Towers conjure segregation images

Henry Ergas has written an extremely erudite and informative article about the tragic history of “social distancing” of which I was abysmally ignorant, despite a Melbourne University arts degree in history and politics (“Andrews treads historic path to segregation shame”, 10/7). My shame, of course, but I haven’t been segregated for it; not yet, anyway.

Clearly, those in the lockdown towers are economically and socially disadvantaged by needing public housing in the first place, but the “segregated shame” of that lockdown is that in this mostly affluent country and state of Victoria these towers exist at all.

Previous governments, both Labor and Coalition, have been responsible for public housing for many decades, ensuring those struggling to put a roof over their heads were “socially distanced” from others more prosperous. This pandemic only highlights how iniquitous and dangerous “segregation” of the poor can be for all of us.

Paulyne Pogorelske, E. Melbourne, Vic

Henry Ergas in his usual erudite fashion provides a necessary corrective to yesterday’s anguished letters in support of Daniel Andrews (“Democracy has not collapsed but there are wobbles”). I don’t believe the Victorian Premier would be a student of history other than perhaps the great and glorious deeds of the Labor Party and trade union movement since inception. For this reason, Ergas’s reference to Milan’s rulers of 1630 authorising “vast public processions” against available medical advice (such as it was back then) leading to an uncontrollable outbreak of the plague would be unfamiliar to him.

Ergas’s last paragraph with its memorable turn of phrase — “Having surrounded himself with bag carriers, he has finally lost his grip’’ — is as good a summation of Andrews and his Government as one could make. And yes Michael Angwin (Letters, 10/7) I do hope the Victorian public exercises their democratic right and votes wisely at the next election.

Ashley Georgeson, Cumberland Park, SA

I disagree with Henry Ergas’s analysis of Michel Foucault’s famous theory of social control. He agrees with Foucault that Western governments have sought to impose “minute and constantly monitored differences” between worthy and unworthy citizens.

As I demonstrate in my upcoming book, Combating London’s Criminal Class, Foucault’s influential framework amounts to little more than a conspiracy theory: with the “ruling class” always seeking to protect its power by oppressing the “working class”. No such homogenous ruling class existed in the past, or exists now.

In fact, the core tenets of Western liberal democracy — such as frequent elections, the rule of law and the separation of powers — have always protected the weak and the vulnerable.

Daniel Andrews’s appalling treatment of those in housing commission towers has no theoretical explanation. It’s on him.

Matthew Bach, Liberal MP in Victoria, Blackburn, Vic

There is some justice in Henry Ergas’s location of the Victorian Government among the callous and unrepentant ruling classes of the past. But it is the incompetence that really grates. Those nodding ministers in work helmets who have graced Andrews’s every TV appearance are now exposed as out of their depth when it really matters in areas like health and policing. Their elevation has been achieved not by talent, but to satisfy the factions.

With democracy virtually suspended in Victoria and the economy throttled by the State Government’s draconian restrictions, the spectre of a local Venezuela looms. Oh, but it can’t happen here?

John Morrissey, Hawthorn, Vic

Henry Ergas’s article documents the never-ending connection between poverty and disease; however, the link to families supposedly “cowering in apartments” in Melbourne housing commission towers is tenuous. That the residents are poor immigrants does not alter the requirements of quarantine, which are to control the spread of the pandemic for the greater good.

There is no doubt grave management errors have been made in Victoria but the need to isolate a major source of infection, whether in a five-star hotel or social housing, is not draconian or discriminatory but obligatory — the wealth or ethnicity of that source is irrelevant.

Graham Pinn, Maroochydore, Qld