James Campbell: Melburnians still forced to accept Premier’s small mercies as restrictions ease
Even if Victorians were to put the agony of a 111-day lockdown – imposed after the government’s hotel quarantine blunders – behind them, whatever gratitude we feel for these relaxations will quickly fade as it becomes clear what hasn’t changed, writes James Campbell.
News
Don't miss out on the headlines from News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Daniel Andrews seemed taken aback.
Here he was announcing the beginning of the end of his hated lockdown and it didn’t seem to be getting the warm reception he’d evidently been expecting.
At one point he looked as though tears were in the offing. Why weren’t the people happier?
Ten people can now go to a wedding! Twenty people to a funeral!
Victorians can now leave home for any reason they like – such luxury! – instead of for one of the four stated reasons.
Permitted workers are no more. Best of all shops, cafes, restaurants, bars and hotels will re-open. How good is that?
Beauty and personal services are resuming – masks permitting of course!
Those of you so minded will even be able to get a tattoo to mark this great occasion.
Melburnians are still confined to a 25km radius around their homes and we can’t visit regional Victoria but to be sure these are all great improvements on the world we woke up to on Monday morning.
No wonder the Premier said he felt “emotional,” though not, I suspect, as emotional as the rest of us.
The immediate response will be, of course, be relief that the worst is over, which the Government will no doubt be hoping translates into gratitude.
That however would require everyone to forget that the only reason we have had to go through all this is because his government allowed the virus to escape from hotels filled with quarantined travellers and when that happened its contact tracing wasn’t up to scratch.
Even Victorians were to put all that behind them – they’ve forgiven Daniel Andrews plenty of other things – whatever gratitude we feel for these relaxations will quickly fade as it becomes clear what hasn’t changed.
We are, as I noted earlier, still unable to travel out of Melbourne.
We’re not free to have who we like to our houses either. And won’t be any time soon either.
There will be rules on who can visit you and how often and in what numbers. What will those rules be?
Well Dan doesn’t like to give you too much information all at once.
You’ll have to tune in again for that “as the exact detail we have to spend time tonight working that through”.
After hundred and whatever it is press conferences, the assembled media have grown tired of Dan’s dance of the seven veils.
At one point a journalist had the bad manners to mention Victoria’s pen-and-contact tracing regime in the context of some QR code developments in NSW.
It wasn’t clear exactly what the point was, but he became emotional: “I have not turned up today to talk about New South Wales. I’m here to talk about Victoria and the fact that every Victorian should be very proud of the precious thing they’ve built, that is not only a day with zero cases but a day we can confidently announce [the easings from] midnight tonight, then midnight from 8 November, at which point we’ll have more to say about what the rest of November and December looks like as we push on to a normal COVID Christmas.”
How good does that sound?