Coronavirus: Is NSW set to become a basket case or will the gently, gently approach work?

Illustration: Johannes Leak

It’s refreshing from an interstater’s perspective to get the chance to have a decent look at the way Gladys Berejiklian rolls.

She has an appealing style and tone and her pandemic settings are an agreeably lighter touch than her southern neighbour.

No overtly authoritarian orders, just clear advice on what people should and shouldn’t do; no folksy rhetoric overtly aimed at the base.

The big question will be whether or not the NSW Premier has gone hard and far enough in stopping the movement of the virus.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian looks down during a COVID-19 update press conference in St Leonards on Sunday in Sydney.

As a Victorian, I have to say I don’t have another lockdown in me. But the one truth that came from the Victorian experience is that the virus dies when people movement stops.

It is a truly loathsome concept but the evidence is in; there can be hundreds of cases a day but the longer people are contained the greater the prospect of the cluster or seeding being defeated.

So has the NSW government gone far enough?

It’s very clear in Daniel Andrews’s rhetoric that he doesn’t think it has.

Andrews attributes Victoria’s Sydney shutout decision to the failure of NSW to implement mandatory mask and stay-at-home rules to deal with the crisis. And it is a crisis.

It took only three paragraphs into the Victorian Premier’s statement to whack Berejiklian and her Health Minister Brad Hazzard between the eyes.

Hazzard has looked like an understandably stressed man for 48 hours but someone should tell him how to wear a mask. If your nose pops out at all, Brad, then it’s running on three cylinders.

 

This Sydney outbreak challenge is not just a problem for the nation’s defacto capital but if the virus spreads, the last thing the national economy needs is a lingering, debilitating shutdown.

Nor does Scott Morrison need the political pain of having been so effusive in his support of the NSW contact tracing system. The one thing that the Prime Minister will know very well, is that it doesn’t actually matter how good the tracing system is if the caseload blows out spectacularly.

It just gets to the point where there are too many tails to chase.

Indeed, we might already be at the point of being too late.

This is why Sydney is in such a precarious position.

In less than a fortnight we will know whether the great state is heading for COVID-19 basket case territory or the gently, gently approach works.

For the good of the country, I’m in the gently, gently corner.