Coronavirus: Just try to kick a Victorian when they’re in lockdown

Victorians know our government is doing its best under tough circumstances. We are not a virus basket case.

Victorians are not chumps; we know the state is doing its best under tough circumstances. Picture: David Crosling

Greetings from within the Greater Melbourne boundary.

This is our life now, in stage-four lockdown: since August 2, for an hour a day, one member of our household, wearing a mask, has been allowed off the property to buy food and necessary items within a 5km zone. It is hard not to go mad, to be honest, and I am not entirely sure that I haven’t.

In the first week we wrote our names on bits of paper and put them in a coffee cup. One of us held the cup and rattled it, the other drew a name out and read it aloud. The victor grabbed the car keys and raced out the door.

This freedom lottery was fun at first. However, as there are only two of us in the household, we became tired of seeing the same old people win. To spice it up, we wrote down 13 more names on bits of paper and put them in the cup. These were the names of our three dogs and 10 chickens.

Unfortunately, despite the initial excitement of declaring, for example, Teddy, Dulcie or Petunia to be the winner, when it came to the crunch they were of no usein fetching food, forcing a redraw until one of us won. This seemed like cheating, so we gave it all up.

In the second week, to keep up our spirits, we vowed to practise mindfulness and take time out to remember there were people who had much harder lives than ours.

The best way to do this was to sit on the couch, in front of the fire, with a nice beverage in hand, and binge-watch Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons on Netflix.

This is a British TV showin which investigative journalists become voluntary inmates in the world’s most volatile prisons, with all their intimidation and brutality.

In most episodes, the conditions are horrific. This pity-porn helped deliver feelings of gratitude, despite our present struggle.

However, one episode revealed a prison with a section where the inmates had been allowed to set up their own businesses, providing the guards were given a profit share. There was a vibrant market economy humming along; prisoners were having haircuts, getting massages and even socialising at restaurants. One prisoner had his wife living with him, running the kitchen in his hospitality venue.

This was a blow. We had to switch off.

Now, we are now on the cusp of the third week and, despite our attempts to remain lighthearted, serious concerns remain.

After more than 100 case-free days, New Zealand is back in lockdown, with authorities scrambling to locate the source of latest coronavirus infections. The implications of this for our “virus-free” states and territories are a real worry.

In NSW the numbers keep bubbling along, and in Victoria, despite everything, the numbers don’t seem to be coming down as much as hoped.

Yes, the lockdown concept is a sledgehammer solution, yet no decision-maker has proposed an alternative, so we must have faith and do as they ask. We hope that civil order is maintained.

Of real concern is the squabbling among our politicians. The last thing any of us need to see right now is the people who are supposed to lead us out of this situation fighting among themselves.

The most demoralising contribution to the conflict comes from a Victorian Liberal backbencher, Tim Smith. His agitated and histrionic perspective on our situation can be heard at its worst on Sydney radio, where he feeds red meat to those in NSW who have always regarded Victoria with derision.

In much of the media, the criticism of our government and public systems is unrelenting — in the evenings, it seems that our Premier is talked about on Sky News more than any other person alive.

Of course, our media is here to hold people to account, but in this quarter there is a continuous barrage of hypercritical content where inevitable (and admitted) human errors and failings are revisited continually and worked over with astonishing focus. It is hard not to feel at the bottom of a nasty pile-on.

One night, I turned on the television to see a banner across the screen: “Socialist republic a virus basket case”. Another night, a different commentator had a graphic asking “Is this a pandemic?” while he editorialised the whole thing was a beat-up.

Victoria is routinely berated for jeopardising the “economic recovery” and Victorians are regularly insulted by being told that, when it comes to Daniel Andrews, we suffer Stockholm syndrome. This week my fellow columnist Nick Cater even wrote of us in these pages as “chumps”.

Of course, it is a free country, and people can say what they like. And I am here to say that this is a pandemic. Victoria is not a socialist republic. We are not a virus basket case. The people here do not have Stockholm syndrome — there are sound reasons that our state government has enjoyed high levels of support. And Victorians are many things — polite, genteel, community-minded — but we are not chumps.

Rest assured, our government will face the people at the next election. In a couple of years, Victorians will cast their vote as they see fit. But right now we have more pressing matters at front of mind.

These are matters of survival, but survive we will.