The uneasy relationship between the states and federal government - or, perhaps more correctly, Labor-held states and the Coalition federal government - was laid bare on Monday when Prime Minister Scott Morrison took an unveiled swipe at Victoria's handling of the crisis.

Mr Morrison singled out NSW as the "gold standard" when it came to the states' responses to COVID-19, but it was hard to escape the feeling that politics was playing at least some part in his commentary.

Of course, the raw numbers show NSW is coming through the crisis far better than our southern neighbours and we've not suffered the same strict lockdowns that Victorians have been forced to endure.

Much of the credit for NSW's comparatively low infection numbers has been heaped on this state's contact tracing system and that may be an area where Victorian officials have failed to meet the mark.

That's certainly regrettable, but does not explain why Mr Morrison has chosen now to rail on Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews (pictured) and his government over the pace of their roadmap out of lockdown.

There's no doubt Victorians are hurting and the cost of this pandemic - in terms of both the community's mental health and economic impact on businesses - will remain a burden for years to come.

But there is no good reason to believe Mr Andrews and his government are deliberately slowing the emergence from lockdown for anything other than their concerns that the virus could take off again.

Every day in lockdown is doing Mr Andrews more political damage and he is now at long odds to remain in the top job after a state election in November next year. Many expect him to go even before then.

So the PM's criticism on Monday looks a lot like a case of kicking a man when he's down, without offering any real assistance for the people (or government) of Victoria.

We can't imagine Mr Morrison saying the same about a Liberal premier, and he appears to have been more critical of the Victorian border closures than travel restrictions into Liberal-held Tasmania and South Australia.

Victoria - and the Victorian Government - have made mistakes and are paying a high price. But now is not the time for easy political pointscoring.