Andrew Bolt: Why Daniel Andrews got it wrong
For months “Dictator Dan”, ordered all Victorians to follow over-the-top restrictions to stop COVID-19. Yet our nitwit government got tough on everything except the one basic thing that counts most and has become the example on exactly how not to fight this virus, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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Victoria’s virus laws have been the most insanely tough. Yet Victorians are now Australia’s lepers, banned from South Australia and crowd events in NSW.
Please, watch Victoria to see exactly not how we must fight this virus or any other.
For months Premier Daniel Andrews polished his image as “Dictator Dan”, ordering all Victorians to stay in their homes to stop the virus.
His restrictions were crazily over-the-top. He banned golf, fishing and camping — even out in the desert –— despite a study showing just one example in China of group transmission of the virus in the open air.
Many of those bans were finally eased, but Victoria remains the most militant state.
But now look: for two weeks it’s had many more new infections than the rest of the country put together. On Saturday, 41 new infections. On Sunday, 49.
(NSW on Sunday had just three, including two travellers in hotel quarantine.)
See, Victoria’s nitwit government got tough on everything except the one basic thing that counts most. It didn’t make sure that sick people were put in tight quarantine — and stayed there.
I’m no expert but could see the stupidity of being tough on things that didn’t count and soft on what did. Since April, I repeatedly warned “we should do more to quarantine the sick” and “do more to make sure the infected stay in quarantine”.
But check what this government did instead.
First, it got security guards — amateurs — to work at hotels where we quarantine travellers returning from overseas, many with infections.
These hotels were virus central. But now we’re told by the ACTU that these guards weren’t properly trained.
And surprise! Some caught the virus from the very people they were supposedly keeping in quarantine, and took it home with them.
Strike one. This government made the most fundamental error: not keeping the door shut.
But wait. It did this twice.
Those guards took the virus to some of the 10 hotspot suburbs in this outbreak — suburbs where up to 60 per cent of people were born overseas.
As Andrews admits, some infections in these suburbs were spread in turn by people who broke the lockdown rules. Some knew they were sick, yet still went to work. Others held big family parties to mark the end of Ramadan, which is one reason why just a few families were responsible for nearly half the new infections in the outbreak’s first week.
The government blames a lack of English for infected people not paying attention to the virus bans, even though health warnings were translated into 53 languages.
But leave aside who should take the blame for this dangerous multicultural disunity.
Strike two against this government is that it once more failed to do the basics. Again, it did not shut the door on this virus. Literally.
Instead, it ran an honour system of quarantine. It trusted people who got sick to stay at home and not have people drop in.
Sure, it eventually backed that up with some police checks, but that clearly failed. Last Monday, police stepped up those checks and found 13 people supposedly in home quarantine had gone out.
How can we run a loose honour system of quarantine when the cost of the virus spreading is so huge? This is bizarre.
It’s not like there aren’t examples to learn from. I’ve pointed before to Taiwan, which has a population about as big as ours, but had just seven people die from the virus. We’ve had 103.
In Taiwan, officials check anyone in quarantine with a daily phone call. If there’s no answer, police will be there within the hour. And phones are tracked, so that if someone in quarantine leaves home they get another call.
Add something else we now lack: Taiwan has a far more cohesive community, more likely to hear and heed government messages.
But Victoria? Check out its government’s final idiocy — its third strike. It let thousands of returning travellers out of quarantine without testing them first.
These Australians, many recently from countries such as India, refused to be tested, yet were let out anyway. Did this woke government not insist on tests for fear of appearing intolerant?
Now, I agree. Maybe the panic caused by Victoria’s outbreak is over the top. Just one Victorian has died of the virus in a month, and just one is in intensive care.
So this government is not just incompetent but hysterical, and the whole country is paying for it.