Failure after failure for tough-talking AndrewsOpinion
A rapid and highly targeted response was always expected to be the key to managing any community outbreaks of the virus in Australia. The Andrews government didn’t apply its own rhetoric.
Jennifer HewettColumnist
Scott Morrison may not want to publicly berate Daniel Andrews. The rest of Australia should not be so restrained. Everyone is now paying the price for the incompetence of the Victorian government in the practical management of COVID-19 over a long period of time.
This was not just a one-off debacle like the Ruby Princess cruise ship in NSW, but repeated failure at the heart of the Andrews government, along with a stubborn refusal to heed the warning signs or to accept offered assistance from federal authorities. Even worse, much of this flawed approach is continuing despite all the tough rhetoric from the Premier.
It’s not just that Andrews will simply
not answer key and very obvious questions about how and why he allowed this debacle to build, instead deflecting such awkward issues to a judicial inquiry conveniently not due to report until September. In Melbourne, the immediate results are increasingly dramatic and damning of the government’s methods over the past few months, as well as being a harsh reminder of future risks.
Police on patrol outside public housing towers in north Melbourne. Asanka Ratnayake
By now, several thousand people in
public housing towers in Melbourne are effectively locked in their small apartments under police guard while hundreds of thousands more in dozens of Melbourne suburbs have had their
movements severely restricted. Nor is this likely to be the extent of the shutdown in Victoria given fears the virus transmission is spreading ever closer to the CBD without being adequately controlled.
Yet the Andrews government is still shrugging off the offer of more numbers from the well trained Australian Defence Force – either to supervise Melbourne’s quarantine hotels, where widespread security breaches proved so disastrous, or to assist with the lockdowns now.
Instead, it is belatedly replacing
private security firms with supervision by Corrections Victoria, which is only now recruiting prison guards and parole officers and even out-of-work airline staff. Victorian police hurriedly assembled to patrol the towers only discovered their new duties as they arrived last Saturday afternoon, with the Police Association secretary demanding urgent safety briefings to avoid police unwittingly becoming vectors themselves.
Andrews tries to justify the jump in numbers as being due to the much greater level of testing under way in Victoria relative to anywhere else in the country. He is not forthcoming on why such intensive testing is only necessary in his state.
Andrews still refuses to offer any rationale for the original gross error of judgment in choosing private security contractors with no involvement by the ADF or Victorian police – in shocking
contrast to NSW. This was despite an earlier state government review done just ahead of the COVID-19 crisis, detailing poor hiring and labour practice by private security contractors.
Nor does he offer any justification for the government ignoring
mounting evidence and numerous examples dating back months that at least some guards in the quarantined hotels were not being properly trained, and certainly not following protocols.
Health Minister Jenny Mikakos says her department was not responsible for the decision to give the job to private companies. Martin Pakula, Minister for the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions, which did hire them, insists he will let the inquiry do its work. Combined with Andrews' stonewalling, this adds up to complete abdication in accepting responsibility right now beyond political generalities.
According to the Premier, there’s no point in looking at what has happened when the focus has to be on dealing with a rapidly escalating crisis now. But even that threadbare excuse assumes his government really has learned from its previous mistakes.
Yet when small outbreaks among a couple of families in a few suburbs as a result of infected hotel guards became obvious nearly three weeks ago, the Andrews government rejected advice to quickly institute a localised blitz in tracing, testing and shutdowns in affected areas.
A rapid and highly targeted response was always expected to be the key to managing any community outbreaks of the virus in Australia. The Andrews Government
didn’t apply its own logic or rhetoric. Instead, it waited until the numbers of infections had grown to crisis levels and spread through many more suburbs before
issuing shutdown orders of 36 suburbs last week. This only bore out federal concerns the Victorian public health system was too centralised to deal properly with local problems.
The Andrews government also insisted military personnel could only account for a maximum of 200 of the additional 800 Commonwealth public servants accepted to help. So instead of the ADF, Melbourne-based staff from various federal departments are helping police manage an ever-increasing number of suburbs by encouraging people to get testing.
This resistance to federal authority is not new, with Victoria renowned for its arrogance in insisting state control is so effective that it doesn’t require external advice. After accepting an earlier offer of 1000 military personnel on June 25, for example, the Victorian government reneged the same day, insisting only 200 would be necessary and not for quarantine duty.
Andrews is now stressing there is likely to be more bad days and big numbers ahead despite a stabilisation on Sunday of 74 new cases, slightly down from the 108 reported on Saturday.
“This is not going to be a pleasant experience for those residents but I have a message for those residents: this is not about punishment but protection,” he said at another sombre press conference on Sunday. “We cannot have this virus spread.”
But he won’t be able to stop the spread of this disastrous breakdown throughout the
Victorian economy – as well as national confidence.
Andrews tries to justify the jump in numbers as being due to the much greater level of testing under way in Victoria relative to anywhere else in the country. He is not forthcoming on why such intensive testing is only necessary in his state – at least for now – and why his government gets F for fail.
The public are unlikely to be so understanding. For very good reason.
