Back in the day, a Michael Leunig cartoon depicted a Melbourne traffic cop directing, not traffic but religious processions. Hare Krishnas had to wait while the Salvation Army band marched through the intersection the other way. Nowadays, Leunig would update the cartoon with rival marching groups of protesters clogging the city streets.
And that’s just with their rubble and weapons. As the city’s police commander showed, at a press conference, “issue-motivated groups on the left” – in other words, the left-wing omnicause professional protesters – used chunks of bluestone, bottles filled with broken glass, umbrellas and other makeshift weapons in battles with police.
Not content with turning Victoria into the Venezuela of the South Pacific, the state’s Labor government is sitting ineffectually by while the rent-a-crowd turns the city into Portland, minus the quirky charm.
There was a time when Melbourne prided itself on being the most liveable city in the world, tolerant, thoughtful, creative and diverse. We wore that badge with pride and spoke of it often with confidence, not arrogance.
The only truth in that sentence is that they spoke of it often. Indeed, they couldn’t stop yammering about it for decades after it had ceased to be even remotely true. Melbourne was like Uncle Rico in the comedy Napoleon Dynamite: a washed-up, Coodabeen, forever bragging about that epic touchdown he scored in high school.
And it’s all entirely self-inflicted.
But somewhere along the way, and particularly since the Covid lockdowns, Melbourne has lost its way.
It’s a difficult truth to confront, but it’s one we must. The pandemic demanded leadership, but in hindsight it also took something from us: our collective empathy, our civic spirit and our tolerance for dissent.
Many supported Melbourne’s long lockdowns at the time, believing we were protecting our health system and by extension one another.
No, you did it because you robotically worshipped your Dear Leader with all the brainless enthusiasm of a North Korean military parade. Call it “the legacy of Daniel Andrews” if you like – and truthfully enough – but it’s also your legacy. Melbournians keep voting for this stuff. With all indications that they’ll keep doing it, next year.
So, don’t come crying to us: it’s all your own fault.
The truth is, Melbourne’s social compact is fraying. Covid, like an earthquake, has exposed fault lines we never knew we had. How quickly many people sold out the collective for themselves. The constant policing of movements, the isolation, the economic shock – all of it combined to make us wary, even hostile. Some now see government as the enemy, while others see government as the answer, regardless of the question. And both sides accuse the other of being the problem.
That’s not who we were, and it shouldn’t be who we are or become.
Of course it’s what you are. It’s the Melbourne disease, a collective mental pathology that sees the entire city patting itself on the back for its ‘awareness’, even as it descends into violent chaos and state bankruptcy.
Victoria’s obsession with being the most progressive – that is, fashionably out there – state in Australia mixes policy ineptitude with the blackest of black humour. Nothing exemplifies it better than the decision to place a convicted pedophile male who has transitioned to being a female in a women’s jail […]
But even sexual engineering blushes in the presence of Victoria’s very recent treaty with its Indigenous people, sponsored by the Yoorrook Justice Commission, itself inspired by a process of “truth-telling”.
For something supposed to be based on truth, the Yoorrook reports are the most partial, ahistorical, weakly researched and fantastical works since Gulliver’s Travels. They are so bad that the few objective facts they do contain are overwhelmed by their shady companions.
And that’s leaving aside the constitutional ludicrousness of a sub-national government signing a ‘treaty’ with its own citizens. Make it make sense – oh, wait, it’s Victoria. ’Nuff said.
Meanwhile, the state faces a genuine law-and-order crisis, with loose bail laws and machete-wielding gangs wandering the suburbs.
True to its progressive playbook, the Allan government starts with denying there is any crisis, then blames its opponents for duping a gullible public, then admits there is some mild difficulty, and finally passes a couple of symbolic laws to shut people up […]
Astoundingly, all these political miracle plays are performed on a set of looming and inevitable financial catastrophe. Fuelled by absolute determination to cling on to government, the Andrews-Allan government has borrowed so much to fund social infrastructure that Victoria has the solvency of a lower-order municipal council. Today, Victoria owes over $100bn. By 2029, it will owe $200bn.
And there’s the worst of it. Like the long-suffering parents paying off their lefty Boomer offspring’s credit card debts in the ’60s, we’ll all end up paying to bail the failed state out. Thanks, Federation!
