It’s becoming hard to believe anything that comes out of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ mouth when it comes to COVID-19.
On 4 August, Daniel Andrews scolded Victorians for failing to self-isolate, claiming that recent door knocks conducted on 3,000 properties found 800 people were not at home.
Andrews then used this “unacceptable” 27% non-compliance rate to justify introducing the “largest on-the-spot fine on the statute books” of $5,000.
As it turns out, only 42 fines have actually been handed out to people failing to self-isolate, representing a non-compliance rate of less than 1.5%:
Premier Daniel Andrews announced on August 4 that fines would increase from $1652 to $4957 in order to deter what he said was an alarmingly high proportion of people not staying at home when required to.
He said as he announced the higher penalty that 3000 doorknocks conducted by the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and health officials found more than 800 people were not home. “This is an unacceptable number,” Mr Andrews said then, also saying people attending work while sick justified the increased penalty…
Of the 42 fines, 26 people were issued the lesser fine before the more expensive fine was introduced on August 4 and the remaining 16 were fined after that date…
Victoria Police say the overwhelming majority of Victorians have followed the public health orders and there were often legitimate excuses when someone did not answer a knock on the door from authorities.
Quite a difference, isn’t it?
The ABC’s Casey Briggs took to Twitter to scold the Government:
I told police I was trapped in an apparent ouroboros of media advisors, and a day later they came back with this, which does not answer the question
2/3 pic.twitter.com/60kfXkBEqn
— casey briggs (@CaseyBriggs) August 6, 2020
— casey briggs (@CaseyBriggs) August 19, 2020
corollary to this: we now need to be very careful about how we treat statistics given by the premier during press conferences and interrogate where they came from https://t.co/7tdlk5yM1b
— casey briggs (@CaseyBriggs) August 19, 2020
This might sound like nitpicking. But as noted separately by Briggs, “government used this statistic in part to justify a tripling of the fine. It’s not nit picking to interrogate a statistic that is being used to make policy decisions”.
It’s also a matter of trust. The Victorian Government is already skating on very thin ice after botching hotel quarantine and then blaming Victorians for “complacency” and “bad behaviour” for causing the second wave of the virus.
It must not be allowed to bend data to suit its narrative.
