James Campbell: Has life inside the Victorian Experiment finally gone too far?
Living in 2020 Victoria is like being stuck in society-wide 1950s psychological experiment designed to find people’s breaking point for obedience to authority. And for many, Sunday was when the actions and reasoning of Victoria’s Premier finally parted company with reality, writes James Campbell.
Opinion
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Living in Victoria right now is like being stuck in a giant society-wide psychological experiment from the 1950s designed to find the breaking point of people’s obedience to authority.
The sort of experiment that would get you drummed out of the profession today.
It seems almost funny now but back in the distant past of February and March, democratic governments around the world hesitated about putting their societies into full lockdown because they were worried their publics wouldn’t accept them. It turns out the “social licence” granted to rulers at the time of public crisis was a lot greater than people had feared.
And in years to come when policy makers look for real-world evidence of just how capricious and heavy-handed garbage a law-abiding society will put up with, you can be sure the Victorian Experiment is going to feature.
For many, I suspect, Sunday was the day the actions and reasoning of Victoria’s Premier finally parted company with reality.
To recap, last week we all tuned in to hear Daniel Andrews tell us he would definitely have some great news for us in two weeks’ time if everything went well. Hell, if things went really well he might be back in front of us in a week’s time to deliver that good news.
The hints and winks that we were on track for something good on Sunday continued all week.
But then on Saturday, this was suddenly thrown into reverse and when Sunday came, sorry, “no change”, you’ll just have to wait for another couple of days.
How can this be when the government’s own road map said we could reopen if there were fewer than five cases on average and this is where we are at?
The Premier’s answer was that “we have had a significant outbreak and we cannot properly understand all of the elements until these test results come back”.
This sort of makes sense, I suppose. Better safe than sorry.
But in actual fact, in this case to be safe is to be sorry.
If we can’t unlock when there are seven new cases, six of which are attached to an existing outbreak, when are we going to be able to?
And how can we have any faith that if we reach these numbers again, Andrews, on the advice of Sutton et al, won’t throw us back into lockdown?
You can’t. Even Jenny Mikakos, who some of her colleagues regarded as bit of a panic merchant when she was health minister, reckons this is nuts, calling the delay “paralysis in decision-making,” tweeting “this was a very cautious target” and “the risk is manageable,” adding the “set reopening is gradual & safe so any delay is unnecessary”.
The only explanation for the delay that makes sense is that despite the reassurances that things are all better now in contact-tracing world, the government still doesn’t trust its own ability to get on top of an outbreak.
And that’s pretty scary when you remember that by world standards the current situation in Victoria barely counts as an outbreak at all.
There are now roughly 53 cases in NSW, 100 in Victoria –—barely a difference.
I don’t need to tell you the difference between the regimes that the two states are under, you could you see it for yourself if you caught a glimpse of the crowd at the NRL Grand Final on Sunday.
It isn’t just the difference between where we are and where they are that is dispiriting from a Victorian point of view, it’s the difference between the reassurance NSW people can have that their government will act proportionately and Victoria where no one can know from day to day what Dan will do next.