Joe Hildebrand: Dan Andrews and Dominic Perrottet deny panic merchants

The Victorian and NSW premiers have apparently had a meeting of the minds on Covid, so why aren’t the southern socialists getting ‘#LetitripDan’ trending, Joe Hildebrand asks.

The most important day for Australia this year isn’t January 26. It’s February 1.

That is the day the nation’s biggest state will send kids back to school.

The refusal by NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and his Victorian counterpart Daniel Andrews to bow to the panic merchants and delay the start of the school year does both men great credit. They have embraced ­reality and left their mattresses undampened.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews and his NSW counterpart Dominic Perrottet are political opposites, but both states are on the page when it comes to Covid and schools.

But even more welcome and more remarkable is the fact that their two governments have worked closely together to produce virtually identical plans and protocols for bringing schools back on time.

So how on earth is it that in this hyper-polarised Covid age the country’s most supposedly right-wing premier and the country’s most supposedly left-wing premier have come up with the exact same policy on the most pivotal and controversial issue that Covid has produced – the question of whether schools are safe?

I’ll soon reveal the answer but first we will need a quick refresher.

The only reason NSW and Victoria were even in a position to agree on schools was because they ended up in exactly the same place after pursuing very different Covid policies – almost diametrically opposite policies, if you were to believe some of the social media commentary.

The NSW government failed to lockdown, or lockdown hard and fast enough – so the Twitter narrative goes – and so was faced with a Delta outbreak that ultimately forced it into an agonisingly long lockdown.

The Victorian government, by way of contrast, locked down incredibly hard and incredibly fast and so … was faced with an outbreak of the Delta strain that ultimately forced it into an agonisingly long lockdown.

Hmmm.

Andrews, like Perrottet, has committed to starting the school year on time. Picture: David Crosling

This somewhat muted the #IstandwithDan hashtag brigade for a time but they soon found a replacement: #LetitripDom

Because with the arrival of the new ultra-mild but ultra-contagious Omicron variant, Perrottet was accused of unleashing the virus on a poor unsuspecting population for the presumed purpose of killing off elderly conservative voters or perhaps his unvaccinated support base.

This would certainly be an unconventional approach to re-election by a supposedly ruthless politician.

(In fact, Perrottet had merely stuck to the timetable developed under the National Covid Strategy – elements of which had already been delayed – and then eventually caved to political pressure and reintroduced some restrictions. But let’s not let facts get in the way of the story just yet. That fun will come later.)

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has been accused of taking a “let it rip” approach to Covid. Picture: Jeremy Piper

Victoria, advised by their hyper-cautious chief health officer and Twitter enthusiast Brett Sutton, would – in great contrast again – be making no such mistake.

And so what happened this time? Omicron ran rampant through NSW and – you guessed it – ran rampant through Victoria too. The only real difference was that Victoria’s health system seemed to struggle much more. Well done chaps!

Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton oversaw the world’s longest lockdown. Picture: David Crosling

And so with both states still scarred by lockdown fatigue and both states swarming with the least worst version of the virus we could possibly have to live with, they finally did what they should have done a long time ago – the same thing.

And this reveals the great secret truth of politics that ideologues on both sides struggle to grasp. Good governments, like Tolstoy’s “happy families”, are all essentially the same.

As long as you have a leader who can count to 20 without taking their socks off, most administrations will realise that even the most invidious problem has a best-possible solution.

That solution might not be ideal – which is perhaps why idealists cannot understand it – but it is the only practicable one available and it will not change to suit your political persuasion.

In 2020, Prime Minister Scott Morrison unveiled JobKeeper – a welfare program worth $90 billion. Picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

This is why we have seen Scott Morrison throwing money at Covid like a drunken Keynesian sailor and it is why Dan Andrews has had a meeting of the minds with Dom Perrottet.

In fact, Victoria is actually sending kids back to school a day earlier than NSW, so in the eyes of Covid catastrophists that should technically make him even more reckless.

But you don’t seem to see many #LetitripDan hashtags trending on Twitter. I wonder why that could be?

And so perhaps it is time to inform our online friends of this simple truth. Perhaps it is time to suggest to southern socialist luvvies that they deploy the hashtag #IstandwithDom now that their Dear Leader has embraced the NSW Premier’s policies.

After all, what is socialism without solidarity?

Joe Hildebrand is the host of the new Sky News show The Blame Game starting this Friday at 8:30pm