Experiments were tried and abandoned: buildings were first hived off then suburbs. It came with government attempts to vest what should have been purely health powers in agents who had no such credentials. The lockdowns – six in total – came with overly vigilant threatened and threatening police, punitive powers of hefty magnitude, mask mandates, curfews, limits on recreation time and demarcated areas of travel. The EIU sternly noted that, “The pandemic has caused huge volatility in our biannual liveability index, which ranks 140 cities across five areas: stability, health care, education, culture, and environment, and infrastructure.” But Melbourne’s Lord Mayor Sally Capp, despite noting the “devastating impact” of lockdowns on the city, could still brightly note that “we remain one of the 10 most liveable cities in the world”. Melbourne had suffered a slump, slumming in eighth spot. In 2021, the Herald Sun would look with envy across the pond to note that Auckland in New Zealand has taken the honours of the EIU’s essentially irrelevant assessment. The lockdown formula became the policy de jour and there was no greater example of this than Melbourne. But there was fierce resistance in the country. Like the nuclear fallout anticipated in Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, the menace had to eventually head down under and do its bit of gathering. The city still had the dining and eating, the sports, the “world class infrastructure”.
Even after Vienna got on its high horse and knocked Melbourne off its pedestal, Melbournians were undisturbed. There were few law and order issues nothing to speak of in terms of war, famine, crisis and the sorts of things that disturb the money minded business traveller.
The Economist Intelligence Unit glowed with praise, designating the city the world’s “most liveable” for seven years running.
As a city, Melbourne previously prided itself with the air of a prim and proper heiress, one without peer in Australia: a gastronomic wonder, a sporting goddess, and a place of orderly public transport.
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