Peta Credlin: Losing power in Victoria is the latest in a long list of failures

With people leaving in droves and a contact tracing system that still can’t be trusted, the only possible conclusion is that Victoria is a failed state.

If having to endure six months of lockdown due to the Victorian government’s incompetence in running quarantine wasn’t bad enough, now thousands of households on Melbourne’s southeastern fringe face a month without power.

A week after a severe storm blacked out much of eastern Victoria, electricity suppliers are warning that it could be another three weeks before all homes are reconnected. That’s a month of winter without the electricity most people use to heat their homes – all because Victoria’s agencies can’t clear fallen trees and rebuild power lines and the army’s offer to help has largely been rejected – again.

Not only are tens of thousands of Melburnians still without power, they’ve also been told “not to drink tap water” at a time when many don’t have the power to boil it.

The Defence Forces preparing generators and equipment for clean up of the storms in the Dandenong. Picture: Alex Coppel.

The Victorian emergency management commissioner, Andrew Crisp, who as-of-Friday-morning had asked for just five defence personnel to help with planning, is the same person who initially wanted 1000 ADF personnel to help with pandemic management last July, only to rescind the request after intervention from Victoria police.

Why did it take till late Friday for the Victorian government to ask for just 120 more soldiers, when council crews, CFA and SES units and electricity company personnel had been flat out for a week?

Indeed, the state Labor government only responded after a pointed intervention from federal emergency management Minister David Littleproud, who said that defence should provide the equipment to “get the power on quicker” plus boots on the ground “clearing the roads of large debris”.  

With its Gross State Product per capita now behind even Tasmania’s, with people leaving in droves, and with a government that – 15 months into a pandemic – has only just got its QR codes sorted and still can’t trust its contact tracing and hotel quarantine systems, the only possible conclusion is that Victoria is a failed state.

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