Dan Andrews cops a serve for lowering the net for tennis
The Australian Open attracts hard-chargers, always looking for an edge. With more than 70 players off the practice courts and confined to hotel room quarantine after flying into Melbourne with COVID-infected passengers, Novak Djokovic served up a laundry list of demands, others ordered in food to rescue their imprisoned palates and some complained nobody had told them that hard lockdown was on the cards.
To be fair, it’s just a handful of players kicking up a fuss; others have posted social media clips of amusing and creative practice workarounds in their quarantine cells, and New Zealand competitor Artem Sitak has confirmed the claim by Victorian authorities that players were given fair warning about the uncertainties they faced by signing up for a pandemic grand slam tournament, assuming they were paying attention and not stringing a racquet at the time.
And Sitak no doubt spoke for many fellow competitors when he said: “I think we need to put some things into perspective, where a lot of Australians right now cannot get back home because of restrictions and we, as foreigners of over a thousand people in Australia, are going to be competing in a grand slam earning a lot of money.”
Premier Dan Andrews had the right instinct when he resolved to try to keep the Open open, even if he exposed himself to the glib suggestion, which his callous partisans had directed at stricken small business during lockdown, that he was putting a higher value on the dollar than on human life. As we’ve repeatedly argued, maximising economic activity is an imperative for human wellbeing, not just for revenue, although it’s easily forgotten that without sustained productivity, all social goods — health, welfare and education, the lot — begin to disintegrate. This is not a charter for recklessness but for pragmatic judgment informed by expert advice and with a comprehensive understanding of myriad costs and benefits now and into the future.
Victoria’s economy is especially dependent on international students, and it’s perfectly understandable that Mr Andrews had hoped to get many more of them to return to campus faster. But in candid remarks on Monday, he acknowledged it simply may not be logistically possible, notwithstanding the tennis arrangements leaving more ample quarantine capacity as a legacy. And of course bringing in plane loads of tennis players and overseas students is a risk about which sensible people may make different calculations.
In any event, Mr Andrews now appears more conscious of the claims of expatriate Australians — many in financial straits and under great stress — who are waiting for flights and quarantine hotel vacancies to come home, not to mention the plight of interstate Victorians who must secure a permit to return.
Mr Andrews is in a predicament partly of his own making. Lacking effective and supple public health machinery, and perhaps the right temperament for such a complex challenge, he relied too heavily on extreme measures and self-righteous rhetoric. Hence the oversized anger from some Victorians when their strongman Premier appears suddenly accommodating to financial interests.
In NSW, Premier Gladys Berejiklian eschewed the school principal moralism, gave no hint of assuming people were immune to economic damage in secure jobs, and pursued a balanced and flexible policy keeping business as open as possible. If Mr Andrews were more measured, his people would be more willing to cut him some slack.
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It’s tempting to dismiss the lockdown lament of visiting tennis pros as gamesmanship, just like challenging an adverse point to see if the umpire is a pushover.