The earthquake – which brought down half a wall in Chapel Street – turned out to be a relatively harmless distraction from an endless cycle of bad news, says Celeste Liddle, a Melbourne-based writer and Greens political candidate. View image in fullscreen Anti-lockdown protests ended up at the Shrine of Remembrance, a memorial to Australian soldiers. Victoria’s chief health officer, Prof Brett Sutton, quipped on Twitter: “No more horses of the apocalypse, please”. The protests shook a city that was already at the end of its tether, and was then literally shaken by a 5.9 magnitude earthquake. There were hundreds of arrests and warnings of a super-spreader event, with union staff who responded to the protesters sent into quarantine. They rallied against vaccine mandates, a two-week shutdown of construction, and the lockdown in general. The protests started outside the offices of the construction industry union on Monday and roamed around the city on Tuesday before ending up at the Shrine of Remembrance, a memorial to Australian soldiers, on Wednesday. Five thousand people joined a violent omnibus protest last week, fuelled by far-right figures. Speak to Melburnians and the overwhelming majority say they support the decision of the Andrews government to lock down hard at the first signs of an outbreak.īut opposition to the health measures, while still a minority movement, is growing and has erupted onto the streets. A further 1,143 cases were recorded on Friday, as the premier extended vaccine mandates to more than a million workers. Parties held over the weekend of the AFL grand final – which was moved from Melbourne to the persistently covid-free city of Perth – led to a 50% spike in cases on Thursday, for a record daily figure of 1,438. Kyran WheatleyĬompliance with the strict restrictions is also waning.

The reason we’ve been in lockdown this long is because we care about whether people die. Last week’s Essential poll for Guardian Australia found approval of the Andrews government had dropped to 44%. Support for the Victorian government’s handling of the pandemic is waning. Lockdown will lift once the vaccination rate gets to 70%, expected around 26 October. It’s a strategy that has left the city feeling economically and psychologically depressed, but it has also succeeded, five times in a row, in reducing case numbers to zero.īut in Melbourne’s sixth lockdown the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has formally abandoned hopes of getting to zero daily cases, replacing it with a goal of getting at least 80% of Victorians over the age of 16 double vaccinated.

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