Steve Price: Inflammatory claims used to justify trigger-happy lockdown decisions

A real estate agent, a union official and an economist are leading the Covid fright campaign and Victorians are right to be fed up.

A media conference held on Tuesday this week fronted by two Andrews Government Ministers and two public servants will go down in Covid history.

Covid-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar won’t want to be reminded about this, but he claimed the Covid virus was passing between strangers in a phone shop, or a display home. It was clearly an inflammatory claim.

Weimar is no medical expert but an economist who used to run various public transport departments as a public servant.

On Tuesday he used words like “fleeting contact” and “stranger-to-stranger” contact. He said “people looking at phones in a shop could spread Covid”.

You wonder what qualifies and allows Weimar to say things like that, even if he used to run a train network.

Such alarming news needed to come at least from someone with a health background.

Step up Dr Brett Sutton — who at least is a doctor, and seems bemused when asked aggressive and pertinent questions by the media — then piled on with his own scare campaign.

Sutton said: “If this strain is allowed to circulate unchecked, as it has in other countries, many people will die.”

That claim was made despite the fact the last death from Covid in Melbourne was actually last November — sadly a woman in her 70s.

Brett Sutton was the only one with any medical credentials at that panic-inducing press conference. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Wayne Taylor

Indeed, this year in Australia we have had one Covid death in the entire country — an 80-year-old man from Queensland who was a returned traveller in quarantine after visiting the Philippines.

That’s a total of three deaths — as tragic as they are — in six months compared with, for example, a road toll total in Victoria so far in 2021 sitting at 94 as of Friday.

Can we then really believe Dr Sutton and his claim of the potential for “many people to die”? Not might die, but will die.

Dr Sutton then referred to the Indian variant of Covid as a “beast” – yet another inflammatory and unnecessary beat up.

So, in the space of an hour at a media briefing minus the Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews or even Acting Premier James Merlino, two public servants and two Government Ministers, Martin Foley and Luke Donnellan, scared people in a disgraceful justification of yet another Covid lockdown.

Foley then trotted out some spin doctor’s words, changing the tag for the latest cluster of Covid from the Maidstone cluster to the South Australian cluster.

It was silly, petty politics from Foley taking a crack at a Liberal Government in SA from a Minister who sat in a Cabinet that oversaw Melbourne’s hotel quarantine disaster that killed hundreds.

Most of our readers and most Victorians — including those who live in Melbourne — don’t sit and watch these media performances from these people. Until the latest lockdown they were too busy trying to earn a living and recover from the world’s toughest and most frequent destruction of their livelihoods.

If you do watch carefully, you can’t help but come away with the feeling much of the over- the-top language is designed to not explain in detail why things are happening but to justify trigger-happy lockdown decisions.

Melbourne has suffered more than 167 days in lockdown since March last year and is headed for 23½-weeks in lockdown — or put simply, being locked up for six of the last 15 months.

The rest of Australia has had an average of somewhere between four and six days.

Victoria's Health Minister Martin Foley is a former union official and political staffer with an Arts degree. Picture: Getty

To say Victorians are angry is a major understatement. Gone are the days when the absent-from-duty Dan Andrews and his Northface jacket were some humorous social media hashtag.

Even the army of Dan supporters who rally in a vocal social media defence of the Premier would have had enough by now.

Increasingly at these daily torture sessions it’s Dr Sutton or Weimar answering the media questions, which is not surprising given the background of the politicians.

Health Minister Foley for example is a former union official with the Australian Services Union and a political staffer with an Arts degree from Monash University.

Minister Donellan used to be a commercial real-estate agent and Labor staffer with a Commerce degree.

So, at that infamous Tuesday media performance — aside from Dr Sutton — we had panic-induced fear mongering from an economist, a real estate agent and a union official.

No wonder Victorians have lost faith in the decision-making processes supposedly driven by the very best medical advice available.

Trust is something all politicians crave, and trust is not something the public have in the Andrews Government right now.

Many believe the latest lockdown to be an over-reaction when compared with how the other Commonwealth States have dealt with outbreaks.

Absent Premier Dan Andrews must sense this from his sick bed, and this forced a rare public statement from him on social media the day after that Tuesday horror show.

He ended his Facebook post with this: “Be proud of what you’ve achieved and be proud of our state too. Keep fighting Victoria.”

Who we are actually fighting, I guess, depends on where you are standing.

Good luck Victoria.

The Minister for Disability, Ageing and Carers, Luke Donnellan is a former real estate agent and Labor staffer with a Commerce degree. Picture: NCA NewsWire

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