Premier’s missteps on road to another lockdown

What’s happening in Victoria is deadly serious and much of the problem can be contact-traced to the Andrews Government and its mishandling of the coronavirus crisis. By far the biggest error made by Daniel Andrews was changing his mind on his initial request for ADF involvement. This was an ideological decision imposed on the Premier by forces of the left and the unions to employ out-of-work security guards.

If the ADF had been deployed in Victoria we would not now have the whole of Melbourne about to go into another full lockdown for six weeks, the NSW-Victoria border closed and under guard by the ADF and Federal Police and Victoria, like the rest of Australia, would be getting back to business. Victoria and the rest of Australia has been badly let down by the Victorian Labor Government.

Peter D. Surkitt, Sandringham, Vic

Every decision by Daniel Andrews has been swayed by one additional factor — is it going to help the Labor Party? Decisions have always been made that preserve Labor’s voting base, which includes the Victorian ethnic community. The shielding of Cedar Meats from public gaze and the awarding of contracts for hotel security were no more than sweeteners for mates. Andrews has been able to get away with practices such as these in normal times, but now he has been caught out and Victorians are paying the price. Let’s hope the whole country is not engulfed in a second wave of COVID-19.

Peter Cornish, Neutral Bay, NSW

The hard lockdown of residents in Melbourne’s ghastly 1960s housing commission towers is unfortunate but necessary. It takes a disaster to highlight the shocking plight of refugees isolated from their land, culture and all that is meaningful. What life can it be to survive in alien confinement, with no hope of integration?

While global authorities have come under flak of late, the solution cannot be to pluck a few saved souls from local horror and place them into a helpless vacuum somewhere else. There has got to be a better solution.

Sandra Finster, Auchenflower, Qld

Without any meaningful consultation or warning to the residents, Daniel Andrews ordered a hard lockdown of public housing estates in Kensington and Flemington where about 3000 residents live. More than 500 police are on “patrol” to ensure no one leaves. These estates are resonant of concentration camps and look as if they were organised by the People’s Liberation Army.

The higher Andrews has risen in popularity the further he has to fall, and fall he will with an almighty thud. He turned a blind eye when 10,000 protesters, against serious medical advice, broke social distancing laws. The Premier and the police went limp when they should have told the protesters to stay home. The Goons (had they still been alive) couldn’t have matched his hotel quarantine fiasco. Meanwhile, public anger is rising at the financial devastation being copped by the private sector and this will only get worse with the new six-week lockdown.

Coke Tomyn, Camberwell, Vic

The hard lockdown of social housing towers in Melbourne has revealed the social disaster that is occurring in Victoria (“Chaos, stress as families are ‘boxed in’”, 7/7). If two adults and seven children living in a small three-bedroom apartment is a typical example of family life in inner city high-rise buildings then the future of Victorian society looks bleak. How on earth can refugees and people from other vulnerable groups break out of the cycle of poverty, welfare, crime and drug and alcohol addiction if this is the type of life they face? Are these types of living conditions typical in other capital cities? Or is there something amiss in the socialist republic of Victoria?

Riley Brown, Bondi Beach, NSW

Spare a thought for the Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, as he jumps from one crisis to another, possibly on the advice of health officials to round up the illusive coronavirus. Here is our modern-day Don Quixote tilting at sandcastles, boat ramps, surf boards, high-rise buildings and now all of metropolitan Melbourne as he valiantly tries to right all wrongs. Comedy it may seem, but a look at the face of the Premier shows bewilderment. As the crisis spirals more and more out of control perhaps this unfolding story will turn to tragedy, with the Premier falling from his high horse.

Tony Pearce, Wynnum, Qld