Victoria is slowly inching towards the time when it can enjoy the inconvenience that the rest of the country have learnt to take for granted. With new cases dropping their premier is graciously permitting the massed citizenry of Australia's second largest (and twentieth most important) city to step outside for some fresh air. One of those capable of taking advantage of this new found almost freedom will be the former health minister who was an unwilling participant in a time honoured political exercise known as "throwing the most expendable under a bus". Officially she resigned and officially I'm a citizen of Great Britain.
Not that I'm saying getting rid of her was a bad decision. If she wasn't responsible for the debacle in Melbourne's quarantine programme then she should have been. Whether any of the others likely to be culpable will suffer the same fate is unknown but given that the government of Victoria has lost three ministers in the last few months for publicly unacceptable reasons the likelihood of any more going seems to me to be a little remote.
Meanwhile my home state continues to be a shining example of how a state government can be simultaneously mired in corruption scandals and also run a halfway competent pandemic response. Here's the thing. We don't actually expect our politicians to be honest. We just expect them to be able to step up when the situation demands. The occasional koala induced fit of insanity notwithstanding our state government seems to have managed this.
From across the oceans my Transylvanian correspondent informs me that Europe is fearing a second wave itself and that the cautious relaxation of restrictions many countries have indulged in might have to be rolled back. For reasons best known to herself my Transylvanian correspondent is stuck in Stuttgart, a city which apparently has all the appeal of Frankfurt but without the excitement.
Closer to home the Aged Care Royal Commission has pointed out that the government's response to the pandemic's affects on aged care was somewhat lacking. This will come as a great relief to the denizens of our aged care homes assuming there are any left. The Commissioners did point out that "this is not the time for blame" presumably on the fairly unarguable grounds that if you are going to have your emergency response run by the shambolically incompetent then you're probably better off with those who at least know where everything is rather than trying to appoint new, inexperienced incompetents in the middle of a crisis. The Federal government has committed to accepting all the recommendations of the Commission which is a pretty fair indication that the Commission didn't demand the heads of those responsible.
To the north of my little chunk of paradise the Queensland government is still keeping its border closed but it is getting increasingly flexible with it's definition of "border". They've now extended it about a hundred kilometres south into New South Wales to enable those who live near the border and might work or need medical attention in facilities just to the north to be able to cross into Queensland without the hounds being unleashed. This is either a sensible reaction to the issues of border communities or conquest by stealth. I give it three weeks before I wake up to find that I now live in Queensland.
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