theaustralian.com.auAndrews must wake up or stand downRobert GottliebsenFollow @BGottliebsen
3-4 minutes
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie
Yet another crisis is set to deepen the chaos which has been created in the management of COVID-19 in Victoria.
I was contacted on Tuesday by a company with 300 to 400 employees where one had become infected. The company immediately reacted in accordance with the protocols and, as far as it could determine, those who might have had contact with the infected employee were tested and sent home for quarantine. Specialised cleaners were ordered for a deep clean. But just as important is the need to test the remaining employees because the direct contact estimations are a guess at best.
Victorian aged care facilities have been hit hard by COVID-19. Picture: AFP
And so the employees were sent to the local testing station and they explained where they worked and that infection had broken out. They were told that because they didn’t have symptoms there would be no test. Apparently the testing bureaucrats bosses had given that crazy instruction. Frustrated top executives of the company contacted the testing operation pleading for tests to be undertaken but, in true Victorian bureaucratic style, they were told: ‘No!’
So executives were forced to help employees tell lies to other testers to get the tests done because almost certainly some of them will be infected and the plant will have to shut again. Fearing government reprisals the company is not allowing its name to be disclosed. We are now discovering from radio call-ins that this is no isolated event, meaning personal contact infected people who have no symptoms are walking around Melbourne because they can’t be tested due to bureaucratic bungles.
Victoria in the last election voted in Daniel Andrews as premier for four years. He is a superb politician – one of the best in Australia. But in a COVID-19 style crisis – whether it was the Cedar Meats cluster, the hotel quarantine disaster, aged care or now testing of infected people – the qualities that made Daniel Andrews a brilliant politician do not translate into a person able to manage the local response to a pandemic.
Most Donald Trump supporters would agree that while they might believe he was a good politician, like Andrews, he was unable to manage the crisis.
The only hope Victoria has is that either he stands down or enough political blows can be inflicted on him so that his political instincts force him to manage COVID-19 like his counterparts in other states.
Business Columnist
Melbourne
Robert Gottliebsen has spent more than 50 years writing and commentating about business and investment in Australia. He has won the Walkley award and Australian Journalist of the Year award. He has a place in t...
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