Steve Price: Daniel Andrews has become symbol for everything sh-tty in Victoria

Give us a chirpy Merlino with a smile instead of grumpy, bearer-of-bad-news Dan trotting out dreadful numbers and lecturing us on how lockdowns are for our own good.

Daniel Andrews took 111 days of sick leave this year on full pay recovering from a beach house accident that injured his back and ribs.

Unlike many Victorians he had excellent and fast medical care and was admitted as an emergency case into hospital.

You can’t help but think — after his increasingly hectoring media appearances this week sent Melbourne and regional Victoria into another long stretch of lockdown — that he’s a very lucky bloke and we are very unlucky.

Stay with me as I try and pick my way through the numbers and dates. Like all Victorians the whole Covid lockdown nightmare has started to blur.

The Premier fell over at Sorrento on Tuesday March 9 this year, the day after the March Labour Day long weekend. The tragic accident happened just a day short of three weeks after Melbourne’s five-day long Lockdown Three, the first of 2021.

So, the Premier fell after guiding us — windbreak jacket and all — through two lockdowns in 2020, including — and what a coincidence this is — the 111-day super Lockdown Two and a quick third one in February 2021.

For the entire 111-day back injury recovery the Premier then embarked on, there was only one 14-day short sharp Covid lockdown, between May 27 and June 10. Lockdown Four.

Deputy Premier James Merlino with his sparkly clean eyeglasses and crisp white shirt took us through this in the absence of the Premier, and what a breath of fresh air he was.

James Merlino managed to give us hope during lockdown while he was acting Premier. Picture: Getty

Dan was knocked up at home and I’m not sure he would have been entirely happy with the chirpy Merlino, who unlike his boss tried to keep us all upbeat and positive while managing to knock Covid on the head in just 14 days.

Many of us were wondering if this wasn’t a better way to be told how our lives were being smashed, our children’s education shredded and mental wellbeing trashed.

Give us a chirpy fellow with a smile, instead of a grumpy hulking bearer of bad news trotting out dreadful numbers, lecturing us all about how the lockdowns were for our own good.

We had Daniel for lockdowns One, Two and Three for a total of 159 days. And James Merlino managed to knock this thing on the head in just 14, meaning his boss in recovery only missed one lockdown of the six so far.

The Premier returned to work complete with a repaired back and a pay rise that he and his fellow politicians pocketed while the rest of Victoria was bleeding money.

Just two weeks later it was on again. Lockdown Five lasted 12 days, with Premier Andrews back in the chair and then just nine days later “bad luck” struck again. Lockdown Six.

What is it about this guy and Covid? Whenever he’s around the virus follows – he injures himself and we spend a relatively Covid-free period while he fixes his back and then he returns and so does the virus.

It must just be bad luck that five of six lockdowns he’s in charge and our biggest break in 18 months coincides with his convalescing on the couch at home.

It has got to the point where many people can’t watch him anymore. It’s like the drunk uncle at Christmas: you know he’s coming, but the visit is always the same — it ends in tears.

Daniel Andrews has become a symbol of everything that has been shitty about the last two years. He never has anything good to say, always delivering bad news, never accepting any personal responsibility and always blaming someone or something else.

His snide sniping at NSW and Gladys Berejiklian has come back to haunt him as he’s now worked out how fighting the Delta strain is a whole new ball game.

When it appeared early in Lockdown Six he might still be able to get the Covid numbers back to zero, he actually said to Victorians not to go outside the house because that could land you in hospital.

He predicted hospitals would be overrun, ICU departments would be unable to cope and the cases would be in the thousands and thousands.

It was full-on scaremongering, topped with night-time curfews and playground closures. Then this week, when it became apparent all this frightening of people wasn’t really working and zero Covid was impossible, he changed tack.

Gladys Berejiklian’s numbers may be bad but Dan’s are accelerating. Picture: NCA NewsWire

Now it’s a lockdown until we all get vaccinated. It’s still a lockdown and even people willing to support Andrews last year and who had sympathy – me included – for his injury have turned.

If Daniel Andrews is still kidding himself that his handling of this pandemic is going to save his political skin, he’s deluded.

Victoria and Victorians right now don’t need an aggressive intractable know-all who clearly runs his Cabinet with a “it’s my way or the highway” steely hand. That has got to change.

Far be it for me to give him political advice — which he would laugh at just as he scoffed at the idea of a vaccinated crowd at the grand final sold off to WA — but take a leaf from Gladys Berejiklian in NSW.

Her numbers are bad, but we now know yours are accelerating even faster.

She has had two full, and some suburban lockdowns. You’ve had six and have set a world record for a major city being locked down from Covid. A world record isn’t something to crow about.

Daniel, you need to start sounding more hopeful and to stop looking as if you are doing us a favour locking us up again. Talk up the vaccination path out without putting caveats on it and be sensible about relaxing the rules.

If you can’t bring yourself to strike that tone let us have James Merlino back. At least he looks as if he has some hope.

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DISLIKES

• Victorian residents trapped on the wrong side of the NSW border being denied a pass to go back home.

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Australia Today with Steve Price can be heard live from 7am weekdays via the LiSTNR app

Originally published as Steve Price: Daniel Andrews has become symbol for everything sh-tty in Victoria