Dan Andrews is chasing the elusive Santa Claus effect.
Despite all the catastrophising about Victoria’s position, some experts and the government believe the state can still hit zero, or close to zero, cases.
But in order to get there, Victorians may have to face another six weeks of lockdown, either in its current form of hard settings or with some minimal changes around the edges.
No-one is suggesting that Andrews or his CHO Brett Sutton are going to suddenly open up and risk a repeat of NSW.
Driving this thinking is Andrews’ fears about the Victorian hospital system becoming overwhelmed, which he is not prepared to risk.
If it proves the case that it takes six weeks to drive down the cases to zero or close to it then that will put us all in the middle of October, which will seem like a very long way down the track.
Under recent forecasts, however, this becomes tantalisingly close to the critical 80 per cent double dose vaccination target, which could be in late November.
This is important because Andrews has made it really clear that 80 per cent, and not 70 per cent, is his clear target for meaningfully opening up Victoria.
So assuming the case numbers can be driven down, which is possible but will be hard, Andrews will be asking himself in mid October what is the best way ahead.
He will be wanting to alleviate the psychological pressure on a cooked community but won’t want to surrender what he sees as the hard-fought gains.
Andrews will want to do what he did after the killer 2020 wave and give the state a decent summer holiday, and the political strategy will be linked to this.
It’s quite possible that there will be some tinkering around the edges on the lockdown rules but that the state remains heavily restricted until close to December.
In fact it’s probable that this will be the case.
None of this is to say that Andrews is doing this because he wants to.
His ideal world is that we go back to 2019 settings and he canters to the 2022 election on the back of a can-do, big-build infrastructure agenda.
Where this all becomes awful for millions of (mainly Melburnians) is that there is no clear and obvious pathway to opening up properly any earlier than late November.
Where it becomes politically tricky for Andrews is that he is confronting a community that has had a total gutful of restrictions.
This happens when you are running a strategy predicated on zero or near zero cases when fighting the Delta strain.
There is pressure from within Labor to lift some of the more draconian restrictions but the Labor caucus must first defeat Brett Sutton’s relentless caution.
Business is understandably demanding a road map out of these onerous restrictions so people at least know roughly where it’s all going to land.
The only real certainty is that Labor wants to deliver a Merry Christmas to an increasingly traumatised community.
Ho, ho, ho.
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