Patrick Carlyon: Victorians facing summer of Freedom Envy
Victoria is doomed to a summer of Freedom Envy, with restrictions on who we can see and how we can see them continuing long after they’ve been discarded in NSW.
Patrick Carlyon
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Premier Dan Andrews lost the crowd some time ago. Yet he still seems unaware that no one wants to listen anymore.
Everyone knew someone who was breaking the pettiest and cruellest of his lockdown rules. In between blaming and castigating us, the Premier claimed he understood Melburnians were “fatigued’’ by the world’s longest lockdown, as if we’d all walked too briskly around the Tan and needed a breather.
In truth, we’re exhausted, broken in some cases, and acted accordingly.
Victoria’s uniquely blanketed approach to the virus fails all the comparison tests of recent days.
Our case numbers are soaring, and will continue to, while NSW seems to have tamped its outbreaks with more selective measures.
That state’s advantage of being several weeks ahead of Victoria will grow more stark in coming weeks.
So, too, in NSW’s accelerated roadmap, the “slowly, slowly” rationale of Andrews will increasingly gnaw as irrelevant, misplaced and unfair.
NSW has proudly flicked the switch to what you can do as opposed to what you cannot. There, school returns will not be needlessly complicated by selective start dates. Here, you may face school drop-off and home schooling on the same day.
How will this improve “fatigue” levels?
NSW will discard masks outside. We won’t.
At 80 per cent double jabbed, masks will not be worn at the office in NSW. They will be here.
In what has probably been the most ignored of Andrews’ edicts, no one can come to your home for some time yet.
When 80 per cent are fully vaccinated, you can host 10 people. NSW will allow 20.
You can go to the pub in NSW. Here, when we catch up to the same vaccination rate, you will have to sit down outside a pub.
Our path is clear enough.
We are doomed to Freedom Envy.
We will be subjected to continuing restrictions on who we can see and how we can see them long after such tight controls have been discarded in NSW.
Who could blame Melburnians if we do what is best for us and, to quote Andrews, do the “wrong thing”?
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