Premier it’s time to follow NSW’s lead and open up Victoria

Premier, you’ve put us through the wringer. It’s now time to follow NSW and reward Victorians who sacrificed everything to get us out of your mess.

Daniel Andrews, it’s time to let Victoria rebuild. Picture: Getty

When will it be enough, Dan?

How much longer must Victorians put up with economy destroying restrictions that other states have abandoned?

Victorians have done the hard yards and endured a harsh and lengthy lockdown to overcome the second wave caused by the Dan Andrews government’s gross mismanagement of hotel quarantine.

There are now renewed calls from leading epidemiologists and business groups for Victoria to follow NSW’s lead and wind back restrictions.

Now, that we are virus-free, with not a single infection recorded in more than a month, why are we still imposing severe restrictions on indoor and outdoor gatherings and workplaces when NSW is open for business and granting greater freedoms to its citizens?

On Wednesday the NSW government announced that venue caps would be scrapped for cafes, bars and restaurants.

It’s time to get back to normal life in Melbourne. Picture: Jason Edwards

While Victoria imposes a 25 per cent capacity rule for workplaces, NSW has no capacity limits.

NSW’s outdoor stadiums and theatres can utilise 100 per cent capacity while Victoria is capped at just 25 per cent.

NSW can have up to 5000 people at outdoor events with one person per two square meters compared to Victoria’s 500 capacity with one person every four square meters.

And, Victoria still has caps on the number of people allowed to attend a funeral, wedding or religious service while NSW has removed such restrictions.

Then there is the mandatory mask rule.

Victorians are still muzzled when indoors, even when socially distanced in offices, while NSW residents are only encouraged to wear a mask if they feel they can’t safely social distance.

They are treated like adults capable of making sound decisions instead of like unruly children who must be threatened with fat fines to behave.

From the start of this pandemic Victoria imposed the harshest restrictions of any state and was the slowest to re-open.

After the first lockdown our glacial reopening saw Victoria be the only state where mothers were banned from seeing their children on Mother’s Day (unless they lived in the same household) and yet we were also the only state to have a second wave of infections with hundreds of deaths.

The rest of Australia has a COVID-19 death rate of 3.5 per million of population.

Victoria has a death rate of 130 per million of population.

Now we are being referred to as the welfare state with Victoria only accounting for around a quarter of the nation’s population but home to 60 per cent of JobKeeper recipients.

We have to encourage people to return to work and fully restart the economy to repair the damage that’s been inflicted over the past seven months.