Enough failure and misdirection: Andrews should go

“You have sat too long for any good you have done lately. Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God go!” So spoke Cromwell when he dismissed the Rump Parliament in 1653. These words apply to Dan Andrews. This current lockdown is just the latest example of his incompetence to govern Victoria. Just compare the conditions with the citizens of NSW.

Every utterance of his at the press conference when this latest incarceration was announced has been shown to be the usual combination of spin, inaccuracies, exaggeration and obfuscation to attempt to cover up the systemic failures of a government which is responsible for the over 800 deaths from those failures to date.

As reported in this newspaper (“UK strain: false facts are more infectious”, 13/2), according to real health experts, the English version of the virus is only marginally more infectious, it can be contact- traced in a timely fashion and the use of the nebuliser supposedly at the centre of the latest outbreak was reportedly known to health department employees.

If the quarantine system used in Victoria is a “gold standard” it can only be comprised of fool’s gold. Never has there been a more graphic example of the old adage “The fish stinks from the head”. In the name of all Victorians, go — before your destruction of our way of life and the economy is complete.

Tony Kelly, Melbourne, Vic

When the pandemic started, and severe restrictions on daily life were imposed, most people accepted the rationale that such restrictions were required to flatten the curve and stop the health service from being overwhelmed. Now the “creeping assumption” (not denied by the Premier) is that the government is embarking on a program of eradication, but that won’t happen.

The Economist (“The endemic endgame is nigh”, 13/2) outlines “ … a growing realisation that the virus is likely to find a permanent home in humans” yet Dan Andrews’s only response to half a dozen cases (caused by a still-inept quarantine and tracing system) is to lock down the entire state. He fails to recognise that life is about balance, the need to find a balance between health and the economy, that his actions are sending businesses to the wall, while he and his colleagues point the finger elsewhere, and continue to receive their salaries and “gold standard” pensions.

No doubt when JobKeeper ends at the end of March, the Premier will release a narrative that the economic consequence in Victoria is all the fault of the federal government, and those suffering from Stockholm syndrome will swallow it. But I haven’t met anyone in the last 12 months who wants to invest in Victoria.

Here on the border we look across the Murray at the sunny uplands of NSW where, although things are not perfect and mistakes are made, residents are led by a Premier who treats them as adults and strives to find that balance. We may have to learn to live with COVID, but we don’t have to live with Daniel Andrews.

Paul Hauff, Wahgunyah, Vic

Katrina Grace Kelly accurately describes Victorians’ meek acceptance or even passionate defence of their Premier’s disproportionate responses to the COVID pandemic (“Scoring political points will come back to bite them”, 13/2). The ballot box may well reward such madness. After all, commonwealth payments have insulated many people from the worst effects of panicked lockdowns, which have even improved life for some.

But they don’t speak for the former occupants of 32 empty premises in my local shopping strip, or the crippling effect on businesses and the wedding outlays lost in the latest snap decision. The only answer to Kelly and other “I’m all right Jacks” is to compare us with the outcomes of a more proportionate NSW response.

John Morrissey, Hawthorn, Vic

More than 6 million Victorians in stage 4 lockdown again. Most premiers with their “open-shut-open” policies clearly want elimination of COVID. You cannot live with the virus when you are importing it daily through international travellers. The livelihoods of resident Australians, not to mention their health, must now be paramount. Overseas arrivals, returning Australians included, must be vaccinated before entering Australia. It is time to close the international borders.

C Granger, Sorrento, Vic