Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg were publicly campaigning for one. Restaurant and cafe owners were desperate, as were people who’d been cut off from friends and family for two months.
Since its establishment, the TAC hadn’t kept records about whose fault an accident was. As a no-fault insurer, what did it matter? Thompson had a hunch that it did. He combed back through old police records and discovered that people injured in an accident that wasn’t their fault took substantially longer to return to work and were more likely to experience depression than drivers left with similar injuries from an accident that was their fault.
"It was collaborative in Queensland, it was collaborative in South Australia it was collaborative in NSW and the ACT,'' says Restaurant & Catering Australia chief Wes Lambert. "In Victoria we weren’t part of the decision process, we were just being told what was going to happen.''‘‘No one at the serious end of business was saying the health stuff didn’t matter. The health stuff mattered enormously.
Looking back from where Melbourne is today, with stores open for pre-Christmas shopping and restaurants and cafes able to welcome guests mask-free for office party bookings, it is tempting to dismiss Logan’s outburst as an overreaction. What was one more day, given Melbourne had been locked down for 110? To do so is to misunderstand the despair felt by those who thought the Premier was oblivious to the impact his decisions were having on their lives..
The worst part of the economic tale will be in the tail; the lingering unemployment that every recession brings. In his November budget, Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas forecast that unemployment should be peaking about now at 8.25. Yeaman told the Senate hearing the effective unemployment rate in Victoria was already 14.5 per cent. This counts people receiving the JobKeeper subsidy as well as the JobSeeker payment.
‘‘We are seeing a 30 per cent rise in need for care and that is spilling into the emergency departments because our system is at capacity, it can’t absorb new cases,’’ McGorry says. ‘‘If you talk to any emergency department director, that is what they are seeing, especially young people with self-harm and suicidal behaviour.’’
Andrews described Victoria’s second wave as a public health bushfire. Professor Ian Hickie, the co-director of health and policy at the University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Centre, says the mental health impact is worse. ‘‘Are the mental health consequences being treated as seriously as some of the other consequences? You would have to largely say no.’’
The criticisms of the Andrews government response don’t underestimate the immense benefit to everyone in Victoria being COVID-free. And no one blames this government alone for the parlous state of public health in Victoria, an unintended consequence of decisions made a quarter of a century ago, when the Kennett government devolved the health system.