DANIEL Andrews has done it again.
He has taken Mildura’s number of coronavirus cases from zero to zero.
He has done the same for Orbost and Swan Hill. Bendigo, Horsham, Morwell and Lakes Entrance are also all stuck at zero. All of regional Victoria, in fact.
To achieve this feat, the Victorian Premier has again locked us all down, further crippling our struggling economies and crushing business confidence.
We still don’t know whether this latest lockdown will end after five days, but the damage is longer lasting regardless, both from an economic and mental wellbeing standpoint.
It has served as a reminder to country Victorians of the Premier’s power to wreck all plans at a moment’s notice. That, with his abundance of caution approach to managing this virus, we can walk only on eggshells under his watch no matter where we live. And that he will act differently to other states, as he has done throughout.
Consider the overreach over the past week.
To control an outbreak of 20-odd cases in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, the Victorian Government again forced country kids from Warrnambool to Robinvale home from school this week.
Mr Andrews cancelled their sports, their arts performances, their camping trips and birthday parties. He again locked them in their homes, after a year of doing the same in COVID-free country regions.
For any parent fearing their child had regressed last year, this latest lockdown was a setback in their slow return to confidence and normality. A jolt to already jangled nerves.
But was it necessary to lock us all down?
And has any other state acted in the same way?
The danger with being the Premier who continually cries wolf is that soon enough people stop listening. They lose trust and even become mutinous, as we have seen with the increasing number of anti-lockdown protests this week.
As Mildura Regional Development boss Brett Millington said this week, frustration is now turning to anger.
I’m guessing even the police force in country Victoria must be rolling their eyes at the notion of slapping fines on people not wearing a mask outside in 35-degree heat. Or issuing up to $10,000 fines for any non-essential business who dares open their doors. Is that really the work police signed up for?
People in country Victoria do not underestimate the dangers of COVID-19, or its mutant strains. But as I’ve argued for the past year, the damage that lockdowns inflict on communities need to be in proportion to the dangers of the virus in that region.
I read yesterday that Australia and New Zealand have incurred costs equivalent to a world war fighting a pandemic that has killed not even 1000 people, with a median age in the mid-80s, between them.
In Mildura, there has not been a case recorded since last April. The only case with a Mildura link was a local woman who contracted it while in a Melbourne hospital, where she remained isolated.
If we get an outbreak in these parts, by all means, close us down if necessary, and spare Melbourne the same fate, but why now?
Being so close to the NSW border, we can literally see how life is on the other side.
When that state had a growing cluster in the northern beaches of Sydney, which reached 150 people, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian didn’t send the whole state home, she locked down relevant areas.
This approach works when quarantine processes are effective: that state has marked more than 30 straight days without a local case.
So, in Buronga, Gol Gol and Wentworth, kids go to school, businesses remain open, locals swim in the river, play golf, eat and drink at the pub, and even go for maskless walks outdoors.
While in Mildura, we endure another cycle of lockdowns for an outbreak 500km down the road.
Only a bridge separates Mildura and NSW, but under different premiers, we are worlds apart.
