April Fools

Locked down Victorians are still waiting for their dividend from Dan Andrews’ April 1st investment into the health system. By Beverley McArthur.

On 1st April 2020, Premier Daniel Andrews announced a “Huge expansion of our health system to fight Coronavirus”.

He outlined $1.3 billion to ‘quickly establish an extra 4,000 ICU beds’.  This would add to the 450 ICU beds already in place across the State.

Another $1.2 billion was announced for ‘equipment’ such as ‘551 million gloves, 100 million masks and 14.5 million gowns’.

The $1.2 billion and $1.3 billion were on top of $537 million previously announced for `more beds, ICU equipment and PPE’.

In total, the April Fools announcement gave Victoria at least 4,450 ICU beds.

On that day in 2020, Victoria’s COVID-19 death tally was four. By the next day it was six. The mood was tense, things were fickle and the air cursed with unknowns.

The lockdowns were introduced to ‘flatten the curve’ so hospitals could cope. We collectively nodded and crossed our fingers.

In Victoria today there are 58 people in hospital with the virus, 21 are in ICU. That leaves another 4,429 ICU beds procured for COVID-19, empty.

You would have to argue that the curve has been flattened and the system can cope.

Yet 518 days since that April Fools announcement, the whole of Victoria remains in lockdown, curfews are in place, shops are shut, schools are closed and people are desperate.

Either the April One investment was made, or it was not.

Are we in lockdown because this ‘massive task’, as the Premier described it, has not been achieved? And if not, where has the money gone?

If these 4,450 beds exist, then we should not be in lockdown.

When announcing the $1.3 billion, the Premier said he was “...preparing Victoria’s healthcare system to rise to the challenge”.

Since then, it seems every Victorian has risen to the challenge of being locked up, except the Premier, his Government and the CHO. Their Hotel Quarantine debacle cost 801 lives.

They are the April Fools in this announcement – but Victorians are bearing the brunt of their callous, inept, undemocratic tyranny.

We have become the laughing-stock of the world. US television host, Tucker Carlson, giggles about us drinking beer through masks.

The Premier’s April 1st media release also said: “None of us want to see the scenes from Milan, New York and other parts of the world happening here in Victoria.”

Wrong again Premier. Victorians would love to have our economy open, streets busy, shops full and a community that is ready to live with the virus with provision for the vulnerable.

Many wish they could join those on Mediterranean beaches far removed from the most locked down state in the world.

The former Health Minister Jenny Mikakos said the April 1 investment was needed to “…save lives and help us get to the other side of the crisis”.

In truth, it is the Government’s cruel decision making - and not the virus - that is costing lives especially of the young. For nine months of this year, not one life was lost to COVID-19 in Victoria.

This week saw the death of two women.

It’s time the Premier told us what ‘the other side of this crisis is’ - because zero cases is not it.

Sadly, internal polling will influence the Premier more than any public cry for help.

This week, the internal tea leaves revealed that people are fed up with no freedom and the yo-yo of emotions, from bad to worse. The public’s can-do swagger has gone.

Guided by the polls, his own survival has surfaced as the true source of his restriction review. Save for the fact that the Prime Minister and Treasurer have already tapped into the black mood of the burbs.

Andrews doesn’t suddenly care, or understand business, country people or the need to get children back to school. Children have been the greatest pawns in his political pandemic.

In September last year, I wrote a piece for The Spectator called ‘When irrelevant is relevant’.

It put focus on the Premier’s use of the word irrelevant. He spits it out like venom to those who oppose him.

For some time, he has gone quiet on irrelevant, but it is making a comeback.

In his latest dismissal of the Victorian Parliament on 17 August, he told reporters that he “answers enough questions here every day.” By that he meant questions from hand-picked journalists with cute Dorothy Dixers. He was not referring to questions on the floor of the parliament.

Journalists shouldn’t be confused for democratically elected representatives.

The absence of the parliament represents an absence of scrutiny, of transparency, of proper process, of respect.

Andrews is telling us that the Parliament of Victoria is irrelevant.

From his point of view, why embrace democracy when dictatorship gets him everything he wants? With his crossbench sycophants, he’s on a good thing.

We are not irrelevant. The Parliament is not irrelevant.

Without its scrutiny, what becomes irrelevant to the Premier are his reckless April Fools billions and the unchallenged lockdown policies that fail logic.

He is guided by the internal polling, the focus-groups, his super-computer and the expert advice that no one has ever seen, or ever will.

It doesn’t exist.

How else do you explain playgrounds and grannies being super spreaders last week, but not today?

Beverley McArthur is a member of the Victorian Legislative Council.