Andrews keeps Victorians stranded in NSW while rolling out the red carpet to Covid positive tennis players

“I make no apology for keeping Victorians safe.”

How many times have we heard the ‘keeping Victorians safe’ line by Daniel Andrews? It is the go-to line. The market tested talking point designed to deflect criticism from his government’s panicked, on-the-run response to managing Covid-19.

Any hope that 2021 would be better than the government’s disastrous response to the pandemic in 2020 has been dashed. 2021 started with Victorians rushing home fatigued, frustrated and panicked because of the government’s knee-jerk response to a few cases in NSW. Now, the government wants to convince Victorians that it is doing everything it can to keep them safe by denying fellow Victorians passage into the state, while opening the door to Covid positive tennis players and officials.

The ‘keeping Victorians safe’ line really does not wash when Andrews is happy to allow hundreds of tennis players (and their staff) in from countries heavily impacted by Covid-19, while denying Victorians stranded in NSW the right to return home even though the NSW government continues to display its competent management of the virus.

The double standard is a disgrace. If you are going to allow people literally infected with Covid-19 into the country then it makes absolutely no sense to deny fellow Victorians the right to return home and quarantine.

Make no mistake. Andrews’ motivation here is political. By trying to clutch at straws and paint NSW as some sort of a leper colony that is too dangerous to be flexible with, he seeks to give the impression that the NSW Liberal government is not as efficient at managing the virus as the facts lay out.

The cost of his political calculation on people’s lives is devastating. Regional tourism operators and traders on the Victoria-NSW border have reported a 75 per cent dive in discretionary visitor spending since the introduction of the ‘traffic light’ travel permit system, while an average 25 per cent drop is being experienced across the board as holidays are cancelled. One tourism operator on the NSW side of the Murray River had just paid back $400,000 in cancellations.

Entire towns and regions are having their livelihoods put on hold. Families are losing income because they can’t return to work while they are stranded in NSW. Yet bringing in international tennis players, their coaches and their staff from all around the world, providing hotel quarantine and denying it to Victorian citizens, is somehow keeping Victorians safe?

It is despicable.

What is worse is that while apparently following public health advice and keeping Victorians safe, the government allowed a positive case of Covid-19 to board a flight to Melbourne. US player Tennys Sandgren was allowed on to a chartered flight to Melbourne for the Open, despite testing positive for coronavirus this week.

Andrews treats his own citizens like the gum on his boot while opening up the red carpet to 1200 tennis players and officials. All in the name of public safety and following the experts, apparently.