Lockdown has triggered a wake-up call for the nation

Cut away the spin and it is clear the nation’s second-biggest city has been forced into an expensive and debilitating two-week lockdown on the basis of false assumptions and limited actual cases of Covid-19. As the dramatic claims used to justify keeping Melbourne citizens confined to their homes have proved to be wrong, the rhetoric from local politicians and health officials to justify their actions has continued to escalate. Melbourne remains a city under siege, but the culprit is not the Covid-19 virus.

One positive from the experience has been to sharpen the focus of the federal government to do better on the things it can control. This includes quarantine, vaccination and setting limits on how it will provide financial support in future state lockdowns. In future, payments will become available once a suburb, town or state is declared a commonwealth hotspot for more than a week. The commonwealth’s hotspot definition is 30 locally acquired cases over three consecutive days and a lockdown of more than one week. State and territory governments will fund business support measures. As editor-at-large Paul Kelly writes on Saturday, it is essential for the commonwealth to impose limits on endless fiscal support, resist moral hazard and enunciate new principles as the fight against Covid operates in the recovery phase. Victoria will receive assistance in this instance but would not qualify in future on the numbers recorded to date in the current lockdown. The new limits should make state leaders think twice before ordering snap lockdowns in the future.

As things stand, Victorian citizens are being traumatised by overzealous officials who lack confidence in their ability to manage even a minor scare. The numbers tell the story. On Friday, the latest official figures for Victoria were four locally acquired cases in the previous 24 hours and two cases acquired overseas. Victoria’s total case numbers from both domestic and quarantine sources were 72 positive results and no lives lost. NSW has 32 cases. Globally, there were 471,828 cases in the same 24-hour period to Friday and 130,021 deaths from the pandemic. Despite Australia’s obvious good fortune, residents of Melbourne continue to suffer some of the most draconian lockdown provisions in the world, with no indication of when the restrictions may be lifted.

With the lockdown in place there appears to have been a conscious decision by Victorian authorities to dial up the rhetoric to justify their actions. Victoria first pointed the finger at South Australia and the commonwealth. Officials said the initial infection had come from a lapse in quarantine in the neighbouring state. They blamed Canberra for not doing enough to boost quarantine facilities. On Friday, when the existence of a separate Indian strain of the virus emerged, Victorian officials also pointed at NSW, claiming it might be responsible for this part of the outbreak. NSW rejected the suggestion, saying there was no evidence that it was true.

Along the way, Victoria’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, described the virus as a “beast”, warning that it had “moved faster than any other strain we’ve dealt with, and we’re seeing transmission in settings and circumstances we’ve never seen before”. On Tuesday, Victoria’s Covid-19 logistics commander, Jeroen Weimar, mentioned “at least four incidents” where people unknown to each other had transmitted the virus through “fleeting contact”. This was later shown to be incorrect when two of the people involved tested negative.

Continued rhetoric about the dangerous nature of the new variant is starkly at odds with the number of infections. But the toll being taken on Victorian citizens is substantial and scandalous. As Victorian editor Damon Johnston reports, soaring numbers of children and teenagers are self-harming, battling suicidal thoughts and suffering eating disorders as a result of the long-term trauma of the pandemic and last year’s marathon lockdown. A confidential 47-page Andrews government report reveals alarming levels of mental health emergencies among youths in February and March this year. In the six weeks to March 28, average weekly emergency presentations for children and teenagers aged up to 17 was running at 319, a 27 per cent increase on the 251 cases for the corresponding period last year.

If there is a silver lining to the current crisis in Victoria, it is that it has forced the federal government to take greater stock of its responsibilities for quarantine and the vaccine rollout. A new Covid-19 taskforce will be headed by General John “JJ” Frewen and will direct all vaccination efforts within the federal government. Scott Morrison says the new taskforce will “give us the opportunity to step up another gear”.

Learning from past mistakes, the Morrison government will push states to make vaccination of aged-care workers mandatory. It also has reached agreement with Victoria for a purpose-built quarantine facility. The commonwealth will pay for the building and the state will fund its operation. Ownership of the facility will return to the commonwealth once the pandemic has passed.

After being accused of abandoning his state in a time of need, Josh Frydenberg has pushed back at the incompetence of Victorian leaders. “The most powerful statistic is that, if you take out the initial nationwide lockdown, Victorians have been subject to 140 days of lockdown, whereas the average across the other five states and two territories is just six days,” the federal Treasurer said. Nonetheless, emergency commonwealth payments of up to $500 will be handed to Victorians laid off during the second week of the lockdown. The scheme is similar to relief given to victims of natural disasters and will be paid directly to affected workers. We agree with the Prime Minister and state leaders that the best thing to do is ensure that states, territories and cities are opened up as quickly as possible to ensure payments are not necessary. But the Victorian government again has shown it is not up to the task. An abundance of caution must be matched by an abundance of competence.