Daniel Andrews passes on COVID-19 infection blame at ‘light speed’

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announces stage-four lockdown of the state on Friday. Picture: getty

Daniel Andrews appears to be rewriting the rules of the pandemic as he goes, in a new and tortured narrative that seeks to shift blame to anyone but his government.

The Premier’s claim he doesn’t do politics from his COVID-19 rostrum also defies credulity as Victorians, once again, are plunged into a stage four lockdown. Political risk appears to be driving his decisions more than any other point in his decision-making. He cannot risk a third wave.

The seasoned Labor leader, unparalleled in his mastery of political spin, is again using the classic tactic of deflection to steer attention away from what appears to be yet another failure of quarantine protocol and inadequate processes by Victorian officials.

His claim we are only now dealing with a mutant variant of the virus that according to Andrews travels at “light speed” ignores the fact it has been around since September last year.

The Berejiklian government had to deal with a case of the UK variant in a Sydney hotel in January. No outbreak. Queensland and Western Australia have also successfully stamped out any outbreak of the same strain. It could be argued that Andrews’ unforgiving response of a temporary stage-four lockdown, beyond that of other states, is more a consequence of the delay in Victoria’s application in dealing with it.

Statistics provided to federal health authorities this week show Victoria fell behind in its contact tracing earlier in the week when the weekly common operating picture was upgraded to a daily reporting event. On Monday, the data from Victoria showed it still had 31 identified close contacts linked to the hotel quarantine worker awaiting notifications. This was, officials claimed, because they had the wrong phone numbers for some people and others hadn’t answered their phones.

The following day, Victorian officials proudly notified that overnight they had improved their contact tracing by using ­administrative data — presumably such basic things as licence data from VicRoads — to contact people. This was never a problem for NSW, which didn’t seem to have the same issue.

Divisions have also been opened up between state and federal Labor on the issue of returning Australians. Anthony Albanese says Scott Morrison isn’t bringing enough home. Andrews is now questioning the entire quarantine system and suggesting only humanitarian cases should be allowed in.

This is despite the eagerness with which all the states signed up to the hotel quarantine system 12 months ago, on the insistence that they run it themselves. They wanted to control their workforces and manage their communities, unsurprisingly. Not any more apparently.

As Andrews becomes more risk-averse, the obfuscation becomes greater and so too does the blunting of the health message, with people having become accustomed to the restoration of freedoms. Perhaps the only way to wake people up is to impose what look like over-the-top restrictions such as those Andrews has just imposed.

Nevertheless, Victorians overwhelmingly continue to support their Premier. And this makes it all the more difficult for Scott Morrison to navigate the issue. People react dimly to criticism of the premiers and the Prime Minister would be conscious of the need to tread carefully with his language as the Labor states’ attempt to re-engineer the national agreement on hotel quarantine.