Regions in Victorians like Gippsland should be released from the seven-day lockdown says Peter Walsh

There's only one response to today's embarrassing revelations that sewerage at Wangaratta ultimately tested negative for COVID: release regional Victoria from lockdown. Announcing the snap statewide lockdown due to outbreaks in parts of Melbourne.

A proportionate response that uses rapid testing, good contact tracing and better targeted vaccinations to crackdown on future outbreaks - without locking down our whole state

Registered negative

Daniel Andrews claimed wastewater at Wangaratta "has pinged, if you like, firstly positive, then it went negative and now it has gone positive again" and that this left no option but to lockdown all of regional Victoria.

But today, local Wangaratta Mayor Dean Rees revealed the third test had in fact registered negative. Lie, cover-up or misinformation - no matter how the Premier got it so wrong, Labor now has one choice: release regional Victoria from the seven-day lockdown.

Thousands of people, businesses and jobs are trapped in a loop of catastrophic mental, social and economic destruction because the Andrews Labor Government still can't get the basics right.

Failing to re-open Victoria

Daniel Andrews based this statewide lockdown on misinformation - at best. At worst, Daniel Andrews has deceived Victorians for his own political ends. The mental anguish of the past two lockdowns has pushed more Victorians to the brink. Every day our communities remain closed is another day of lost income for families who are barely making ends meet.

Victorians deserve a plan out of statewide lockdowns. A plan for a proportionate response that uses rapid testing, good contact tracing and better targeted vaccinations to crackdown on future outbreaks - without locking down our whole state.
And the Andrews Labor Government must come clean with the public health advice in the interests of transparency and accountability.

Failing to re-open regional Victoria tells us one thing: Daniel Andrews is guilty of putting his own job before saving the jobs and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of regional Victorians.

Pictures from Victorian Department of Health.