Daniel Andrews’ hotel quarantine boast is tone deaf

Daniel Andrews should be careful when boasting about the state’s hotel quarantine system — 800 Victorians died as a result of how the last one was handled.

As you all know by now, last year more than 800 Victorians died as a result of the slapdash way Daniel Andrews’ government ran the state’s hotel quarantine program.

For some months after this disaster the Premier was, unsurprisingly, reticent in spruiking the wonders of how we do things in Victoria. In this space anyway. But that was then.

A new year has dawned and we are now apparently best-in-show with, the Premier explained on Tuesday, “50 points of difference” between how we run things and how they do things interstate.

In fact, we’re now so good “we’ve had the rest of the country copying what we’ve been doing.” Not that he could be sure if they’ve actually followed through because, well, that’s not his problem “but they’ve committed to do it”.

Not only that the gap between us and them is set to widen as “we’re looking to change again, so there will be further work for other states to do.”

All in all our system is “one of the best” and he is “very confident we have a system that is worthy of being copied by others. It’s not about boasting, it’s a fact.”

Daniel Andrews is probably correct when he says Victoria’s hotel quarantine system is better than everyone else — but it should be. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

It might well be a fact — I hope it is — but it is certainly a boast. And a pretty tone-deaf one too, when you remember the death toll that flowed from his first go at hotel quarantine. Listening to him, you could almost forgive him for forgetting for a second that we’re all back in masks because this magnificent new system — the one that everyone else has agreed to copy — has managed to infect three people.

Luckily, fingers crossed, touch wood, it is looking like we have escaped a more widespread outbreak.

And to be fair to Andrews, he is actually probably correct when he says Victoria’s hotel quarantine system is better than everyone else.

But then after what happened last year you should bloody well expect it to be. That said from the way he was speaking there is no doubt Andrews is fully alive to the dangers of the new strains of the virus.

It is as he said a “dynamic” situation and “as the virus changes so our public health response has to change”.

Just how much our public health response is going to have to change in the next few months while the danger from the new variants grows and we wait for the vaccine remains to be seen.

James Campbell is a Herald Sun columnist

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