As Victoria's Covid-19 outbreak set an unwanted new record with 2,297 cases and 11 deaths announced on Thursday, Premier Daniel Andrews still couldn't resist having another crack at Sydney.
Mr Andrews claimed Sydney and NSW had only emerged from lockdown this week because they got more help from the federal government with doctor accreditation and vaccine supply.
It was another unnecessary comment from the Victorian premier, who has a long history of saying things about the pandemic and Sydney that end up coming back to haunt him.
Two months ago, on August 16, Mr Andrews said 'We don't want to be like Sydney when there are hundreds and hundreds of cases a day, and thousands of cases across the outbreak, and then hundreds of people in hospital, many of them needing a machine to breathe.'
In the same press conference, the premier also said 'I don't want us to finish up like Sydney where it has fundamentally got away from them, they are not reopening soon, they are locked in until they get pretty much the whole place vaccinated.'
Photos taken by Daily Mail Australia on Thursday show the grim reality lockdown is having on Melbourne, its people, its economy and the state of Victoria more broadly.
Daniel Andrews (pictured) has a long history of saying thing about the pandemic that come back to haunt him, often aiming his criticism at New South Wales
Melbourne CBD is all but empty as Victoria records its first day with over 2,000 Covid cases (pictured, a woman walking through the desolate city on Thursday)
Lockdown is bad for the world, but it has its benefits for a skateboarder in Melbourne (pictured on Thursday in an eerily empty road)
This has turned out to be very wide of the mark. Sydney got out of lockdown this week with a 70 per cent vaccination rate, and is on track to soon get further freedoms upon reaching an 80 per cent fully-vaccinated rate.
Meanwhile, Melbourne is in its sixth lockdown and Victorian case numbers are going up again.
On August 9 last, Mr Andrews also had some unprompted advice for NSW, saying 'I'm not here to be a commentator on Sydney, but if you want to see whether locking down some local government areas works, have a look what's happening up there.'
Sydney is back in business, having emerged from lockdown on Monday after reaching a 70 per cent vaccination rate (pictured, a bustling Pitt Street Mall on Tuesday)
But Melbourne is still in lockdown and its streets are near empty with shops, bars and restaurants all forced to keep their doors shut
A couple of weeks before that, on July 23, he trotted out one of his favourite phrases - calling for a 'ring of steel'.
'If Sydney has been declared a national emergency then my message is very clear. On behalf of all Victorians, I'm saying there's a national responsibility to put a ring of steel around Sydney,' he proclaimed.
Eight months ago, on February 14, Mr Andrews had a Valentine's Day message for Victorians, saying its latest lockdown would be 'a short, sharp, circuit breaker'.
He was partly right on that occasion - that lockdown, Melbourne's third, lasted just five days. But there have been three more lockdowns since then and the latest, the sixth, is ongoing.
But Mr Andrews has previous form in being overly optimistic about what the future holds when it comes to the Covid-19 pandemic and his state's handling of it.
On September 13, 2020 he said: 'I'm so proud of Victorians for the way we are all working together to beat this virus - it means we can take our first safe and steady steps towards a Covid normal tonight.'
There was nothing normal about Covid that night, and there is nothing normal about Covid now either.
But despite the surge in cases, Victoria is on track to reach its 70 per cent double vaccination target before its planned date of October 26 - meaning the end
