Anger is building over Melbourne’s fourth lockdown in 14 months, which is expected to cost the economy about $1 billion in lost activity.
While the outbreak began via a failure in South Australia’s hotel quarantine system, it quickly overwhelmed Victoria’s porous contact tracing system which, yet again, wasn’t up to task.
The contrast with New South Wales (NSW) is stark. The NSW Government has successfully managed multiple virus outbreaks without lockdowns, while also taking the majority of nation’s international arrivals.
So, the fact that Victoria has been plunged into multiple hard lockdowns cannot be brushed aside as ‘bad luck’, but bad management.
A major concern with Victoria’s COVID management system is that QR codes have been rolled-out on an ad hoc basis across the state.
When my family stayed into NSW and QLD over April, the QR code systems were generally robust. We simply could not enter most public places without registering. And staff usually asked us for QR code verification before serving us or, in the case of cafes and restaurants, seating us.
The QR code system in Victoria, by contrast, is lax. Rarely does anybody bother to sign in, nor do staff at most restaurants or cafes check.
Booking in for a Pfizer vaccination in Victoria is also downright nonsensical. Since my wife is an essential medical worker and we have a heavily autistic son, we were told earlier this month that we qualified for the vaccine. On Monday – before this latest outbreak had even gathered steam – we tried for an hour to book a vaccination over the phone with no luck. There were no spots available, due in part to Box Hill Hospital no longer taking bookings.
My wife has subsequently tried to book every day this week, but each time has given up after spending an hour-plus on hold.
We are continually told that we need to be vaccinated against COVID. Yet doing so is overly difficult for those of us that want to ‘do the right thing’.
Let’s be clear here. My criticisms of the Victorian Government’s diabolical COVID response can also be aimed squarely at the negligent Morrison Government. It has failed dismally in the vaccine rollout and has refused to fund/build alternative safe quarantine facilities modelled on Howard Springs in regional areas, passing the buck to unsafe state-run hotels instead.
The end result is that us long suffering Melburnians have been caught between dumb and dumber, completely let down by our political masters at the state and federal levels.
