In a state of death and despair, Daniel Andrews has lost touch with reality

Like a morose funeral director, Daniel Andrews is determined to kill Victoria rather than admit his own mistakes.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews comes out each day, gaunt and morose like a funeral ­director, but never wearing a tie, and he lists the daily death toll. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

In a macabre theatre of the damned, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews comes out each day, gaunt and morose like a funeral ­director, but never wearing a tie, and he lists the daily death toll. He shares only numbers and ages, and sometimes describes the deaths of aged care residents in their 80s or 90s as “tragic”.

His Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, has confirmed some of those listed have been in palliative care and did not die from the disease, but tested positive at the time of death. When rare deaths of younger adults are reported, there is no mention of comorbidities; the privacy of the anonymous deceased is apparently more important than providing relevant infor­mation in a public health crisis.

At this point it is worth recounting that Victoria enacted voluntary euthanasia laws last year and in the first 12 months of operation at least 124 people have availed themselves of assisted dying. Presumably, if any people who have won approval to end their lives test positive, they too will be listed as coronavirus fatalities.

So twisted is our response to the coronavirus that our politicians provide additional funding for ­suicide prevention services, especially in Victoria. In a grotesque demonstration of the self-perpetuating nature of governments and bureaucracies, we see government overreact to a viral threat by imposing costly and extreme economic and social restrictions, and then government acts to mitigate the damage it inflicts on its subjects by spending more money imploring them not to end it all.

And from houses they have not vacated for weeks on end, many citizens cheer. Let’s do this thing! If only every Victorian could sit in their living room until their clothes fray against their whitened skeletons, then there would not be a single infection in Victoria (well, so long as someone keeps the borders secure).

Andrews gives the impression he is quite prepared to destroy Victoria and Victorians in order to save them from the coronavirus — perhaps he sees it as his only way to make up for mangling quarantine, contact tracing, infection control, public messaging, ADF assistance and testing. He is mistaken and should stop compounding his errors.

Whatever he does, whatever damage he does to his state, the virus will still exist, in Australia and around the world, and Victoria eventually will have to learn to live with it. Either that or he has bet his legacy, and the lives of 6.5 million Victorians, on the prospect of a highly effective vaccine being available within a few months.

You never know your luck. But history and science suggest this is a long shot. Andrews is obsessed. We know this because we can see it, and because he has told us.

When federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg made the obvious point last month that Andrews was presiding over the worst public policy failure in living memory, the Premier was pushed for a response. “I haven’t got time to have an argument with (Frydenberg) or a debate or even a discussion. I’m very focused on getting the job done,” he said.

When Scott Morrison announced plans to scrap state government deals at odds with national foreign policy, Andrews refused to engage, even though his Belt and Road deal with China was in the frame. “I’ll leave it to the Prime Minister,” said Andrews. “He seems rather focused on these matters. I’m much more focused on fighting the virus. I’m much more focused on creating jobs. If the Prime Minister has got time to be doing those things, then that’s fine for him. I don’t. I’m exclusively focused on fighting this virus.”

If only the quarantine security guards had been so single minded. Apparently nothing matters in Melbourne any more except the daily infection count.

A premier who cannot multitask, prioritise, or realise that, as difficult as the pandemic is, there are many other issues jockeying for importance, is surely not up to the job. Andrews is disappearing down his own wormhole.

He turns up every day. Andrews wants to be the one announcing the numbers. He trusts no one else to convey the gravity of the crisis. He has lost touch with the world around him. He needs some time off to walk around a park and wander around some empty streets to see what he has done to the state.

Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station at peak hour. Picture: Jay Town

Instead, this week he gave us an insight into his inflexibility. “My message is the strategy is working and we have to stay the course,” he said. “We have to make all that we’ve given, all that we’ve done, all the sacrifices that every Victorian has made, has to count for something. We can’t just let that be washed away by opening up too quickly. We’ve got to do this in a safe and steady way. That’s what the science, the doctors, data tells us, and as difficult as that is to hear, there is no alternative.”

That is so wrong. In a task that is all about balancing risks against rights, costs against benefits and health outcomes against economic and social needs, the alter­native approaches are myriad.

What Andrews is really saying is that he must persist with his approach until it succeeds because he is unwilling to admit error or ­adjust his approach. He is driven to redeem himself, and Victorians must pay the price.

None of us should or would be dismissive of the loss of life — especially those of us whose loved ones are in their 80s in nursing homes — but the invocation of tragedy and reluctance to reveal comorbidities of younger victims speaks volumes about the mindset.

Andrews is the personification of pandemic pessimism, or COVID catastrophism, representing that large cohort of society that likes to dramatise every challenge.

He is determined to portray COVID-19 as an existential threat.

These Hanrahans have determined we would “all be rooned” save for their grand intercessions. Journalists and media, by their very nature, are drawn to this approach and become complicit as they sensationalise developments and heighten interest.

We see screaming headlines and hysterical television stories about modest and trifling outbreaks of infection, along with hostile beat-ups about people who are breaking the rules. Zero infection fatality rates for young people, high rates of asymptomatic or mild cases, and improvements in treatments seem to interest them much less than people holding house parties in breach of draconian rules or sneaking across heavily policed state borders.

Other premiers tap into this fear and parochialism. Queensland bizarrely says its border will not reopen to NSW until the largest state can go a full month without community infections, a condition that might never be met. This is extreme, illiberal and unsustainable.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is the only premier who has grasped reality and accepted the responsibility of leading. Instead of hiding behind medical advice, she is using it as a crucial input in decisions that involve many moving parts and which she is prepared to own.

More than two million Australians are employed by governments federal, state and local; they are insulated from the financial strains and threats of the virus responses. Publicly funded journalists are the most enthusiastic proponents of lockdown, as they swap social media jokes about the trials and tribulations of working from home.

In the real world, the economic pain is here now, or looming daily. The strain is immense, and the restrictions are absurd.

The federal wage subsidy schemes are so generous they have sheltered many from the reality, giving hundreds of thousands of people similar comfort to the public sector, and staving off the economic reckoning.

While the safety net has been crucial, it has had the perverse ­effect of sheltering people from the stark choices ahead, protecting them from the need to get back to work while the virus is still with us.

It might always be with us. We cannot have another year like this one — we could not ­afford 2020, let alone a repeat.

A year from now we might be proud of how we “got to the other side” as Andrews frames it. But I fear we will be learning the difficulties of living with the virus, and looking back on 2020 with disbelief, wondering why we spent $300bn and caused enormous disruption, only to delay the hard choices that we could never avoid.