When it comes time to vote, remember the brutal lockdowns Dan Andrews enforced
At election time, Premier Daniel Andrews should be judged on what he did to Victorians over the past two years, not allowed to pretend brutal Covid laws were never made.
Opinion
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In a week it will have been two years, to the day, since an official armed with a red megaphone told Formula One Grand Prix ticket holders queueing at the Albert Park circuit that the event was cancelled.
A few hours earlier, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews had made the decision the race could proceed — but minus a crowd.
Before he even spoke, some of the wealthy drivers had fired up their private jets and fled Melbourne.
They haven’t been back since and the race was not only cancelled on that fateful Friday but again last year.
Chief health officer Brett Sutton was painted as the villain as Andrews and his ministers tried to dodge the fallout from a last-minute lockout of fans, many of whom had flown into Australia from overseas.
We all remember the mantra at the time, repeated again and again by the Premier: “We act on the best health advice”.
This excuse was used month after month to justify every unpopular decision that affected brow-beaten Victorians for all of 2020 and most of 2021.
Only when it became bleedingly obvious to everyone once the Omicron Covid variant began spreading like wildfire did the health advice get ditched quicker than a worn tyre on a Mercedes F1 car.
The March 12 Albert Park gate lockout in 2020 should be the marker point for what Melbourne, and wider Victoria, has endured for the past two years.
It should also be an anniversary to neverbe forgotten, and used in assessing the Andrews government as the November state election at the end of this year edges closer.
Mr Andrews and his senior sidekicks must be judged on what they did over those 24 months and not allowed to pretend they have always been of the view Covid was a virus to be lived with.
November’s election on the 26th is largely considered a walk in the park for Labor, with a lower house majority of 88 to 55, but it shouldn’t be.
Life in Melbourne in 2022 is nowhere near as attractive as it was on that Friday morning when the reign of CHO Sutton and Daniel Andrews launched the most destructive partnership in Victorian history.
Victorians endured the longest Covid lockdown anywhere in the world, let alone Australia. Over-the-top health advice banned children from playgrounds – an order that nobody has yet apologised for – while skate parks were sealed off with police tape.
Adults were threatened with fines if they dared sip an alcoholic drink from a plastic cup with a straw, and police used capsicum spray, riot shields and batons to chase protesters around suburban streets.
Week after week, for two years, households were banned from having visitors in their own home, including parents or children not living there.
Exercise, unbelievably, was limited to a 5km radius and only once a day.
You could walk with one other person only, and the only businesses open were petrol stations and supermarkets. You can’t make this stuff up and we all need reminding of how over-the-top this political lockdown was.
Then came the completely useless idea that an after-dark curfew was needed where the people of Melbourne were banned from going outside between 9pm and 5am.
Remember, this is not ancient history.
A media release from August 16 in 2021, so just over six months ago, on letterhead from the Premier’s office, laid out a two-week lockdown extension with a curfew.
In that release this is what the Premier said: “These restrictions are hard work for every Victorian. Everyone wants this pandemic to be over, but the rules are in place for a reason — we know they work and if we follow them together, we’ll be able to lift them sooner.”
By the August 29 we were still locked down off the back of 92 cases. It was lockdown six and ended up lasting 78 days, ending on October 21. It started with just nine cases of Covid — let’s never forget that.
Thankfully, it was the last of these over-the-top reactions from a Premier who seemingly got some bizarre pleasure in locking down his people.
An arrogant dismissive attitude toward any critics, including from those on his own side, became a trademark of this two-year period from the Premier.
As this November election approaches, we must never forget the damage this lockdown obsession delivered to Victoria.
From bungled hotel quarantine to deaths in aged care and a swath cutting through hospitality, major events and sport, we were on our knees for far too long.
Incredibly, a cowed public seems to be in a mood of forgiveness, even with a crippled economy and destroyed businesses.
It’s surely a case of never forgive or forget, and never let the history of Victoria 2020 and 2021 be rewritten by those with an agenda to pretend it never happened.
Governments of all political persuasions made dreadful mistakes — from the bungled vaccine rollouts by Canberra, to WA and Queensland’s absurd border lockdowns.
But it was in Victoria that the sledgehammer of state government regulations strangled the population.
You just wonder what the current medical advice is given on Wednesday in Victoria 28 people died and we had 4123 fresh cases.
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