Daniel Andrews delivers a snide low blow to afflicted Gladys Berejiklian in Covid-19 battle

The Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews gives a COVID-19 update at parliament in Melbourne. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Paul Jeffers

Dan Andrews says he didn’t want to boast but it seems bar-room brawling is OK.

Just over 20 minutes into his press conference on Tuesday, he threw a political kidney punch at Gladys Berejiklian in what might be her darkest hour.

Not so much as a phone call to his NSW counterpart to let her know he was restricting movement to Victoria among residents living in the southern part of her state covering 25,907sq km. That’s roughly a third the size of Scotland.

“I’ve been too busy to pick up the phone today,” the Victorian Premier lamented.

It was nonsense, of course, but Australia’s federation is becoming increasingly split.

As Sydney confronts another coronavirus wave, there is no sign its interstate rivals have a great deal of sympathy.

Part of this is because of a view that Berejiklian’s government and the Morrison administration were subversively hostile as Victoria battled its 2020 lockdown, which killed hundreds.

Petty? You bet.

Ignore the interstate rivalries and a picture is emerging in mid-2021 of Victoria having probably forged the template to deal with the Delta variant.

The Berejiklian model isn’t working.

Trying to keep open for as long as possible was admirable in ways but it has created another wave that is looking deadly, protracted and unmanageable.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Picture: NCA Newswire/Gaye Gerard

The Victorian strategy of tightening quickly has created an emergency response that can limit lockdown times and, hopefully, economic fallout.

We’re not talking about the pursuit of perfection, rather the most pragmatic way of getting results in a crisis.

Nor is this ignoring the terrible economic pain imposed on business, or the health impacts of shutting down normal life.

Victoria failed the early shutdown test in 2020 but is now claiming a victory of sorts, having defeated Delta twice.

Strategic action works.

The expert advice (and there is so much of it) is pretty consistent on the question of vaccinations.

There will be no major change from this outbreak/lockdown cycle until enough Australians are sufficiently vaccinated, even though there are contrasting views about what percentage will need to be inoculated.

In other words, states and territories that win this short-term battle are those that prevent yet another wave breaking out.

What Tuesday’s announcement of eased restrictions in Victoria also does is add another layer of detail on a multi-layered health response.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the chief economic victims of this pandemic in Australia continue to face a dire fight. The effect on hospitality, tourism and retail of relentless opening and closing of the economy is not going away, and is unlikely to until well into 2022.

Perhaps even so when vaccination numbers are sufficiently high to take a punt on so-called Covid normal.

When you strip away the politics, some businesses are looking difficult to sustain in a pandemic.

And that’s no one’s fault.