By extending the lockdown over NSW and flagging even tighter restrictions for parts of Sydney, Gladys Berejiklian has found herself facing the ire of her backbench colleagues and, most importantly, voters.
Over the past two days, Liberal MPs have published extraordinary letters to the Premier railing against the flaring imbecility of locking down Covid-free regions of Sydney.
Voters, too, have voiced uncharacteristic frustration, deluging MPs with correspondence ranging from mild dissatisfaction to letters freighted with the scorching heat of a thousand suns. “Next election I will be voting Labor,” said one obtained by The Australian. Another said: “I cannot ever forgive your state government for the harm you have done to the people of NSW.”
For the past year, Gladys Berejiklian has differentiated herself from counterparts in South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland by imparting sanity during debates over border closures and lockdowns, but also by scoffing at the need for either.
Barely two months ago she fronted the Liberal Council in Canberra claiming QR codes, contact tracers and a well-resourced health apparatus had averted the need for lockdowns in NSW, insisting it was “not by accident” the state could “weather these storms”.
Well, since then we have witnessed the Delta strain leaking out of quarantine, the exposure of lax public health orders concerning airport drivers and, as a result of both, an outbreak that has forced the Premier to cautiously defend the very lockdowns she has always eschewed.
Voters don’t care so much about seeing the Premier eating humble pie, but they do feel frustration in the messaging. The past two weeks have seen days of flip-flopping and confusing signals to an audience growing impatient.
We have seen health officials insisting that contact tracers were well-equipped to chase down the virus, to then insisting there was no need for a lockdown, to then imposing a partial lockdown across the eastern suburbs of Sydney, to then imposing wide-reaching “stay-at-home” orders covering five million people.
We have seen the Premier appearing optimistic about the likelihood of easing restrictions to then fronting the cameras crestfallen a day later, only to imply that an extension needed to be imposed as the only medicine.
The health advice informing these decisions remains classified, as does the economic modelling of their impact. Instead of being armed with this vital information, we have been given prefabricated lines and phrases that are fast becoming meaningless to people whose livelihoods face permanent damage.
Most infuriating of all was the government’s decision to sit on its extension of the lockdown by another week. It made its call and then held onto the information for almost 18 hours, leaking it to select media on the condition they not publish any details until after midnight.
That information should have been released as a matter of absolute priority to the community, within minutes of the decision being made. It is another example of a government focused more intently on its media strategy, not its pandemic strategy.
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