Road map to despair for 6.6 million Victorians

Illustration: Johannes Leak

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton are not admitting it, but there are realistic alternatives to the devastating road map announced on Sunday.

Restrictions, including Melbourne’s new 9pm curfew, will not be eased significantly for seven weeks, until October 26 — and only then if the tally of new COVID-19 cases falls to a daily average of less than five, over the previous 14 days.

On that basis, Sydney would be locked down today, with most shops closed and residents barred from restaurants, many workplaces or venturing out after 9pm.

Unlike NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s government, which is providing effective leadership in how to live with coronavirus without being crushed by it, the Andrews government, in forcing Victorians to remain bunkered down, will continue to hurt millions and destroy once-viable businesses for months.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews (right) arrives to deliver his daily coronavirus briefing yesterday with Victorian Deputy Premier and Minister for Education James Merlino (centre) and Victorian Minister for Health Jenny Mikakos. Picture: Getty Images

Mr Andrews and Professor Sutton insist such a road map is necessary to avoid a third COVID wave and purport to base their decisions on science and expert modelling. But, as Professor Sutton now concedes, the six weeks for the stage-four lockdown was in some respects “guesswork’’. It remains to be seen how much of the road map towards a normal Christmas also turns out to be “guesswork’’.

What is not guesswork is the impact of the “road to nowhere’’, as Victoria’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry described it, on businesses, jobs and national economic recovery.

Business owners who have been hanging on desperately for months will now see their enterprises fold, as chamber CEO Paul Guerra, a COVID survivor, says. Such owners will now need to look their employees in the eye and tell them they no longer have a job.

While devastating for those workers, their families and their chances of hanging on to heavily mortgaged homes, that is also bad news for the federal budget bottom line and taxpayers nationally. The ongoing decimation of our second-largest state economy will stymie growth across the nation. It comes on top of us falling into recession for the first time in 28 years and the premiers of WA and Queensland — Mark McGowan and Annastacia Palaszczuk — showing all the selfishness of stroppy teenagers keeping their borders slammed shut.

In describing the Victorian arrangements as “hard and crushing news for the people of Victoria’’, Scott Morrison, Josh Frydenberg and Health Minister Greg Hunt were restrained in their response to Mr Andrews’s announcement. The road map, as they noted, will come at an economic cost and a cost to mental health.

The first round of restrictions to be eased from 11.59pm next Sunday — pushing the curfew to 9pm, reopening playgrounds, an extra hour of exercise a day and single “social bubbles” — will do nothing for the economy and jobs. The second round, from September 28, COVID numbers permitting, will have little effect on economic activity.

As we said on Saturday, the arrest and handcuffing of a pregnant mum in her own home in Ballarat last week had the hallmarks of a police state. Sunday’s announcement, too, smacked of a state-knows-best, central planning mentality.

This big-government approach paid scant regard to basic liberties and gave little credence to the common sense of most citizens. Rather than emphasising the importance of householders practising careful hygiene and social distancing when welcoming visitors, for example, so-called “social bubbles’’ for those who live alone will be limited to hosting one visitor at home. Most people are sufficiently discerning to host several different people and avoid the risks of COVID transmission.

Similar arguments apply to business. There is no reason, as Business Council of Australia boss Jennifer Westacott said on Sunday, why businesses should not be given the green light to reopen if they have COVID-safe plans in place and are in areas with no community transmissions. Instead, as peak industry bodies are warning, the road map offers a “death sentence” for many retailers, especially in Melbourne.

Australian Retailers Association CEO Paul Zahra makes a valid comparison when he says the Victorian government is being unrealistic to target single-digit daily case rates before reopening. NSW, in contrast, has remained open and on track with about 10-18 new daily cases during much of August. Melbourne has long been regarded as Australia’s capital of fashion and style, but many retail businesses in the city cannot survive a further seven weeks under harsh lockdown after months of being closed. Nor can many restaurants or the quirky shops in the distinctive lanes.

The Andrews road map fails to provide that elusive ingredient vital to recoveries — confidence. The non-plan lacks the hope and optimism required, as Australian Industry Group chief Innes Willox said, along with clear, measurable steps for businesses to open up. The road map will compound economic, health and social damage.

During his Sunday press conference, Mr Andrews denied he was pursuing a strategy to eliminate rather than suppress coronavirus. That’s not how it appeared, however, with moves to open up in earnest hingeing on daily case numbers falling to less than five. He apologised, as well he might, for “the circumstances we find ourselves in’’. These arose out of his government’s failures over hotel quarantining.

It is impossible to wish the problem away. But heavy-handed big government will exacerbate the devastation it was designed to fix.