Patrick Carlyon: Mandated behaviours have no place in Victoria’s immediate future

Andrews should promise there will be no return to drastic mandates, even if doing so whiffs of the politics of power as much as the health of the people.

A short break for Premier Dan Andrews might ordinarily double as a mid-winter respite for many of us. No one can begrudge his time off.

Yet the timing is unfortunate.

Covid is fighting back. There’s talk of a third wave. In the absence of firm leadership, a resurgence of the virus has also inspired a resurgence of the Covid catastrophists.

“Mandatory” ought to be a dirty word in a state where people, not long ago, were scolded for walking on the beach or watching a sunset. It connotes the separation of loved ones and lonely death.

Being told what to do, as opposed to individual choice, conjures the oppression of brutal regimes of history, such as Victoria in 2020.

Yet the possibility of cruel restrictions has not been comprehensively removed from the shifting list of Covid scenarios ahead.

People are choosing to wear masks outdoors as Covid cases rise in Melbourne. Picture: Nicki Connolly

Business groups speak of fear and confusion. Health lobbyists, on the counter side of the argument, also speak of fear and confusion.

Into this vacuum go demands for fresh rules. Masks in schools. Masks in shopping centres. Working from home.

The hospital system will be strained, we are told. Elective surgery stands to be cancelled once again, and The Alfred hospital has already flagged the need for such unwelcome measures.

The instinctive reaction? Haven’t we heard all this before? And if such rules were to be reintroduced, who would follow them after such being bludgeoned for so long by blunt instruments of control?

The doomsayers, and the Australian Medical Association deserves special mention, have feasted on projections of horror and suffering, perhaps inspired in part by a marked lack of leadership which appears to have descended upon Victoria.

True, people everywhere are decidedly unwell. Everyone who disembarks an international flight seems to be sniffling or worse. People speak of weeks of spluttering, of throats freshly sore from week to week, of symptoms that cannot be shaken.

Yet they generally fall short of being drastically sick. Stories of acquaintances, of friends of friends, being admitted to hospital, are thankfully few.

Hospital admission numbers may be rising, but they appear to be sadly over-represented by people who are not fully vaccinated.

It’s easy to be cynical about the motivations of the Andrews government, given the residual contempt for its overreach of 2020 and 2021. Into the furnace comes new Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas. She is on training wheels. She has refused to publish modelling on Covid cases, hospital admissions and deaths.

Yet her first major decision was the right one. She ignored the advice of acting chief medical officer Ben Cowrie, who urged the compulsory wearing of masks in school and shopping contexts.

The regressive symbolism of such recommendations, of once again having to submit to powers thought to be relegated to history, is beyond the tolerance threshold of many Victorians.

Her rhetoric contrasted with the once unquestioned sanctity of the “medical advice”.

She spoke of Victorians being empowered “to make their own decisions”. As others have pointed out, such a line could have been lifted from the placards of Melburnians who last year protested against government overreach.

Such official thinking is to be welcomed. Yet Victoria’s leadership seems oddly feeble at a pivotal time.

Minister for Health, Mary-Anne Thomas, first major decision was the right one. Picture: David Crosling

Four senior ministers stepped aside at the same time last month. Each offered plausible reasons for moving on. Yet the collective departure exposed vulnerabilities at the top.

James Merlino, Martin Foley, Martin Pakula and Lisa Neville were well-placed to apply their experience until election day. True, some of them made mistakes. Yet they grasped the unexpected effects of a collective disrupter such as a pandemic.

Their resignations have left behind an untested and anonymous bench of novice ministers. The newbies have not led in such unpredictable circumstances.

The cynical assumption goes that the new ministers will be forced to look up, as did their predecessors, for the instructions of supervision from Andrews himself.

In its leader’s absence, the Andrews government projects a provisional quality. Thomas looks to be alone, if not lonely, in confronting conflicting stakeholders who have sharpened their lines over more than two years.

Andrews may have deeply divided opinions. He has often opted for prescriptive policies which produced unintended consequences.

But what we need now is clarity. Andrews must underscore a more enlightened approach to public health, even if doing so brings into question the unnecessary pain of hard-line policies of the past two years.

Mandated behaviours have no place in Victoria’s immediate future. Andrews should promise there will be no return to such drastic settings, even if doing so whiffs of the politics of power as much as the health of the people.