Credit for success is due as is responsibility for all the failures

Beachgoers enjoy the sun at Melbourne’s St Kilda beach, Victoria. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Daniel Pockett

Farewell to the ring of steel. Goodbye to the 25km travel limit. Victoria’s state of disaster is over and the government’s crisis cabinet has met for the 99th and final time.

Daniel Andrews’s announcement on Sunday of a further easing of restrictions coincided with a new bright backdrop and “Stay safe, stay open” slogan, but his timetable to COVID normal life was characteristically cautious.

Victoria now looks to have defeated the second wave, recording nine consecutive days of no new cases and no new deaths.

Andrews called the outcome “unique in our country” and of “international significance”. Indeed, it is a remarkable accomplishment that many of his critics deemed unachievable.

From 11.59pm Sunday and the next easing on November 22, personal freedoms taken for granted before the pandemic will be increasingly reinstated, while the restaurants, pubs and cafes smashed by the lockdown will be able to host more customers.

For the time being, mask wearing outside the home remains compulsory and if employees can, they must work from home, meaning many will not have been in their office for eight months, a development that has truly upended traditional attitudes to the way we work.

Provided case numbers stay down, Andrews has signalled that additional easing will be detailed in a fortnight, including a likely increase in the numbers allowed to visit households so that more family members will be able to come together for Christmas.

These announcements will be made two days before the Victorian budget, which Andrews has promised will see an “unprecedented investment” in infrastructure and spending to start repairing the extraordinary damage to the state’s economy.

Declaring Victorians should feel optimistic and proud, he acknowledged there “has been a lot of pain, a lot of hurt”.

“There’s a need for healing, for investment, for all sorts of repair on a very personal level as well as in broader terms, but the most important thing that all of us have to do is to stay the course on this, to be as stubborn as this virus,” the Premier said.

Of course, if Andrews can claim credit for the success in driving down case numbers and deaths, it follows he should be accountable for the government’s failures, most notably the mismanaged hotel quarantine scheme that  contributed to the second wave.

Jennifer Coate’s final report examining the decisions and actions taken in setting up and running the bungled scheme is due by December 21, and could be released weeks earlier.

More statements from key players could be made public by the inquiry this week, while the government will soon detail its response to Coate’s proposed quarantine model set out in her interim report released on Friday.

Andrews must get the future quarantine model right, even if it involves substantial expenditure, while Coate needs to prove the sceptics wrong and ensure the right people are held accountable for the original fiasco.