan should ’fess up and commit to its repeal. Amending it would not be acceptable.
DAN FINALLY GETS US OVER 90 PER CENT
Congratulations, Chairman Dan, you’ve finally done it — you’ve finally taken Victoria above the all-important 90 per cent compulsory acquisition mark.
Under the ‘COVID Code rules’ — apparently agreed by the National Cabinet, to match the Takeovers Code — any state that passes the 90 per cent mark of all the virus deaths for Australia, becomes entitled and indeed arguably should be obliged to compulsorily ‘acquire’ those outstanding deaths in the other states.
Heck, if the government a premier leads is so, so devastatingly and catastrophically incompetent as to rack up more than 90 per cent of the nation’s virus deaths, surely it should ‘own’ them all, all 100 percent of them?
After Monday’s further grim toll, Victoria which has just 26 per cent of the nation’s population now has 90.02 per cent of all the recorded Australian Covid virus deaths.
This is the first time it’s breached the 90 per cent mark. Both the actual number of deaths and the percentage will continue to track their grim climbs higher; hopefully, only slowly and — especially, the actual number of deaths — only slightly higher.
Under the Takeovers Code, compulsory acquisition to claim the 100 per cent ownership is done usually through what’s called a “Scheme of Arrangement”.
With Chairman Dan and the ‘COVID Code (of shame)’ it would be something similar — via perhaps a ‘Scheme of (utter) mal-arrangement’; otherwise known more generally and more accurately as ‘Dan’s Arrangement’.
Originally published as Terry McCrann: How Chairman Dan’s curfew call was utterly useless