In response to the proposed Pandemic Bill, Victorian Nationals will hold a Royal Commission into the Victorian Government’s pandemic response if elected to government next year.
The Nationals told Parliament earlier this week “for our local communities to recover and rebuild from the challenges and conflict of the past two years, a Royal Commission is needed to ensure the government learns from its previous handlings of Covid and does not make the same mistakes again.”
The call comes after serious concerns were raised by The Victorian Ombudsman, Victorian Bar Council, Melbourne University Law School Professors and the Law Institute of Victoria relating to the government’s extreme pandemic legislation.
“Melbourne has been locked down longer than any city in the world while Victoria has had the most deaths, daily cases, total cases and active cases of any state in Australia.
“Hundreds of people lost their lives as a result of the Andrews Government’s mishandling of the second wave, millions of people were locked down in their homes and hundreds of thousands of businesses were put on life support.
“We saw botched contact tracing, problem after problem with hotel quarantine, and all we have ever had is denial – from the Premier, from key ministers and from government bureaucrats.
“Now we have legislation before Parliament which confers extraordinary powers on the Premier and Health Minister to detain people without judicial review.”
Mr McCurdy said, “Victorians are tired of being treated like fools by this Government”, he continued, “the Victorian Government is now cosying up to other independents; we know that every independent has a price, but what will Victorians pay for the Andrews Government ‘back room’ deals?”
“Our Victorian communities deserve better,” he said.