Out of its darkest place, Melbourne’s long walk to freedom

The world’s most locked-down city is free at last from Daniel Andrews’ shackles.

Melburnians enjoy a taste of freedom after passing the 70 per cent vaccination target. Picture: Getty Images

It wasn’t exactly Freedom Day. It felt more like a loosening of the shackles for the long-term incarcerated. But for the people of Melbourne, who have been locked down longer than anyone else on the planet during this pandemic, the first scraps of freedom fed to them on Friday by Dan Andrews were eagerly devoured.

People emerged from their homes en masse, like zombies rising from their crypts, to eat, drink and play again. It was fun, it was needed, it was a relief. But only to a point.

The Victorian Premier, zealously cautious to the end, refused to grant the same freedoms to an exhausted Melbourne as were given to the people of Sydney by his NSW counterpart, Dominic Perrottet. As leading epidemiologists have admitted, there are no logical health reasons that would justify Victoria being slower to reopen than NSW.

But Melbourne’s so-called “freedom” on Friday, after it passed the 70 per cent double-vax mark, looked very different to Sydney’s at the same stage. Unlike in Sydney, Melbourne’s indoor retailers on Friday remained shuttered, cinema doors were locked, indoor pools stayed closed, masks were mandated for schoolchildren, most workplaces remained off-limits and fewer people were allowed into restaurants and pubs. This was no Freedom Day for desperate small-business owners who have endured six lockdowns in this city. For no good reason, fewer freedoms will also be granted to Melbourne than Sydney once Victoria reaches its 80 per cent double-vax target around November 1.

Despite its people doing the right thing and getting vaccinated in admirable numbers, Andrews still refuses to set Melbourne free – he has merely transformed the city from a maximum-security prison into a low-security correctional centre. He has ensured a highly vaxxed Melbourne will sleepwalk its way back into the real world when it urgently needs to regain its mojo after the most damaging 19 months in the city’s history.

Former deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth and epidemiologist Catherine Bennett tried this week to politely highlight this cruel discrepancy between Sydney and Melbourne, stating that, for the Andrews government, “the interpretation of inconclusive evidence in a conservative way has become a trademark approach, and one reason why Victoria’s approach has often been more restrictive during the pandemic”.

“Both states (NSW and Victoria) are similar enough they could move out of lockdown at the same vaccination-target-determined rate,” they said.

Andrews hates the perception – true as it is – that Perrottet’s bold but sensible reopening plan for Sydney has forced him to push his modest reopening plans for Melbourne faster than his ultra-cautious instincts would normally allow. But Andrews has also been forced to reopen Melbourne now, at least partially, because he has used up his political capital and authority with his repeated and extended lockdowns.

To travel around Melbourne in recent weeks was to see a city in almost open revolt against Andrews’ lockdown rules. Many of the same people who had adhered religiously to his Covid-19 restrictions during last year’s four-month lockdown are now double-vaxxed and have had enough. In recent weeks they gathered in small but still illegal numbers in parks, in homes and in backyards, sharing a drink and a laugh and enjoying the human company denied them for almost three months.

If Andrews had extended Melbourne’s lockdown any further he knew he would risk losing control of the city and damaging his own political authority. If he tries to impose yet another Melbourne-wide lockdown after vaccination rates exceed 80 per cent, he would likely face a public backlash that could threaten his political career.

For all of these reasons, it is likely Melbourne’s reopening will be permanent regardless of future infection rates. From now on, Melbourne will be forced to live with Covid just as Sydney and the rest of the world do.

History will not be kind to the Andrews government when the story of Australia’s response to the pandemic is written. Yes, Victoria had some bad luck and yes, like all the states, it was badly hamstrung by the federal government’s slow rollout of vaccines.

No government in the world has been perfect at handling this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic and no one is suggesting Andrews did not try to do his best. But the outcome for the people of Melbourne was a dismal one.

Victoria has had far more Covid-19 infections than any other state, almost double the number of deaths as the next state (NSW), far longer and harsher lockdowns than any other state, its economy has been hit harder than any other state and it has had more violent protests. No other state took such cruel measures against its own people, such as closing children’s playgrounds or having police check takeaway coffee cups to make sure they did not contain alcohol.

Then there was last year’s hotel quarantine debacle. The families of the 768 people who lost their lives in that Covid outbreak continue to grieve quietly, having never got a satisfactory answer as to who was responsible for the tragedy. Several ministers and public servants lost their jobs in a subsequent and farcical inquiry, taking the fall instead of the Premier. Many Victorians have been remarkably accepting of these failures.

Having arrived back in Melbourne earlier this year after four years living in Washington, it seemed to me as if a sort of Stockholm syndrome had taken root in my home town where many lockdown-addled people accepted the word of their state government without question. Sure, lockdowns were justified to save lives and they were a necessary tool to a certain point. But they also needed to be balanced against the damage they caused to mental health, to children, to education and to businesses and livelihoods.

Yet until recent months, neither Andrews nor his chief health officer, Brett Sutton, nor even some sections of the Melbourne media, seriously canvassed these broader issues. The advice of Victoria’s health officials was seen as the Holy Writ and those who dared question it were portrayed as granny killers.

Throughout the pandemic Andrews all but ceded his leadership to the advice of his health officials until recently, when the Delta outbreak forced him to abandon his Covid-zero aims and adopt a wider perspective. Even when the Andrews government sought modelling to inform its reopening plan, it chose the ultra-cautious Burnet Institute, known for its excessively pessimistic Covid forecasts.

Andrews was on the extreme end of the world’s pandemic response by locking down Melbourne and the lives of its people for longer than any other place on the planet.

Historians will one day ask why this was not more heavily questioned. Was every other city on Earth wrong and only Melbourne right? Did this make Andrews some sort of one-off global Svengali when it came to dealing with Covid? Or does the fact Melbourne will forever be burdened with the tag of the world’s most locked-down city suggest the Premier could have brought a little more perspective and balance to his handling of the pandemic?

Either way, Melburnians are now resurfacing to finally resume their lives.

Let’s hope Andrews quickly ends his overreach. Let’s hope he starts to encourage people back into their offices so Melbourne’s near-dead CBD can be revived. Let’s hope he relaxes the overly cautious Covid-19 rules in Melbourne’s schools, which will still lead entire schools to shut down for a single Covid case. Let’s hope he pushes for the city to welcome back international travellers and re-engage with the world. Let’s hope Melbourne is soon as free as Sydney.

In short, let’s hope Andrews better embraces freedom for a city that has suffered much and has done the right thing and met its vaccination targets. Melbourne should now be given every chance to move past this dark chapter to become the fabulous city it once was and will be again.