Federal government need to be sensitive to the needs of Victorians

Federal government need to be sensitive to the needs of Victorians

With Victorian in lockdown as a stimulus, it just took 9 days for Australians to have 1 million vaccinations. Vaccine hesitancy, formerly an issue to be tackled, is now replaced with a high demand for vaccines in Victoria.

Unfortunately, Victoria is in the second week of the fourth lockdown and Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton refused to commit to unlocking Melbourne on Monday. He insisted that decision would be made based on day to day evaluation of the situation from various sources of information.

The source of the contagious strain Covid-19 Delta is still unknown makes people nervous. But all the downstream infections are under quarantined gives hope that the situation is still controllable. The high testing rate with over 5% of Melburnians tested last week allows the administration to have confidence that the virus is still contained. The only thing Victorians can do is to wait and see.

The disaster support package by the federal government seems to be too harsh with many people deemed to be illegible due to either they are currently receiving social security support or failed the test of the threshold of savings. The federal government still has not taken up the responsibility of supporting suffering Victorians.

Too little and too late support simply hammer the confidence of the Victorian businesses to survive. Small business owners have indicated that they are deserted by the federal bureaucracy to bear all the economic cost of the lockdown. Their pessimism towards surviving will lead to the closing down of more businesses which in turn will lead to more people relying on social security, and in turn, leads to the slower recovery of economic downturn.

The federal government need to be sensitive and be a leader rather than doing nothing to boost the confidence of people at the time of suffering.

Raymond Chow

Publisher, BlessingCALD