CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
As of midday today, Victoria has recorded 288 COVID-19 cases in 24 hours, the largest daily increase of the pandemic so far.
Melbourne is now in the second day of yet another six-week lockdown, triggered by the second wave of coronavirus infections that Labor can’t possibly believe they should be blamed for.
However, luckily for Victorian Labor, these catastrophic numbers also coincide with a University of Sydney study that found official pandemic material in languages other than English had not been disseminated effectively, meaning uptake and engagement was limited.
For the die-hard Andrews supporters, this looks like a good way to shine the spotlight away from the fact that his government chose to decline the help of the military to quarantine infected overseas arrivals, and instead opted to hire private security contractors with no tender process and only 24 hours notice.
The Victorian Premier said on Tuesday that state teams will be working hard to overcome any language barriers to ensure the public is informed of the risks. Because that’s the definitely the only problem here.
Multicultural groups welcomed increased efforts to provide more coronavirus support to multicultural Australians, but have warned against using the Federal Government’s difficulty with overcoming language barriers as a racist scapegoat for the entire binfire that is Melbourne’s second wave.
These grave warning against divisive blame-shifting appear to have been lost on the #IStandWithDan crowd – who have gone ahead and revised the mission statement of the Labor Party, which is now apparently just a feel-good political movement for inner-city gentrifiers and other people too scared to vote for the Greens.
The Betoota Advocate spoke to one prominent Brunswick Labor organiser, Marlene Macklin (26) who says it’s unfortunate what has happened to those poor migrants and single parent families in the North Melbourne houso blocks, but reiterates that Daniel Andrews shouldn’t have to shoulder the blame for a direct lack of communication with his community’s most vulnerable residents.
“It’s like. Yeah, I know the hotel thing didn’t go as planned…” says Marlene.
“But these communities aren’t exactly fully engaging with the ABC updates haha”
“Like, it’s good they’ve got translators and stuff down there now. But it shouldn’t have to be the state government’s job to ensure these people were washing there hands”
“I just wish they’d learn English arghhh ahaha”
