Shannon Deery: Premier Daniel Andrews will return to Covid mess

Like a parent who left their teens home alone for the weekend, Premier Daniel Andrews will come back to find his house in a bit of a mess.

It’s now been three months since Daniel Andrews made his last public appearance.

It was Thursday, March 4, and he joined deputy James Merlino and acting emergency services minister Danny Pearson at an event to spruik a raft of changes to support paramedics.

He was next due to front a media conference the following Tuesday, March 9, in Healesville to announce a landmark Indigenous truth and justice commission.

In between those dates he spent a now infamous weekend away at the Mornington Peninsula with his family.

He hasn’t been seen since.

As sudden political departures go there has been nothing like it in Victoria since prime minister Harold Holt went missing while swimming off Point Nepean in 1967.

And just like the Holt disappearance, the Premier’s incident has spawned a raft of conspiracy theories.

Premier Daniel Andrews at his last public appearance. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Andrew Henshaw

About the only thing that has reached a general consensus is that the official story peddled by the Premier’s office about his fall is less than entirely truthful.

There’s nothing necessarily hard to believe about someone slipping and falling while getting ready for work. But still the story hasn’t sated the appetite of the electorate, which believes there’s more to the incident.

It seems after a year of near-daily Dans, it’s just too hard to believe he’s down and out.

Still, senior government sources remain confident he will be back this month, pending a final sign-off by his doctors.

And like a parent who’s left their teens home alone for the weekend, Andrews will come back to find his house in a bit of a mess.

On the day of his fall Victoria had recorded its 11th consecutive day of no locally acquired cases of coronavirus.

After getting to 86 days straight, the virus returned and the state was thrown into its fourth lockdown.

Premier Daniel Andrews recuperating from his fall in hospital.

It was quickly obvious it was not going to be a straightforward seven-day circuit-breaker lockdown either.

As early as three days into the fourth iteration of Victorian house arrest, the signs were well and truly there that this was going to drag on.

The rhetoric rapidly changed from short, sharp action to expectations of more pain to come.

It should have come as no surprise, though we had all held our breath and hoped for better.

But no other lockdown, with the exception of the February circuit-breaker, had been under a week.

And it was quickly evident in February that the five-day snap lockdown was overkill, and probably didn’t need to be half as long.

But every other lockdown or imposition of restrictions has been at least two weeks.

If lockdown does end this week, you can bet it won’t be a throwback to life as we knew it two weeks ago.

Melbourne was placed in its fourth lockdown. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Paul Jeffers

All the telling signs are there that it will be a painfully slow return to life as we knew it.

The regional restrictions that remain in place across country Victoria, despite no cases there, is evidence of that. Still regional Victorians can’t have visitors to their home.

Density limits are back in place, funerals and weddings are capped, and offices can only be 50 per cent full.

If he does return this month, the Premier will again have to oversee another emergence from lockdown.

Businesses need support and confidence, students need to get back to school, the CBD and the arts and events industry need serious help.

If it’s not done sooner, he should immediately deliver a road map to recovery so Victoria knows exactly what lies ahead. We can’t simply keep flying by the seat of our pants.

Victorians deserve to know where they are headed.

Former Magpies star Dane Swan expressed a community view that is simmering away. Picture: David Caird

If not, the growing frustration that is appearing among the electorate will only be exacerbated.

People are exhausted and they’re worried.

They want to know everything is going to be OK, and that we are closer to the end point than the beginning.

Dane Swan slammed the government in a series of tweets last week.

But because he’s “just a footballer” he wasn’t taken seriously.

But he’s a Victorian and what he argued seems to be emblematic of a community view that is quietly (and not so quietly) bubbling away.

People want someone to blame, and they want someone to take out their frustration on, even if they don’t articulate it.

And that is going to be a challenge for the Premier going forward. Repairing public sentiment and trust, in the face of an opposition often dubbed ineffective, and avoiding the trap of his government becoming lazy, arrogant and a little too risky.

— Shannon Deery is Herald Sun state politics editor