Susie O’Brien: Victorians let down again with third lockdown

As Victorians prepare to suffer through a third lockdown, it’s now clear we can no longer trust our leaders to manage hotel quarantine.

This third “circuit breaker” lockdown is more evidence that the State Government is failing the people of Victoria.

Even Premier Daniel Andrews sounded defeated when he delivered the bad news this afternoon.

There are now 19 active cases of the coronavirus in this state, all linked to hotel quarantine.

Health officials understand where this outbreak came from, how it’s been spreading and who the close contacts are.

But they have so little confidence in their own abilities to manage less than 20 cases that they are locking us all down. Again.

None of these cases are in country areas, but people from Melbourne to Mildura, Wangaratta to Warrnambool, will have to stay at home locked down for five days, starting tonight.

For the next five days we will only be able to leave the house for shopping, permitted work, exercise and caregiving.

Victorians have been let down by their leaders. Picture: Getty Images

And yet tennis players and staff have been classified as permitted workers and will keep playing.

The Australian Open tournament will continue, but with no spectators.

This shows an appalling lack of judgment by the Premier.

How can he tell six million Victorians across the state to stay home locked in their homes and still allow a major sporting event?

We can’t play sport or go into work or send our kids to school, so how can this be justified?

It’s irrelevant that the stands will now be empty – no one much was turning up anyway. We know better than the Andrews Government that it doesn’t feel right at this time.

The Premier may claim the strain is “moving at a velocity that has not been seen anywhere else in the country”, but I can’t help feeling more could and should have been done to prevent this step.

We can no longer trust state governments like ours to manage the situation.

There now needs to be national guidelines for hotel quarantines, which should be moved to isolated areas instead of in the middle of large cities.

The management of hotel quarantine should be handed over to the federal government, as should the issue of state border closures.

Victorians are tough and we will get through this.

We will do what we are told and come out the other side. But it should never have come to this.

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