Tim Blair: Daniel Andrews playing mind games with Victorians

Daniel Andrews is riding a third-wave lockdown that he claims will protect the ‘precious thing’ his wretched government imposed on its people, writes Tim Blair.

Isolation, stress, separation and inactivity eventually drive people insane.

And so will being told that up is down, black is white, cats are dogs and Dan Andrews is a brilliant premier leading a fantastically effective COVID containment program.

On that first point, researchers have found that folk are suffering far more mental anguish during Germany’s current second lockdown than during a previous lockdown last year.

“Life satisfaction has decreased significantly — worries, stress and depressiveness have increased,” ­research group leader Dorota Reis of Saarland University told German media.

As well, a sense of national purpose during the first lockdown — the “we’re all in this together” syndrome — has now eroded.

The whole state is being gaslit by Andrews, according to Tim Blair. Picture: Paul Jeffers

People are becoming “rather selfish and drifting apart”, Reis said. Which, when it comes to Germans, may not be a bad thing. United, they can be a little pesky.

Deutschland despair is setting in after two lockdowns. Victorians are now enduring their third, and it comes complete with additional ­insanity provocations.

On top of the general challenges brought about by five-kilometre travel restrictions, business closures, job losses and what have you, our compulsorily-masked southern friends are daily asked to accept a false ­version of reality.

The whole state is being gaslit by its own Premier.

“We’ve all given so much, we’ve all done so much,” Dan Andrews said last week, announcing the third lockdown.

By “done so much”, he presumably referred to all the dying. More than 800 deaths in total. The rest of Australia has lost just 89 to COVID.

“We’ve built something precious,” Andrews continued.

His government has “built” an economic basket case with such lame coronavirus quarantine and tracing systems that more than six million people — many of them hundreds of kilometres from any infection cases — are now effectively under house ­arrest.

“We have to make difficult decisions, and do difficult things,” Andrews added, “in order to defend what we’ve built.”

One “difficult decision” was to classify Australian Open tennis players in Melbourne as essential workers, although they are neither workers nor essential.

Andrews spoke last week of the terrifying speed with which the latest coronavirus variant could race through the community.

Propping up a virus-plagued Australian Open. Cartoon: Warren Brown

Then thousands were allowed to show up at Rod Laver Arena for that evening’s scheduled matches, eventually being ordered to leave at 11.30pm before the virus clocked on and resumed its deadly work.

The Victorian government’s “essential worker” tactic mirrors events in New York, where television presentation rules require that shows “must prohibit live audiences unless they consist only of paid employees, cast, and crew”.

New York-based comedy program Saturday Night Live dodged that restriction by paying their audience members — technically qualifying them as employees.

It’s no surprise, by the way, that Victoria might be picking up ideas from New York. The place is a coronavirus disaster zone, led by a governor who makes even Dictator Dan seem accomplished.

Check the numbers: New York’s COVID death rate per 100,000 people is 233. Even Victoria’s is only 12.4.

The rate in the rest of Australia, minus Victoria, is way down at 0.44. Or, to put it another way, basically cured.

Besides his strange Twitter cult, Andrews does have another fan. “There’s nowhere in the world that tackled a second wave like Victorians,” Labor’s federal leader Anthony Albanese wrote online.

There’s also nowhere in Australia that had a second wave, a point Albanese declines to consider. And that is despite NSW accepting masses more overseas arrivals than Victoria.

“There’s nowhere in the world that can stop a third wave like Victorians,” Albo went on. “You’ve got this, ­Victoria.”

They sure have, and all in Melbourne. So why are people in Mildura, Horsham, Wodonga, Orbost and hundreds of other towns far from the capital also under lockdown?

Interestingly, tennis players beyond Laver Arena are not considered essential at all.

The Swan Hill Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, 340km from Melbourne, expected to be hosting the Country Week tennis tournament for a week beginning yesterday. All the plans were in place.

“Country Week is the largest grassroots tennis event in Australia and injects up to $1.5 million into the local economy,” Swan Hill mayor Bill Moar said earlier this month.

“The event sees accommodation facilities totally booked, hospitality venues in full flight and dollars flowing in the town.”

Dollars are still flowing, but in the wrong direction. “On Friday, organisers from the Swan Hill Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club were forced to swallow the loss of $40,000 in perishables and cancel,” Melbourne’s Age newspaper reported.

Multiply Swan Hill’s heartbreak by every other town throughout regional Victoria and you’ll get an idea of the “precious thing” Andrews is building.

Victoria’s lockdown is crazy, and it is taking more people down than it can possibly be protecting.

The only sensible thing to do is get the hell out of the place at the first opportunity.

A Melbourne friend, sensing a looming lockdown, early last week booked a motel room in Albury, on the sane side of the NSW-Victoria border.

Then, just prior to Andrews’s announcement, she hit the road.

Arriving in Albury, en route to Sydney, she saw hundreds of cars with Victorian plates swarming the place, their occupants desperate for ­lodgings.

The owner of her motel said he could have booked out his venue three times over.

That’s the one positive from Victoria’s lockdown. It’s putting money in NSW pockets.

Sign up to The Blair Report.