Big Daddy Dan making kids pay for rule breakers

Daniel Andrews says he’s sick of people making “shitty choices” during lockdowns, but by being needlessly cruel to our children, he is the guilty one.

How vicious and infantile this lockdown has become. Big Daddy, Premier Daniel Andrews, thinks Melburnians have been naughty and must be punished.

No playgrounds for you!

And go to your room! Curfew: you’re grounded after 9pm.

Big Daddy said on Monday he’s sick of us making “shitty choices”, and ignoring some of his “rules”.

But if anyone has been making “shitty choices”, it’s the Premier himself, who is being needlessly cruel to our children.

It’s our children who have already paid the highest price for all these lockdowns.

They cannot go to school. They cannot visit friends. There will be many who cannot escape – even for an hour – parents who are cruel, unkind or even violent.

Now, in Melbourne, they cannot even go to the playground. Nor can their mums go with them on a rare outing for themselves, maybe to meet the friends that many stressed young mums so badly need.

But why? Yes, I’ve always wanted tough enforcement of rules that make a difference, like limiting indoor numbers in shops and sending police to make sure every infected person and their contacts stay in quarantine.

Premier Daniel Andrews is being needlessly cruel to our children. Picture: David Crosling

But now it turns out that children are being punished – made an example of – because of the supposed sins of some adults.

Chief health officer Brett Sutton was asked on Tuesday if there was a single case of children getting infected at a playground outdoors, when this virus is almost always transmitted indoors.

Er, no, he admitted, although there was now one suspected case he was investigating.

So, not one confirmed case of playground infection of a virus in a state where no one of any age has been killed this year, and in a country where the virus hasn’t killed one child.

But you can’t be too careful! Sorry, kids!

So what’s going on here? Let me give a couple of clues to an ugly reality – that this is just for show.

Premier Andrews was asked, also on Tuesday, if he knew of a single infection in this outbreak that would have been stopped by a curfew like the one he this week imposed.

No, he said not one case came to his mind. He didn’t have “that level of detail”.

That means he imposed a curfew that several top epidemiologists say isn’t effective without knowing of a single case it could have stopped.

Why would a Premier do something so seemingly useless, yet painful?

Here’s another clue. News of this curfew was first leaked by an official to an ABC journalist, who reported there was a “real sense compliance is down” – people were breaking existing rules – and authorities felt “they have to signal ‘this is serious’.”

There is not one confirmed case of Covid infection from a playground in Victoria. Picture: David Crosling

Note the arrogance. They’re saying people are getting sick of the existing rules, so hit them with tougher rules, however pointless, to teach them to get serious.

Indeed, CHO Sutton this week couldn’t say what difference the curfew itself made, but confirmed that it helped to set a “social norm”: “the curfew is reinforcing exactly how serious that stay-at-home direction is”.

This is not the first time in this pandemic that children have been punished to teach their parents a lesson.

Queensland’s chief health officer, Jeannette Young, last year stopped children from going to school because “if you go out to the community and say, ‘this is so bad, we can’t even have schools, all schools have got to be closed’, you are really getting to people”.

This is wrong. This is torturing children to force parents to submit. And it’s treating our freedoms – even the freedom of children to go to a playground – as disposable for politicians needing a marketing tool.

And the final insult: the Andrews government is keeping from parents the horrific price their children are paying.

Children in Melbourne can’t go to school and can’t visit friends — and now they can’t visit playgrounds and skateparks. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

As Damon Johnston of The Australian newspaper has reported, its Victorian Agency for Health Information is not publicly releasing data showing a terrible rise in the number of children now struggling to cope.

That data shows that in the six weeks to March 28, the number of teenagers rushed to hospital after self-harming and suffering suicidal thoughts was up 51 per cent. The treatment of girls for serious eating disorders – up 26 per cent. And more.

Yet copies of this data come with a warning to recipients: “Keep the information confidential. If you have received this report in error, please destroy it.”

Destroy the data that suggests lockdowns destroy children. And don’t let those sad children near a swing.