VICTORIA’S COVID-19 commander Jeroen Weimar flew to Mildura this week to take command of the region’s COVID-19 outbreak.
He spent his time in deep discussions with key community organisations such as Mildura Base Public Hospital, Mallee District Aboriginal Services and council to better understand what was needed to deal with the unfolding crisis.
He also fronted a community forum, albeit via Zoom, where 2500 local people tuned in, before then granting exclusive access to this newspaper for a one-on-one interview.
Cool right? It was the sort of engagement with government Mildura has been crying out for for 18 months, but until now has been sadly lacking.
Consider this, over the course of this pandemic, the state government has only held a handful of COVID-related “press conferences” over Zoom with regional newspapers, where each newspaper has been granted one question (that’s right, one question). That, of course, is in comparison to the government’s daily press conferences with city-based journos in Melbourne where questions are unlimited.
So with such little engagement, how could the Premier and his health advisers ever make truly informed decisions on behalf of those regions?
When the Victorian Government reflects on its overall handling of the pandemic, it needs to ask itself did it get the balance right in terms of engagement, blanket lockdowns and heavy-handed restrictions in the many country regions that remained relatively COVID-free? And, importantly, what would it do differently in the future?
Here in Sunraysia, we have been given front-row tickets to the contrasting ways the Victorian and NSW governments have managed the crisis.
In the red corner, the Labor Government’s hardline approach has created headlines around the world, from its initial success of driving hundreds of cases back to zero, to the absurdity of rules such as banning golf and drinking coffee in playgrounds, to blanket statewide lockdowns based on a handful of cases in metropolitan areas.
In the blue corner, now former NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian instead tried to suppress the disease and drive a message of lifting the vaccination rate. In doing so, she maintained localised lockdowns and allowed regions like Wentworth to keep their economies ticking over while they were virus free, as well as keeping children in schools.
So what worked better?
Luck no doubt played a part, but the evidence of the past 18 months shows there has been less civil disorder in NSW, less economic hardship, less protest and less division than we have seen in Victoria.
Yet the NSW method also saw case numbers explode like they hadn’t before in Australia, therefore contributing to the position we are now in.
Both sides got things right, both sides got things wrong, which was understandable. This is an unprecedented pandemic. So, forget politics and egos, what did they both learn?
Right now, NSW and Victoria have a great opportunity to unite in their approaches and show the rest of the country the way forward from here.
Our two biggest states need to take the gloves off and get on the same page with roadmaps as we begin to open up. Same rules, same messaging.
A look overseas gives us a snapshot of the reality that lies ahead.
In England, where the country is 80 per cent double vaccinated, life has snapped back to something like pre-COVID normal.
Full restaurants, big crowds, concerts, lots of traffic.
But … but… it’s not all rosy. Lots of people are still getting the virus.
In fact, many double vaccinated people have actually now had COVID-19, some describing it as “like the shittiest flu I’ve ever had”.
The key, though, is there is an acceptance now that, bar the elderly and vulnerable, for most double-vaccinated people the potentially life-threatening illness will instead be a bad flu or very few symptoms at all.
As a result, the pandemic has lost some of its sting.
Daily press conferences about COVID are no longer held. Daily case numbers are high, there are still deaths, but they are not front-page news. How good does that sound?
I briefly caught up with Mr Weimar over a stand-up, masked-up coffee during his Mildura visit and found him to be smart, personable, genuine and hell-bent on helping us get out of this mess, just like he comes across on TV.
He struck me as the sort of leader who could put party politics aside and work together with NSW to move us forward together.
The Murray River has always united the people of Sunraysia. It’s time our two state governments thought of it the same way.
In the cities, they may have a NSW/Victoria rivalry. But here on the border, we are happy for the grass to be just as green on the other side.
