Daniel Andrews has performed so well, but the virus could beat him

Daniel Andrews prepares to hold a press conference to discuss the latest COVID-19 figures. Picture: David Crosling

The sight of empty footpaths and traffic-free streets in the city centres of London, New York and Paris takes getting used to. The world is on the backfoot and the bug causing all this, to date, defies the efforts of the world’s best scientists to defeat it. We have been brought to our knees. Some nursing homes are proving to be reliable incubators for it and their residents sadly do not always survive.

In Melbourne the disease is proving well nigh impossible to contain. Locking down entire suburbs is easy to say but extremely difficult to implement.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is just about the best I have seen at handling the huge and hectic press conferences that have become part of his daily routine.

Nonetheless there must be a strong chance that Andrews will fall foul of the respect of voters because of it. We have no idea as to when a vaccine will become available, but it seems it will not be soon enough to save him. Up until this point Andrews had provided the kind of stable, sensible leadership voters crave. Politics is rarely fair to those who participate; indeed, it can be cruel, especially to those who fail to see the writing on the wall and get out when most people still admire them.

Neville Wran knew it was time to go when he couldn’t restrain himself from giving journalists a profane character assessment.

The urbane Wran faced a constant battle to keep his fiery temper under control, at least in public. Previously he was a foul-mouthed firebrand who would rip people to shreds at the drop of a hat. So pervasive was his command of the spotlight that in an age when campaign songs were still in vogue, “Wran’s our man” was the slogan encapsulated by Alan Morris and Allan Johnston in their memorable ditty.

The first of the genre — It’s Time — was absolutely spot-on. It was perfect for the circumstances, with the Coalition having been in power more than two decades.

The reins of Liberal government had been handed to Billy McMahon. He had waited in the wings for too long and it showed. His size and somewhat puny voice were in stark contrast to the tall, handsome, silky-voiced Gough Whitlam. Before you got to the substance, the visual differences were so striking. That jingle was hummed and strummed by folk with little or no interest in politics. Who can forget the video with almost every name in Australian arts and entertainment crammed into a studio and singing along? It was legendary and contributed to the election of a legend.

The first move by Whitlam when he and deputy Lance Barnard took over and allocated all of the portfolios to themselves was to order the withdrawal of Australian troops from Vietnam. This was more than a symbolic gesture. It demonstrated the end of one era and the beginning of another. Anyone who at the time tried to suggest that the Vietnamese were as suspicious of the Chinese as we were would have been dismissed as crazy. They would of course have been absolutely correct.

I have never forgotten being terrified of the Chinese from the age of six when I was informed by Sister Annette that they were coming down to take over. I absorbed everything Sister Annette said, or at least I believed I did. I remember going home to Mum and Dad after school and complaining that they had lied to me about God being in heaven because we had recited the Lord’s Prayer at school that day and it clearly said: “Our father who aren’t in Heaven”.

One issue that will always be present in schools is bullying. It can be physical and verbal, and in this era the internet has presented a whole new area in which this can be perpetrated. It did not take long for bullies to realise how powerful this might be. Every school must now have a policy on dealing with bullying because it is ceaseless.

Kids don’t like to report they are being bullied, but this plays right into the hands of the perpetrators, which is a problem for teachers and headmasters. This suits the bullies right down to the ground. If bullying is to be stamped out in schools, perpetrators must be named and shamed. Imagine being shamed before the whole school. Bullies never prosper when light is shone on them. They work well only in dark spaces.

The UN has never functioned as it should. Largely funded by the US, it regularly bites the hand that feeds it by passing resolutions critical of the US, and it would hardly surprise if President Donald Trump decided to reduce that funding. Trump does not consider himself bound by any set of laws or precedents. He will want something positive for his contribution. He sees the world in simple terms and believes strongly in the old adage: you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. That’s the world according to Trump.