THE Victorian Government has been urged to give Mildura residents some clarity to when the current lockdown orders will end.
Melburnians will enjoy more freedoms from this Friday as the state’s capital ends lockdown after months of stay-at-home orders.
But Premier Daniel Andrews was yesterday unable to give a definitive answer whether Mildura would end its seven-day lockdown as planned at midnight Friday, if not earlier.
“Not today, but as soon as we can have them on the same footing as the rest of regional Victoria we will do that,” Mr Andrews said.
“The stability that has come to those cases in the past 24 to 48 hours is good, so hopefully that decision is not too far away.
“But it’s not one for me to make today and there has been no decision to that effect made yet.”
Mildura councillor Glenn Milne said the Premier’s response missed the mark.
“To pass off a question with a really confusing answer isn’t good enough,” Cr Milne said.
“People’s lives and their livelihoods are at stake and they need to get a straight answer.
“People are stressed, they are upset, they don’t know whether they can go to work or not — business owners are hurting and the mental health issues are growing in the community.
“We just need to be given some clear direction as to when our community can get on with its life.”
Cr Milne said the Victorian Government should be able to use available data to give the region some indication about when the Mildura region could fall in line with the rest of regional Victoria.
“Cases are going down, vaccinations have gone up … as a community we should be expecting a better answer,” he said.
“There are a number of unknowns and we need to take that into consideration, but if you look at the overall number of people who have had a first vaccination, that’s extremely high.
“We’ve got Melbourne opening up so they can have 10,000 people at the Melbourne Cup yet we can’t have our children or grandchildren come over and visit us — it’s difficult for people to understand that logic.
“There’s not much more that the community can do as far as taking precautions because they have got to wait for their second vaccination.
“We have got to give the community credit — they have taken the advice of the government, so it’s now up to the government to make some decisions that actually look after our community.”
Cr Milne said the government should be able to explain itself to the Mildura community.
“If there is a real reason why we shouldn’t come out of lockdown, then give us that reason,” he said.
“The cases are exploding in Melbourne and Mildura’s are going down — we just need some clean, clear and understandable direction.
“Business owners need to know when they can aim at opening up because they need to start rebuilding their businesses and their lives.
“It’s causing an awful lot of angst in the community and it just needs to be fixed.”
