The latest damning release of information around Victoria’s lockdowns is heaping more (well-deserved) pain on the Victorian government. Just the day after US president Joe Biden ignited a furore by calling Republican voters ‘garbage’, a newly released email shows the Victorian government’s Covid advisors calling dissenting citizens “pig-headed know-it-alls”.
The revelation hits a day after a national inquiry concluded that “premiers, drunk on power with politics their focus ... ero[ded] public trust in politicians and our institutions”. Just weeks after another scandal erupted when Victorians discovered that the architect of their Covid misery, ‘Dictator Dan’ Andrews, was appointed chair of a leading youth mental-health service.
The previously secret email so obviously heaps insult onto injury, that the government not only tried to block its release, and further fought to redact the key phrase, but refuses to admit who actually wrote it.
Victorians concerned about Covid-19 lockdowns were branded “pig headed know-it-alls” in a mystery email the Allan government has been ordered to release after losing an 18-month fight to keep it secret […]
The “pig headed know-it-alls” insult was blacked out by the DPC when the email to former premier Daniel Andrews’ taxpayer-funded political strategy firm QDOS Research was released under Freedom of Information laws last year. Mystery surrounds who wrote the email – dated April 6, 2022 – with the Premier’s office saying the email was not written by a public servant or politician, but refusing to identify who was responsible for it.
As PM Anthony Albanese found out the hard way this week, carefully worded, lawyerly statements like these only infuriate the public and increase speculation that there’s something to hide.
What we do know is that the email was sent to QDOS, a Labor-linked strategy firm owned and operated by veteran Labor pollster John Armitage. It was generated as part of the up to three million dollar taxpayer-funded, secret political intelligence programme co-ordinated with Daniel Andrews’ private office. The very existence of the programme exposed that, rather than ‘guided by science’, the Andrews government was micromanaging public opinion and tailoring its responses accordingly.
The taxpayer-funded program was used to monitor Victorians’ views about Mr Andrews’ personal performance during the state’s 112-day lockdown in 2020, with Mr Armitage briefing cabinet on the results.
Documents have also revealed QDOS conducted extensive and regular monitoring of Victorians’ reaction to lockdown restrictions such as the 8pm curfew, the 5km travel limit, the metro-regional split on rules, industry closures, police conduct and who was to blame for hotel quarantine leaks, which triggered the deadly second wave […]
By April 2022, when the email was sent, most Covid restrictions had been lifted after a world-record 267 days of lockdown through 2020 and 2021. The purpose of the profiling exercise in the “pig headed” email is not disclosed in the communications between the DPC and QDOS, owned and operated by veteran Labor pollster and strategist John Armitage.
Half an hour after it was sent, a QDOS executive responded.
The email also contains this unintentionally hilarious accurate assessment:
The “pig headed” email also describes Victorians who were opposed to Covid-19 lockdowns as believing “tyrannical government is the enemy”, embracing “fantastical conspiracy theories” and choosing “individual rights” ahead of “collective rights”. It described category one as Victorians who “strongly support and follow restrictions” and who “trust authorities” and consider “following restrictions is the right thing to do for my family and my community” and “don’t find restrictions overly onerous and will follow them”.
Which group do you think has been proved right, in the long run?
