Dear Readers,
Victoria is now free from Covid-19 lockdown.
With masks no longer needed to be worn at outside gathering and gatherings allowed, the Victorian society is moving towards Covid-normal as other states. However, Victorians are not going back to the pre-Covid time. Only 25% of people will be back to the office and others still need to work at home, if possible. Hosting of major events is still uncertain as we are still waiting for permission for the Australian Open with strict quarantine requirements for players.
Anyway, we can have a bit more people in the restaurants, church, gymnasium, food courts, and of course the party of not more than 15 guests at home. We are unsure how small businesses are affected by the lockdown. We are yet to see how many small businesses will go in sixth months and how many people will become unemployed after the end of the Jobkeeper program. These are all caused by an outbreak resulted from the failure of the hotel quarantine program which we still do not know why had been organized in such a way.
It is a time the Victorian government should think about how to be accountable to all Victorians. The forgetfulness of ministers and government bureaucrats simply cannot comfort the pain and loss of the Victorians.
For CALD Australians, both the federal and state governments claimed that much money had been spent to have factsheets in different languages available in many languages, even though few of them reached the CALD Australians when they needed them. Now we heard that many of these factsheets were even done by the inaccurate and unreliable but free Google Translate. Few CALD media received funding to support them to distribute and promote Covid-19 prevention measures at a time with no advertisements. Instead, money was spent on publicity work to tell the CALD communities that the governments were working hard.
Yes, a vaccine will be available soon but the vaccination program for all Australians will not be completed before the end of next year. This means we are still under the threat by Covid-19 in the coming 12 months. The governments should support CALD media to prepare the CALD communities for a very different Covid-normal society.
Regards,
Raymond Chow
Publisher, BlessingCALD