Victorians have made great progress in reducing the rate of COVID-19 infections from the second wave outbreak in Victoria.
\nWhile the Commonwealth Government welcomes Victoria\u2019s commitment to the national framework agreed at National Cabinet to have Australia open by Christmas, for many Victorian businesses and their workers today\u2019s announcement will mean they will simply not be able to make it.
\nThe new Framework to reopen by Christmas is a clear and transparent, three step plan which provides the Australian community and businesses with a way forward where Australians can live and work in a COVID Normal Australia, ensuring that we maintain strong health protections and minimise job losses and mental health impacts.
\nVictorians are to be congratulated for meeting and beating the considerable benchmarks that were set by their State Government before restrictions could be eased. They have played their part and sacrificed much in the pursuit of reaching those targets in the belief restrictions would be eased.
\nUnder the Victorian Stage 4 lockdown, Victoria has seen the devastation of more than 1,000 job losses per day. We have also agonisingly witnessed a 31 per cent increase in Medicare funded mental health presentations in Victoria during the lockdown and significant increases in other mental health services.
\nAt some point, you have to move forward and put your public health systems to work in a bid to reclaim the jobs that have been lost, and rescue the livelihoods and peace of mind of so many Victorians who have been affected by the inability to contain the outbreak that led to the second Victorian wave.
\nVictoria\u2019s public health systems are either up to the task of dealing with future outbreaks or they are not. The decision to keep businesses closed suggests that there is still not sufficient confidence within the Government that their systems can support reopening.
\nThis is a profound disappointment. Of course, Victorians do not want to face another lockdown and of course they don\u2019t want all of this to have been for nothing. That is why ensuring the State Government\u2019s capability to deal with outbreaks through their public health response is so essential. This is what you need for Victoria to open up safely and stay safely open.
\nBorders and closures are not indicators of public health success. They are the opposite.
\nVictoria\u2019s infection rate is now below the Victorian Government\u2019s own target of a 14 day rolling average of fewer than 5 cases per day to further reduce restrictions. It is also well below the Commonwealth\u2019s hot spot definition, based on the advice of the acting Chief Medical Officer, of a rolling average of fewer than 10 cases per day over 3 days.
\nDuring this time, the Victorian Government has greatly benefitted from the cooperation of the Victorian public and business community who have paid a significant price as a result of the prolonged lockdown measures.
\nThe Commonwealth Government has also provided significant assistance from the ADF, medical and technical experts with the management of the lockdown and boosting Victoria\u2019s contact tracing systems.
\nThe Victorian Government has stated that they have now significantly improved their contact tracing capabilities to deal with any future outbreaks. Such capacity has been critical to enabling NSW to deal with numerous outbreaks, whilst staying open.
\nIf this is the case, then we strongly encourage the Victorian Government to rapidly take the next steps to implement the National Framework and mirror the NSW COVID Safe restrictions for the sake of health, mental health and halting the loss of more than 1,000 jobs per day.
\nThe Australian Government will continue to support Victorians through this crisis through our record economic and income supports. We will also continue to work with the Victorian Government to assist them to strengthen their public health and contact tracing capacity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Victorians have made great progress in reducing the rate of COVID-19 infections from the second wave outbreak in Victoria. While the Commonwealth Government welcomes Victoria\u2019s commitment to the national framework agreed at National Cabinet to have Australia open by Christmas, for many Victorian businesses and their workers today\u2019s announcement will mean they will simply not … Continue reading “Victorian Restrictions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}