Leader of The Nationals
Peter Walsh
THE most recent lockdown may have lasted five days, but the impacts will be long-lasting across our regional communities.
When Daniel Andrews announced late on Friday — ahead of the busy Valentine’s Day weekend — that the virus had again leaked out of government-run hotel quarantine, it sent businesses and community groups into a spiral of costly cancellations.
In my home town of Swan Hill alone, the cost to the community was estimated at more than $2.5 million after lockdown forced the cancellation of the annual Victorian Country Week tennis tournament, which brings hundreds of people into town.
The snap lockdown led to a surge in requests for mental health support with Lifeline receiving its third-highest number of calls in the nearly 60 years it has been operating.
I’m not naïve enough to say that mistakes won’t happen while we all battle a pandemic — there is always going to be unknowns that the government must address.
But the difference is the Andrews Labor Government just isn’t learning from its mistakes.
There’s been more than enough time to learn how to safely deliver hotel quarantine and effective contact tracing, but we’re still waking up with the daily uncertainty of what we’ll get when Daniel Andrews parades in front of the cameras.
We’ve just emerged from a third statewide lockdown. The question must be asked, why does this keep happening?
And why is Victoria suffering from such serious and consistent lapses in management of the government’s hotel quarantine program and contact tracing?
Despite still failing to get the basics right, Daniel Andrews has moved to keep his extreme power over Victorians’ lives and livelihoods until the end of 2021.
It’s part of a debate going on in the Victorian Parliament at the moment to extend the State of Emergency powers.
Rather than allowing Parliament to review it on a month-by-month basis, Labor is asking for nine months.
A nine-month blank cheque to close your business, your children’s school, and force you to cancel weddings and funerals.
But at the same time, Daniel Andrews refuses to tell us the truth of what went wrong in hotel quarantine to lead to the second wave and to release public health advice behind his third lockdown.
This Labor Government just doesn’t care.
Well, Premier, Victorians have had enough.
The spin, the rhetoric, the lies and the incompetence has to stop — the cost to us is too great.
Daniel Andrews must put his arrogance aside and look to other states for his ‘gold standard’.
New South Wales has successfully managed to keep outbreaks under control with good contact tracing which saves the need to lockdown the entire state.
We need certainty but this will only happen when the Andrews Government fixes the holes in its hotel quarantine and ensures contact tracing is up to scratch.
More blanket lockdowns will only sound the death knell for more country Victorian jobs and businesses.
