Sydney is paying the price for its smug arrogance over Covid management

Melbourne is one big village largely working together, while Sydney is a group of villagers throwing rocks at each other — and it’s costing them lives.

Vaccinations are the only answer to Australia’s Covid crisis. Picture: David Crosling

Sydney is not Melbourne. Trust me, I know.

Have a look at the accompanying photograph of legendary radio presenter John Laws and myself taken ringside at the world title fight between Anthony Mundine and Antwun Echols in Sydney, 2003.

As you can see by my facial expression,, I’m not particularly happy. Just half an hour earlier I had been sacked from my job presenting the breakfast radio show on Sydney talk station 2UE.

I had lasted 18 months after being parachuted into the toughest replacement job — until then — of taking over from Alan Jones, who had defected to competitor 2GB with a massive financial deal worth millions of dollars.

Price consoled by 2UE workmate John Laws at the Mundine v Echols WBA super-middleweight title fight. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Being Sydney, and the way Sydney does things, plenty of people in the media, along with my own work colleagues, knew I was being knifed before I did.

In fact, while driving to a meeting with radio bosses at a five-star hotel in the city I took a call from a journalist asking how I felt about being shunted off breakfast.

I told him it wasn’t true but then walked into an ambush.

In Melbourne this would have been a much more civilised parting of ways. It would have been done during working hours, in an office and wouldn’t have leaked.

But Sydney is brutal.

Sixteen years later I was standing in the foyer of a bank buying Japanese yen for a trip, leaving that night, when it happened again.

Not sacked this time, but asked to present a program I wasn’t contracted to do, so I took 12 months off on full salary instead.

That’s Sydney for you; rooster one day, feather duster the next. Sydney is, as I have often described it, a group of villagers throwing rocks at each other.

Melbourne by comparison is still one big village largely working together.

It’s Sydney’s arrogance that now sees it in the middle of a deadly Delta-variant Covid outbreak, with its smug attitude a year ago to Victoria’s four-month closure exposed.

Sydney isn’t remotely similar today to a locked-down Melbourne in 2020.

Melbourne has been largely ‘one big village, working together’, to beat back Covid. Picture: David Caird

Bunning’s and Office Works are still open to walk-in customers and Sydney, unlike Melbourne, has never had a night-time curfew.

At least they have cancelled the Bunning’s sausage sizzle, but that would have been done with great reluctance.

Essential retail and essential workers have never been adequately defined.

In Melbourne last year I required a letter from my employer, renewed weekly, to be on the road more than 5km from home.

The Ten Network needed me in the studio on Monday and Wednesday and more than once I was stopped at a police roadblock with officers wanting to know why I was on the road.

Sydney has had random police patrols but workers have not had to produce employer-generated work permits.

The Melbourne system put the responsibility of the declaration on the bosses and limited people movement.

The other big difference between the two cities, apart from the arrogance and smugness, is Sydney has a more outdoor lifestyle.

Sydney people believe it’s their right to be outside on a beach in the middle of a pandemic not wearing a mask.

Masks were just adopted in Melbourne, while in Sydney they continue to be seen as an ugly annoyance to be avoided.

While Sydney is more like ‘a group of villagers throwing rocks at each other’. Picture: Gaye Gerard

Physical disputes are still breaking out over the insistence of QR-code entry in Sydney, while in Melbourne, with a couple of poor exceptions, they have just become part of our life.

Sydney, with a steadily rising death toll and more and more people in ICU and on ventilators, has sadly let the virus genie out of the bottle. It’s now too late for a harsher lockdown and Sydney people will resist, only making the breakout worse.

Sydneysiders will not tolerate a night-time curfew and a tightening of leave home rules.

The only answer now for all of Australia is vaccinations and the end of lockdowns permanently.

We need strong national leadership and an agreement from all the states and territories on a date to aim for.

I’m plucking one out of nowhere and have chosen Melbourne Cup Day — November 2 this year.

That is a little more than three months away and if we need to, we can pluck a name out of the air as well. Perhaps borrow from the Brits and call it Freedom Day?

Mask wearing has been simply accepted in Melbourne as a means to suppress virus transmission. Picture: David Crosling

Declare Melbourne Cup Day a national, not just Victorian, public holiday and encourage people to celebrate the race that stops the nation. And from dawn on Cup Day 2021, Australia will not have any more state-by-state lockdowns.

There will be no more border closures crushing tourism and anyone not vaccinated by the time the race runs, then that’s your choice.

Between now and then we will have debates about vaccination passports, and nobody will be allowed into Flemington without proof of the jab.

It’s the goal we need in our lives. Without hope of a resumption of a normal life again, people give up.

Let’s use the example set by the 2015 cup winner, Prince of Penzance.

As the field jumped it was a 100-1 chance ridden by a female jockey — no woman had ever won the great race.

Three minutes and 23 seconds later Michelle Payne had made history.

Our odds of doing this are about the same but let’s at least have a go.

LIKES

Perth’s Peter Bol inspiring track athletes all over Australia with his efforts in the Olympic 800 metres.

Post-lockdown meal at Restaurant Aru in the CBD. Talented people cooking delicious food.

Increased debate about vaccination passports – bring them on.

MasterChef judge Jock Zonfrillo’s new book Last Shot – inspiring.

DISLIKES

Media hysteria over some Olympians having a few drinks too many on the flight home.

The Melbourne City Council’s inability to rid the city of kerbside beggars; they are mushrooming by the day.

Dumping our golden girl swimmers from Tokyo in Howard Springs quarantine without any fanfare for their return home.

Australia Today with Steve Price can be heard live from 7am weekdays via the LiSTNR app.