David Penberthy: In hindsight, this arrangement has been unfair on Professor Spurrier

There have probably been more sightings of the sasquatch in the past two years than the man at the helm, writes David Penberthy.

You can tell a bit about a person from their voice and also from their appearance. You can also tell a bit about a person from their voice and appearance before a parliamentary estimates hearing.

On that basis it seems fair to describe the head of SA Health Dr Chris McGowan as somewhat imperious, at least on the basis of his performance under questioning from MPs last week.

In qualified fairness to the bloke, appearing as a public servant before a group of headline-hungry MPs must be about as much fun as root canal therapy. Over the years there have been many MPs who have made complete pork chops of themselves in that setting with their bullying and rudeness.

Watching our health chief under questioning last week, it seemed like he was the one who was getting more tetchy than his interrogators. And he was principally doing so around one key thing, his department’s then-refusal to release the Covid-19 modelling for South Australia. More concerning was the air of ambivalence he adopted when asked about specific cases involving people who have been hard done by on account of Covid rules.

The people who have spearheaded the response to the pandemic in this state have generally made themselves freely and frequently available to the public through the media. We have joked with Police Commissioner Grant Stevens that he’s on our radio show so often that he will end up hosting his own show.

SA Health boss Dr Chris McGowan. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

He has consistently fronted press conferences when the news cycle is good and bad, and despite occasionally looking like he wouldn’t mind tasering the odd member of the press pack, he always handles himself with candour.

When the back-to-school arrangements became an issue, Education Department chief executive Rick Persse fronted up despite the fact that the hybrid model was being labelled a nonsense.

In contrast, there have probably been more sightings of the sasquatch in the past two years than McGowan.

His rejoinder to this would be that chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier has led the charge both in crafting the medical response to Covid and its public explanation. I think in hindsight that this arrangement has been unfair on Professor Spurrier. It’s been her job to focus on an epidemic, not to deal with procedural and systematic questions arising from the management of the epidemic by the health bureaucracy.

One of the worst examples of that came last year when some 10,000 South Aussies were stranded outside the state, including high-profile cases of kids in border communities locked out of schooling. Clearly, people who had compelling cases for exemptions were simply not having those cases heard because SA Health was totally snowed.

It made zero sense for Professor Spurrier to have to answer those questions, as she is not in charge of those systems, yet she copped all that attention because she was the only one putting her head above the parapet.

Anyway, it was in estimates last week where we got a look at the remoteness that seems to afflict this department from the top down.

As I said above, MPs can be annoying in these hearings, and having clashed with Labor’s Ian Hunter in the past, I can see why the health chief might have got tetchy with him.

It was the nature of the tetchiness that was worrying though, because it involved totally legitimate public questions, one of which involved a completely heartbreaking case that deserved sincere answers.

Hunter was rightly asking McGowan whether he would be releasing the University of Adelaide Covid modelling. Weirdly enough SA Health posted it on its own website last Sunday, but at the time of estimates last week, McGowan was saying he didn’t think it would be released, and doing a poor job explaining why.

After some to-ing and fro-ing, where the health boss suggested the modelling was too complicated for people to understand, he then said if people really wanted to see it they could apply for it under Freedom of Information, suggesting somewhat haughtily that the whole thing was a waste of his department’s time.

“I’m sure if they are suspicious enough they can FOI it and probably get access to it,” he said.

“I’ve got a team of people who are pretty flat out doing a whole lot of things at the moment, and to convert it into a consumable document that is useful – but if people want to FOI it, they are welcome to.”

Hunter replied (validly) that, given it took up to 12 months to get FOIs back, the answer did not fill him with hope.

“You might have missed that we are managing a global pandemic at the moment,” McGowan shot back.

It was his answer to the question about the shattered family of a young man who died suddenly last week that sounded the most dismissive.

I spoke several times last week to the father and stepmother of the lad, whose body was at the state morgue.

The family were first told that they weren’t allowed to see their boy unless they were triply vaccinated. Then, after scrambling to get their booster shots, they were told they had to wait another day because their son needed to be Covid-tested, as apparently you can still be infectious even when you’re deceased. Then, when they finally got in the next day, they weren’t allowed in to hold his hand or kiss his forehead anyway, but had to view him through a glass window.

McGowan’s reply to all this was that in his experience things didn’t always align to the manner in which they were reported. It was a rubbish non-answer that did not show enough respect to the family.

People in public service should never forget who put them there, who pays their wages, and to whom they are ultimately answerable. Especially when they’re getting paid $561,000 a year, and when their department is making decisions that are costing a lot of businesses and individuals a hell of a lot more than that.