Don’t be fooled by Dan’s sudden aversion to masks

The same Premier who readily called the shots when it came to locking us up six times now has the gall to claim mask mandates aren’t up to him.

Premier Daniel Andrews had the front this week to accuse the media of cheap politics.

Over two media appearances on Tuesday and Wednesday he bristled at the idea that he would use his new-found objection to Covid masks as an election ploy.

I’m not sure who he thinks he’s kidding. This is the same bloke who, during the bad old days of Covid lockdowns and restrictions, used so-called health advice to force golfers playing out in the open to wear masks.

You had the global embarrassment of men and women teeing off out in fresh air with a blue Covid mask on. Golfers I know were incentivised to quickly complete the first hole and, out of sight of the clubhouse, rip the mask off and keep playing.

Some clubs, fearful of retribution from the Andrews Government, had mask marshals riding the course in golf buggies to check on who was breaking the rules.

Daniel Andrews bristled at suggestions his new-found objection to masks is an election ploy. Picture: Ian Currie

The Premier – himself a single handicap golfer – ventured out to the course to play only once he had cancelled the crazy golf ban, not applied anywhere else in Australia.

But we have no idea if he was masked.

Dan was often the first player out on one of my local courses with his name never appearing on the time sheet and often playing solo. Good luck to him.

To this week object to suggestions any return to masks wouldn’t happen because an election was due in November, claiming the notion was false, was clearly fanciful.

Premier Andrews and his NSW partner in crime these days Premier Dominic Perrottet avoid even using the word Covid if they can.

In the week prior to the day Andrews debunked the “no masks so I can get voted back in come November” theory, more than 100 Victorians died from or with Covid.

The let it rip political solution – it’s certainly not a medical solution like the mantra we lived by for two years – sees a new surge in cases regardless of vaccination status and we are only a week into winter.

Andrews continued to lecture the media who dared suggest he was now making decisions on political, rather than safe medical, grounds, saying he had received no health advice to implement mask mandates in more settings.

Chief health officer Brett Sutton has suggested we should return to wearing masks indoors. Picture: David Crosling

In Victoria masks are required in hospitals and health and aged care, and in airports. Masks are also required on public transport with no one, as far as I can work out, policing it.

The Premier’s claim he has had no health advice to implement any mask mandates beyond what we have is probably correct because his old partner in crime Professor Brett Sutton now reports to Health Minister Martin Foley.

Premier Andrews on masks again: “I’m not aware of any advice to do that (increase mask rules). If we did receive advice, then the Minister (Foley) would have to weigh that up”.

That would be the same Health Minister who is not at work because he has Covid. Sutton on social media has been posting that it was important to think about wearing masks indoors.

It got worse for Premier Andrews, a bloke who locked us up six times over two years, as he tried to dig his way out of what was clearly becoming a train wreck media conference.

He clearly doesn’t see, or is too arrogant to admit, the irony in all of this. A leader who stopped people from moving more than 5km from home while walking with one other masked person out in the fresh air now says his advice is: it’s your choice.

So we finally have choice after having it ripped away from us in the name of health advice that he now clearly chooses to ignore because it suits him. The arrogance is breathtakingly depressing.

It wasn’t that long ago that Daniel Andrews was calling all the shots at daily press conferences. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

The Premier, who wouldn’t let vaccinated people see dying relatives or babies being born, then said these words: “That’s why we don’t have politicians sitting in judgment on those matters.”

Asked if he’d rule out future mask mandates, again he tipped Foley in saying that was up to the Health Minister and public health advice received under the pandemic laws.

Talk about hospital handpasses to a sick Health Minister.

Premier Andrews needs to realise Covid is not over just because he has an election on November 26. If he wins he will become the third Labor leader in Victoria after John Cain and Steve Bracks to win a third term.

Duck-shoving anything to do with Covid to other Ministers isn’t leadership, and trying to pretend it’s not really up to him is laughable when in 2020 and 2021 it was all up to him, and nothing could be done without his daily media appearance.

Surely Daniel Andrews doesn’t believe the Victorian public are so stupid as to believe his role in saving lives stopped just because he says it did.

I’d never want to side with anything the Victorian Greens proposed but I’m with Greens Health spokesman Dr Tim Read who has called the Premier out.

He said this week we are not getting the leadership Victoria needs and the hospital system is struggling to cope.

It’s not struggling – it’s on the verge of collapse. But I guess in Dan’s world that’s the Health Minister’s problem.

Likes

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Dislikes

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