Daniel Andrews’ bragging about Victoria’s ‘best in class’ hotel quarantine bragging helped land us back in lockdown

Just two months after it launched, Dan Andrews’ second crack at hotel quarantine has landed Victoria back in stage four lockdown. And why should we be surprised?

So much then for Dan’s second go at hotel quarantine.

On Tuesday the Premier was spruiking the “50 points of difference” between how he runs things and the backward ways of the interstaters who are now “copying what we’ve been doing”. As for our contact tracing.

Don’t get him started! It was “best in class” when it comes to IT he boasted late last year. And now? Now, Victoria is to have a “short, sharp” lockdown.

We’ll see about that. We certainly know it will be sharp, it’s the short bit that should have us worried.

People cross Flinders Street after authorities ordered a five-day state-wide lockdown Photo by Con Chronis / AFP

Because if we learned anything last year, it’s that once Victoria’s public health authorities have you in their grip they have trouble letting go.

So even if things do start to wind back to normal next week, you’d be brave to bet we will snap back to how we were at 11.59pm on Friday night.

No one should take comfort from it – we’re all Australians after all – but common sense would suggest that most customers who stop for coffee at the Melbourne Airport Brunetti’s are probably on their way out of the state.

Most of the customers from last week will now be Gladys and Annastacia’s problem. Good luck ladies!

If you want any tips from Dan’s “best in class” contact tracing, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We knew it was odds on that he would open the batting yesterday with a shout out to the “incredibly fast-moving and hyper-infectious UK strain” which is “no 2020 virus” but “something very, very different”.

Really it’s a whole new pandemic.

The Holiday Inn at Tullamarine Airport was dramatically evacuated earlier this week Picture: NCA NewsWire/ David Crosling

It’s just bad luck I suppose the only place that has cocked up hotel quarantine in this new world is the one that cocked up the old hotel quarantine.

Could have happened to anyone. But wait a minute, were we told in the first week of January the Victorian Government was hyper-alert to this hyper-infectious strain?

That week the Herald Sun revealed we were pushing for a special national cabinet to talk about the danger.

Epidemiologists were even then warning we should think about halting hotel quarantine until we could vaccinate the people running it.

Even without the vaccine we could have considered isolating them from the community. Sure it wouldn’t have been cheap but it would have been a bargain compared to the cost of the (fingers crossed) next five days.

And without accepting the Federal Opposition’s line about quarantine being a federal responsibility, the point blank refusal of the Commonwealth to contemplate assistance in moving quarantine out of the middle of our capital cities has contributed to this mess.

Expect to hear a lot more questions too about where we are with the vaccine.