What sane Victorian didn’t do a double take when it was announced that the state’s former Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, was named Victorian of the Year?

Many are asking why a bureaucrat, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, should be made the state’s greatest citizen.

Put simply, why should someone be given an honour for just doing their job?

The purpose of the award is to recognise the most outstanding Victorian for the year. It’s why, quite rightly, a gracious woman such as Dame Elisabeth Murdoch is among its former winners: a stellar choice for her tireless community and philanthropic efforts.

Many Victorians will be unimpressed with the decision to honour Sutton. According to covidlive.com.au, more people have died of COVID-19 in this state, than any other in Australia. Victoria also has the greatest number of deaths per capita. Sutton presided over this. He was our King of Covid. He was the man, standing shoulder to shoulder with Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, during the self-imposed dark days of the Victorian COVID-19 lockdowns. These two men, supposedly ‘guided by the science’ imposed the shutdowns that turned Victoria into one of the most locked-down places in the world.

While much of the ‘science’ remains secret, we have since learned they were also guided by the $2 million taxpayer-funded QDOS polling which provided them with the best words to keep people terrified and obedient and begging for more.

In this climate of fear, the true believers tut-tutted if someone forgot a mask as they walked down an all-but-empty street and neighbours pulled curtains aside to body-count any action next door.

These were the days of empty supermarket shelves and barren aisles where toilet paper became the most highly sought-after commodity. Rations were irregular. Some shelves are yet to recover. Some businesses have never recovered. 

Brett Sutton’s advice enabled the state’s borders to be locked and blocked stopping thousands of Victorians from coming home, or others from exiting.

COVID directions resulted in hundreds of Victorians missing vital healthcare treatments or prevented them from being at the bedside of a dying family member, or among the ten people allowed to attend a funeral.

The cruelty of the border decision alone was enough for the Victorian Ombudsman, Deborah Glass, to write that ‘some outcomes were downright unjust, even inhumane’ and, ‘People felt caught up in a bureaucratic nightmare.’ Yet the mastermind of that nightmare is now lauded as the Victorian of the Year.

Under his bureaucratic baton, children were stopped from going to schools and playgrounds or fishing. They couldn’t walk on a beach – certainly not without a mask – they couldn’t go more than five kilometres from home, and they couldn’t leave home for more than one hour a day. What was the result of Sutton’s sanctions? Queues for mental health support have grown longer, and truancy and a reluctance to go to school are serious problems.

801 Victorians died as a direct result of the failures of hotel quarantine. People are still dying from COVID today and hundreds of them have caught the virus while in hospital. This is not to say it is all Brett Sutton’s fault, but why would you crown a man who is the face of so much misery and whose decisions left people wondering whether they should cry or scream? 

Sutton created a loneliness that was too much for some. There are still plenty of empty shops that sit as daily reminders of how Sutton and Andrews closed down this state so radically. Some people still can’t return to their workplaces simply because they chose not to be vaccinated. People don’t forget this stuff.

Sutton was made Victorian of the Year for doing the job he was paid to do. But if that is the criteria, will Deborah Glass, the state Ombudsman, be next in line? She too has been stoic and relentless in her task, a true leader, but the crown is unlikely to be hers because she stands up in the face of wrongdoing and speaks truth to power.

Yet that leaves plenty of others who could be suitable suitors for the Victorian honour, simply for doing their jobs. In March 2020 as the COVID clouds were swirling, then-Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, said that he considered essential workers to be ‘someone who has a job’ in this country. Under that criteria, millions of Victorians consistently turned up to work during Covid and did their essential job to the best of their ability.

To those people we remain grateful – the supermarket staff who faced every cough and splutter, the truck drivers, the farmers, the nurses, doctors, and firefighters. How about those who turned up on roadsides in all weathers, at all hours, to change flat tyres? Were the services they provided in a time of need any less than those of others? Weren’t these people also brilliant? Yet none of them will get the crown of Victorian of the Year. Most wouldn’t accept it for simply doing their jobs. 

Sutton says he attempted to decline the honour. The truth is he should not have accepted it. It is particularly inappropriate given that he is involved in court proceedings relating to actions he took as Chief Health Officer and the receipt of an award may appear to be an endorsement of his action in that case. 

If he had a sense of shame, or pride even, he would have said, ‘Thank you, but no thank you,’ and slipped quietly into his next role cognisant of the trail of damaged and lost lives left in his wake.

But in the perception game of politics, that award was not just for Sutton. It was a visual reminder, a self-assessed gold sticker, for Labor’s mismanagement of the COVID years.

The immortalisation continues – Kirner gets a hospital, Sutton gets the crown for Victorian of the Year, and Andrews gets the bronze statue.

Bev McArthur is the Liberal member for Western Victoria Region and the shadow parliamentary secretary for roads and road safety