> what do you think they should be doing instead?
Probably not much. But that's because you used the word "doing". If you had asked "what should Victoria have done instead?", then there is a long list.
To pick on one thing, I was amazed press were showing people in the locked down towers apparently depending on charities for essential supplies. To this day don't know if it was a beat up or real, but if real it boggles the mind. It implies the lock down was little more than a thought bubble with almost no effort put into planning.
Obviously, they did eventually react to the collapse of contract tracing, the explosion of cases, the outbreak in nursing homes and so on, and as a consequence everything seems to be as under control as it can be now. But it does seem to all be reactive, not proactive.
I do wonder how the situation arose. At one level it's obviously a reflection of competence of the bureaucracy, as this is where the pollies (who usually have very little expertise in their portfolio) get their advice. But those same pollies have been there for 10 years and so they should by now have made their stamp on the culture of the bureaucracy. Frankly when you compare it's performance with bureaucracies in all other states, it was very poor. For me (a Queenslander) the outstanding state was NSW the Ruby Princess cluster fuck notwithstanding.