Tom Minear: Daniel Andrews’ aggressive lockdown tactics risk backfire

Dan Andrews is breaking the spirits of millions of Melburnians who have done the right just to target the rule breakers.

There’s a running joke among Victorians: the hardest part about a one-week lockdown is the second week.

That’s what we told ourselves before the second week of lockdown 6.0 produced another two-week extension, a curfew and shuttered playgrounds. No one was laughing after that.

It’s Daniel Andrews’s shock-and-awe strategy to stun Melburnians into action.

“We need to go harder and we need to go longer,” the Premier declared.

“We have come so far, we have given so much, we have done so well — but we have to do more.”

The problem for Andrews — and the problem for Victoria — is that people may not have much more to give.

For millions who have done the right thing through more than six months of lockdowns, these latest restrictions are a heavy blow. Parents are devastated to lose the trip to the playground that was the only escape for their kids. And while the curfew may not change our day-to-day stay-at-home lifestyle, it feels like a cruel overreach.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has tightened Victoria’s restrictions. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

The inconsistencies will grate.

Why can’t someone kick the footy in the park with all of their housemates?

Why can’t someone drink a beer on their walk after work, when they can drink a coffee surrounded by a crowd at a cafe in the morning?

Most of us will push through, as we have done so bravely over the course of the pandemic. But by toughening the rules, and by sending out the police chief to promise a “huge blitz” of enforcement, Andrews risks breaking the spirits of some who are out of patience and energy.

He is taking this risk because he thinks it is the only way to pull those already flouting the rules back into line.

Instead, by targeting them so aggressively, it may make them even less likely to comply.

As it stands, someone can’t drink a beer on their walk after work but can drink a morning coffee surrounded by a crowd at a cafe. Picture : Ian Currie

There may not seem to be a political cost for Andrews, given he has the federal government’s backing for his reliance on lockdowns.

That said, what if this doesn’t work? What if more rules are broken and case numbers keep climbing?

After almost 18 months, compliance was always going to waver. Andrews wants to avoid months of further lockdowns, as we all do, but he does not seem to have factored in the fatigue already slowing us down.

Monday’s headlines also brought a new lockdown in Darwin, a two-week extension in Canberra and 478 cases in New South Wales — their worst day of the pandemic. No wonder we are tired.