Memory loss is not a listed symptom of COVID-19, but it seems that the Wuhan Plague has resulted in an astonishing wave of forgetfulness in the Victorian ruling class.
The disastrously botched hotel quarantine scheme in that state is responsible for nearly all of its wave of infections which led to the entire state being locked under virtual house arrest and the first curfew in Melbourne’s history. Someone made the decision to hand the running of the scheme over to private contractors. Someone made the decision to award the contract to an “indigenous” company with an expired license. Someone oversaw the hiring of untrained guards via Whatsapp and putting them in charge with no training, except “diversity and inclusion”.
But who? Well, nobody seems to know. Least of all the government and bureaucrats supposedly in charge.
The people entrusted to navigate Victoria through this pandemic steered it onto the rocks of the second wave — and now they obfuscate, buck pass, dissemble and perhaps even lie under oath. It is a conga line of incompetence, insincerity and insensitivity. And it is a gross insult to the families who have lost loved ones because of them.
Premier Daniel Andrews has hidden behind this inquiry each time he’s been asked about the catastrophic decisions made by his government in the establishment and running of the hotel quarantine program. He has hidden behind the inquiry even when the former judge running it made it clear there was nothing stopping him talking about it.
He promised Victorians that the inquiry would get to the bottom of what had occurred.
Instead, all the inquiry has delivered is a farcical litany of “I don’t know” from everyone involved: the premier, his senior ministers and public health bureaucrats.
Adding insult to grotesque injury, the most senior witnesses to the inquiry this week have been a pantomime of amnesia, bureau-babble and cowardice.
From the secretary of the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet Chris Eccles saying he sometimes had no recollection from meetings he had chaired, to the forgetful police commissioners (past and present) who couldn’t remember what notes they wrote at the meetings.
We’ve had three senior ministers say repeatedly that they weren’t aware of matters within their portfolios and didn’t seek to ask any questions about them.
We’ve had a cringeworthy performance from the Secretary of the Department of Health which has left everybody reeling at the fact that she is in charge of our entire health system, let alone the pandemic response.
We’ve had spaghetti bowl organisational charts and utopian mission statements. We’ve had emergency management plans with more acronyms than a United Nations summit.
But nobody — not a single person — has said they were responsible for the decision to use private security guards instead of police or the ADF, or that they could possibly identify who was.
This leaves two conclusions: either the leaders of the Victorian government are all lying, or this is a government so incompetent that not one senior politician or bureaucrat had the least idea what was happening with the single most important policy decision of the moment. Neither conclusion reflects well on Andrews’ government.
Andrews has offered an allegedly wholehearted apology – but an apology without any concession of guilt is the most insulting and meaningless gesture possible.
But there’s a very obvious reason why no-one in the Andrews government wants to remember anything about hotel quarantine.
As I’ve written previously, the Victorian Workcover Authority is undertaking an investigation into the COVID-19 outbreak, under the auspices of Andrews’ very own “industrial manslaughter” laws. Those laws carry criminal penalties, including jail time, for such criminal (in Victoria) offences as: a failure of an employer and its officers (i.e. the government, and its ministers and bureaucrats) to provide and maintain safe systems of work; a failure to provide information, instruction, training and supervision for the safety of employees and a failure to monitor the conditions of the workplace.
No wonder no-one in the Victorian government wants to cop responsibility.
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