In a state of anxiety, time is running out

It is clear that Victoria — and therefore a big slice of the national economy — is running out of time.

The messaging from Premier Daniel Andrews and Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton is pointed: either the virus is contained in the very near future or the state will be back to the lockdown version of first base.

The shutdown of the Flemington/North Melbourne public housing flats is a terribly uncomfortable step to take in a liberal democracy, yet the expert health advice is that the price of retaining some of the most basic civil liberties would potentially be hundreds of coronavirus cases in the community.

They are, indeed, much like floating cruise ships minus the monetary largesse, near-perfect incubators of the virus among a cohort where many suffer health problems and live uncertain lives.

Victoria’s Housing Minister, Richard Wynne, has previously worked extensively in some of the flats and today lives near others; he knows the layout and is acting from a position of great concern and conviction.

But Wynne can’t wave a political wand and make the virus disappear.

It is likely that within days, authorities will have located dozens of cases in the flats and there will be the opportunity to contain these two geographical clusters, spread as they are across nine towers.

The broader problem is that it doesn’t fix the rest of the mess in Melbourne’s north, northwest, west and outer southeast, as the virus moves around Australia’s second-largest city, creeping as it is into the inner east.

Common sense suggests if the current lockdowns fail, the government will have only two triggers.

The first is a dramatic expansion of the suburb by suburb shutdown, followed by a city-wide lockdown that will be politically and socially explosive.

The political implications are exaggerated by the cock-up that has been the way Victoria has run the hotel quarantine system.

Both Andrews and Sutton hid yesterday behind the looming judicial inquiry into the quarantine fiasco, refusing to answer even the most basic of questions.

We can forgive Sutton for not going into detail but he unfortunately becomes a big part of the government’s defence system.

The defence mechanism is to call the inquiry and then refuse to answer any questions about what has apparently triggered this awful predicament.

Those who argue that Australia has done well by global standards are right — but only up to a point.

That point ends at the moment a government put the state’s medical and economic health in the hands of a bunch of security guards.