Andrew Bolt Premiers must stop playing ‘State Dad’ with lockdowns and let us live with consequence

Instead of looking to WA Premier Mark McGowan, Premiers must stop playing ‘State Daddy’ with lockdowns and let us live with consequence.

George Orwell in his grim book 1984 warned against Big Brother. But Labor in 2021 has given us the equally dictatorial State Dad.

Yes, Labor in Western Australia actually urged voters last week to send Premier Mark McGowan a sickeningly sycophantic Father’s Day message; “Thanks for being the best Premier and State Dad”.

McGowan is not the “State Dad”. Nor is Queensland’s dictatorial Annastacia Palaszczuk the State Mum, any more than Joe Stalin was “Uncle Joe”.

Yet in this pandemic such premiers take it upon themselves to ban even harmless activity of which they disapprove, like some stern but benevolent older relative.

Daniel Andrews is not our dad.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, for instance, had his police chase people off beaches, despite near zero risk of infection in the open.

They get away with such virus theatre because too many voters – militant hypochondriacs – accept these premiers as their State Dad.

But I don’t want any premier to be my dad. They are my servants. And we won’t get rid of these nightmare lockdowns and locked borders until we insist we’re grown-ups who can decide for ourselves what risks are worth taking with our lives.

Governments have now offered vaccines to everyone most likely to die from this virus – overwhelmingly people in aged care and the very old.

The vast majority of those still dying refused to take those vaccines.

Look at the 19 who died in NSW from Friday to Sunday. They included 10 in their 70s, three in their 80s and one in her 90s, but only two had bothered to get vaccinated – the two already dying and in palliative care.

Of the younger victims, only one had had even one shot.

WA Premier Mark McGowan has sickeningly described himself as a ‘State Daddy.’

So how much longer must eight million Australians be locked up to save predominantly very old people who refused to save themselves?

Even Andrews now admits enough is almost enough, now that nearly 40 per cent of Australian adults are fully vaccinated: “We are not going to have a situation, at least not in Victoria, where we lock the whole place down to protect people who won’t protect themselves.”

But to get to that point premiers must stop playing State Daddy and leave it to each of us to take responsibility.

You don’t want to get the jab? Fine, but the consequences are on you.

You want to lie on a beach? Then accept any consequences of that, too, or else lock down yourself.

Those are your choices, not State Daddy’s.