How millions are paying for Victoria’s lax protection
Victorian families, businesses and students are being left behind as the rest of the country returns to a new normal. Yet we are the ones being blamed for this devastating lockdown, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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This week I saw first hand the cruelty of the latest lockdown inflicted on vulnerable Victorians due to the gross incompetence of the state Labor government.
At a major Melbourne hospital, I watched as family members were turned away from visiting their ailing loved ones with strict new guidelines banning entry to visitors under 18 and limiting patients to just one visitor a day and just for an hour. That’s the policy at The Alfred, Caulfield and Sandringham hospitals.
Of course the policy is well intentioned but that doesn’t alleviate the emotional pain of desperately ill people who want to spend a few minutes with their children and grandchildren.
A number of other hospitals, including Royal Melbourne, Box Hill and Maroondah, allow up to two visitors a day, again with strict time limits, and limit under 16s entry to certain wards. Even patients who are in their finals days have limits imposed on the number of visitors they can have.
It is heartbreaking to see Victorian families, businesses and students left behind as the rest of the country returns to a new normal with kids at school, businesses open, restaurants, cafes and pubs full, and even thousands of fans attending football games.
The pandemic was imposed on us but the mishandling of the crisis by the Andrews Government has seen Victorians bear far more economic and emotional pain than necessary. Melbourne is a ghost town and throughout the metropolitan area there are many businesses which barely survived the lockdown that are unlikely to survive this one.
From day one, Victoria had the harshest restrictions in the country. We were the only state that prevented people from visiting their mothers on Mother’s Day and were the slowest in lifting restrictions.
And yet those illogical measures that were supposed to save us from a second wave failed because infected overseas travellers were left unmonitored and untested in hotel quarantine and outbreaks were not adequately managed.
The indiscriminate nature of the current lockdown is as maddening as the incompetence and arrogance of a government that would rather blame citizens than acknowledge its own ineptitude.
The Glen Eira and Bayside council areas are home to more than 250,000 Victorians and have a total of five infections but are under the same restrictions as hot zones with 100-plus active cases.
Even areas with zero infections, such as the Mornington Peninsula and Cardinia shires, are being forced into lockdown, needlessly putting more people under mental and financial strain.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist