It’s miserable in Melbourne today. At the time of writing, the rain has apparently turned to constant drizzle, but the mercury has only just climbed over 10 degrees. Meanwhile, in Sydney, it’s sunny and clear and set to reach 18.

Before coronavirus, Melbournians were gloating that this would be the decade where their city would regain the honour of being the largest in Australia, the title seized by Sydney after the depression of the 1890s. Forward with Glorious Chairman Dan.

Today, the border is being closed between Victoria and New South Wales, not just thanks to the Chairman’s incompetence and hypocrisy but his politicised mismanagement of COVID-19, an echo of the politicised policing his government pursues.

The Chairman is as much under siege as any of the unfortunates locked down in the abominations that are Melbourne’s public housing towers, 30 storey monuments to policies the planners knew had failed almost half a century ago.

And so it came to be that The Australian newspaper today published the perfect picture of Melbourne, 2020.

“A protester is ordered to leave the area around the towers in Flemington,” the caption reads

The bandeau top on a day that hit 12 degrees, the colour coordinated yoga mat, the loon pants, the bag from Organic India “A social enterprise on a mission to provide True Wellness for all. We offer organic Tulsi teas and supplements for healthy conscious living”, the expression of emotional incontinence — and four police for one deluded soul. You couldn’t make it up. It’s beyond parody.

As a certain Spanish gentleman once said: “The winner is Syd-en-ney”.

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