Last week, news seeped out that former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews had been controversially appointed chair of the leading youth mental health service, Orygen.
The backlash was harsh and immediate. And for me, it came with a personal insight into the trauma this announcement has inflicted on families impacted by decisions he made in government.
Ange Shearman is one of my dearest and most longstanding friends. She lives outside Geelong with her husband, Brent, and beautiful daughter Matilda. She went public with her story with a petition to get Orygen to rethink its choice of Andrews (accessible by visiting www.change.org)
“I lost my 16-year-old son to suicide in April 2020, during the first of Dan Andrews’ record six lockdowns. Louie might have been ground zero in the suicide statistics that were a consequence of the inhumane lockdowns that impacted our young people, but sadly, he is now one of many. Last weekend, my son would have turned 21.
“Instead, our family and his many friends had a fundraiser to support youth mental health charities. We raised over $25,000 for local regional mental health services that have been left decimated by recent cuts by the state government. I don’t want any more young people to be a statistic like Louie. I don’t want any more families to suffer the existential shattering that occurs when you lose a child to suicide. His Dad, his little sister and me – we will never be the same. We have been to hell and back. But today we are in shock.
“How can a divisive ex-premier in Andrews, who has wreaked havoc on Victoria, presided over the longest harshest lockdowns in the world, with the highest suicide rates, be appointed to chair Orygen, a prominent and respected youth mental health body. The optics alone are horrendous. It’s like Orygen and the ex-premier are gaslighting the most vulnerable people in our state. It’s unbelievable and I’m asking for your support to reverse this. Orygen must think again.”
Of course, my friend Ange wasn’t the only critic. Another former premier, Jeff Kennett, who had previously chaired the mental health body Beyond Blue, slammed the Andrews appointment as “destructive”.
On Tuesday, former treasurer and Victorian Peter Costello labelled Andrews’ pandemic management as “moronic”.
So, see this appointment for what it is – a desperate attempt by Andrews to try and salvage his reputation as the magnitude of the mess he’s left behind becomes more and more apparent. The only mystery is why Orygen agreed to be the fall guy for his reputational rebuild at the risk of their own. Over the course of two years, Victorians endured more than 250 days of lockdown, with most schools and many businesses closed, people allowed out for only an hour a day, travel restricted to within 5km of their homes, and a 9pm to 5am curfew.
At times, children were banned from using playground equipment with the then-premier chastising people for wanting to watch sunsets from their cars. Old people died alone in nursing homes, all because Andrews and his overzealous chief health officer thought that people should stop living from fear of dying.
When many Victorians eventually decided that they were sick of having their lives stolen from them, the Victorian police met freedom protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets and mass arrests.
Dr Ferdi Botha, of the Melbourne Institute for Applied Economic and Social Research, reported that the prevalence of “psychological distress” in Australia rose from 6.3 per cent pre-pandemic to 17.7 per cent by early July 2020, with Victorians reporting the poorest mental health in the country.
In the independent review of Australia’s pandemic response by a panel, including former public service heads Peter Shergold and Peter Varghese, and senior business leader Jillian Broadbent, it was found that 44 per cent of Victorians had moderate to severe depression due to Covid restrictions, compared with 32 per cent living elsewhere in Australia.
And then the links to suicide. In a study of how the pandemic and its consequences influenced suicide in Victoria, the National Library of Medicine concluded that Covid was an “important background stressor that can erode one’s wellbeing, sense of agency and connectedness to others” – even though the actual rate of suicide, during the lockdowns, had not increased.
This was the comment made by Orygen chief executive Professor Pat McGorry on Melbourne radio as he tried to stem the outrage over the Andrews appointment. And yet – as he well knows – suicide is often a lagging indicator.
If an individual suffered mental health harm caused by the lockdowns, manifestation to suicide might not be immediate, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a link. Indeed, in a press statement released by Orygen only last month, they said: “There has been an alarming increase in death by suicide for young people in Victoria … August data released by the Coroners Court of Victoria … shows that deaths among the 18-24 demographic have increased by 48 per cent compared to the same time last year.” The statement went on to say: “The trend so far this year (2024) is 6 per cent higher than the same time in 2023, which is the most deaths by suicide the state has seen.”
It’s a shame McGorry forgot to mention his own recent research when defending Andrews.
Given all that Victorians suffered, you can understand their dismay, indeed anger, at the appointment of Andrews. From their vantage point, watching his hour-long daily press conferences, he was oblivious to the mental health impacts he inflicted and almost seemed to revel in deploying even more draconian measures.
As well as reminding them of a time they’d mostly prefer to forget, the appointment has also highlighted the fact Australia has so far had no serious official study into what went right and what went wrong, to try to ensure that the next pandemic is better handled.
In a country that’s accustomed to having royal commissions into crises large and small, from the Black Summer bushfires to a Darwin juvenile detention facility, the low-level study the Albanese government has commissioned into Covid specifically excluded the actions of state governments, even though a future pandemic is all but certain.
An obvious place for any fair dinkum inquiry would be the fate of the carefully prepared National Pandemic Plan, which had been most recently updated in August 2019, that specifically ruled out long-term border closures and shutting schools and workplaces; and that was essentially junked in panic in early March 2020.
Dr David Nabarro, the World Health Organisation’s special envoy on Covid, has said that while lockdowns were an effective way for governments to buy time at the start of the pandemic to prepare their health systems, they should not have become a “default response to outbreaks”. “You keep the number of cases down” said Nabarro, “by having really good surveillance and detection and isolation and detection” but there was a “huge cost” to the “100 per cent lockdown approach”.
A cost Victorians are still paying for with their lives.
Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636.
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