Victoria COVID-19: Absurdity of lockdown laws exposed
Shopping in supermarkets and bottle shops is safe but somehow it’s dangerous if you want to buy a computer. Sophie Elsworth argues there’s no need to cripple businesses right now in Victoria.
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Shopping in supermarkets and bottle shops is safe but somehow it’s dangerous if you want to buy a computer.
That’s the absurdity of the situation under these strict stage four restrictions in Victoria right now.
I recently purchased myself a new laptop, a decent cost to shell out without actually getting any assistance with the product I was buying.
I did a quick scroll online and sifted through some tech reviews to work out whether the device I wanted to snap up was any good.
Once I made a decision, I threw the laptop into my virtual shopping basket and hoped for the best.
It’s now a waiting game before I can “click and collect” under Victoria’s stage four restrictions that allows citizens to exit house arrest momentarily.
Then I can safely walk to my nearby store — within the 5km radius of my house, masked up, sanitised and socially distanced, all under the out-of-house arrest rule book.
All this rigmarole to go through to make a simple purchase because it was somehow going to be dangerous for shops to stay open during this crisis.
A bit of good old-fashioned, one-on-one customer service is best, albeit safely.
When I shop, I like to try before I buy and I would much rather go into a store than sit behind a computer screen or glued to my smartphone to make a purchase.
In metropolitan Melbourne, virtually all retailers are closed except supermarkets, green grocers, corner stores, newsagents, chemists and bakeries.
And only one person per household can head to the shops once a day to buy essential items.
It’s fine if I make a trip to Coles to pick up groceries in a supermarket that’s swarming with people, then I can nick into the bottle shop and grab some alcohol — no worries.
But it’s unsafe if I want to buy a hammer, some new pyjamas or a new pair of runners.
More than five million Victorians have been slowly working their way through what feels like a never-ending lockdown and the date pinned for stage four to end is September 13.
Sure, we need to keep people safe from COVID-19, but I don’t believe it’s necessary to cripple businesses and people’s livelihoods in the process.
Keeping nearly all shops closed during lockdown 3.0 is going to do more harm than good and sadly many won’t come out the other end.
Hundreds of thousands of Victorians are out of work and the real damage that has been caused remains to truly be seen.