Promises of removalists’ retribution were all hot air

The NSW removalists who locked us down have been fined just .00299 cents for every Victorian whose lives they stopped.

We were promised a reckoning for the three Sydney removalists who crisscrossed Victoria, forgot to wear masks, did not co-operate with authorities, spread a virus and stopped the lives of 6.681 million Victorians.

The “book” was going “to be thrown” at them. On Tuesday, the men were still being officially labelled as “infamous”.

So what did this “book” amount to?

3AW’s Neil Mitchell toted the numbers a couple of weeks back and found that the removalists could face fines of about $45,000 each.

The removalists at work outside the Ariele Apartments. Picture: Channel 7

These included a $10,004 penalty for not keeping accurate records, a $10,904 penalty for providing false/misleading information and a $21,810 fine for refusing to comply with COVID-19 directions such as mask-wearing.

“These people have tricked, and lied, and covered up,” Mitchell said, channelling an anger expressed by COVID-19 commander Jeroen Weimar.

“Potentially that’s endangering lives.”

A complex DHS investigation ensued involving police from two jurisdictions, analysis of CCTV records across the state, logbooks and phone records.

What did the investigation conclude? That the men had not done much wrong. A $200 fine would be issued to one of the three men for not wearing a mask.

There was no penalty for refusing to tell authorities where they had been. For hampering the need for knowledge upon which our health and livelihoods hung.

The NSW crew have been fined $200 for one not wearing a face mask.

In the end, the men have been penalised .00299 cents for every Victorian whose lives they stopped after July 8.

You might ask: what price, freedom?

Let’s consider the mixed messaging here. An Echuca publican has been fined more than $20,000 for opening against the rules.

That’s a hundred times more than the penalty against the men who put a state in lockdown and triggered most of the 190 positive cases in this state.

Those in home isolation may be especially galled.

As a member of one of the 20,000-odd households in home isolation, I await a day-13 test result from a householder who was exposed to the virus at school.

Residents of the Ariele Apartments have been in quarantine for 14 days. Picture: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

It’s been an odd time. The chief preoccupation has been waiting in vain for the Department of Health to answer a call.

DHS likes its rules, and that fact may ordinarily be a comfort. But when the 14-day isolation period ends, on the proviso of a third negative test, you cannot automatically walk out the front gate and do a jig.

No, you must wait until DHS officially tells you what you already knew – that you pose no risk to the community.

The theory of this “exit process” sounds reasonable. But when the phone call or email can take days to arrive – after 14 days of hard lockdown — the adherence to bureaucratic box-ticking fades to the urgent need to do something, anything, beyond the driveway.

Those of us who do not wait for official confirmation of what we already know have been threatened with penalties. You must comply.

So why didn’t the same rigour apply to the three morons who gave us this mess?