David Penberthy: The bigger question is who is ultimately responsible for running the state as this pandemic continues?

This week’s advice on dodging a ball – and the decision to let Collingwood into the state – are rare missteps in an otherwise strong response, David Penberthy writes.

Here are two statements which should not be mutually exclusive. Professor Nicola Spurrier has done a sensational job managing the pandemic for South Australia. And, advice surrounding the avoidance of stray footballs at Saturday’s Crows-Pies game is comical and strange.

One of the biggest challenges amid the pandemic for public officials has been achieving consistency and clarity around messaging. It is one of the reasons we have generally done so well here throughout the pandemic.

The best recent example is the high take-up rate of QR check-ins in our state, while poor old Victoria flounders around having only introduced a proper universal check-in system on Friday of last week. Our state government has also done a much better job than the feds in explaining and advertising the benefits of being vaccinated. These are both big ticks.

Management of the exemption for this Collingwood game has been a different story. It is one that invites eye-rolling and cynicism at a time when you want compliance and acceptance.

And, far from criticising Prof Spurrier, I would instead question the role of the Premier in doing the sell-job on the thinking behind allowing this exemption at a time when many others are being denied.

I would also ask whether it was fair for people in politics, who are trained in the art of knowing how issues will play with the public, to let Prof Spurrier go out on her lonesome with advice that was always going to invite derision and laughter as it so flies in the face of common sense.

Professor Nicola Spurrier has done a sensational job managing the pandemic for South Australia, but advice surrounding the avoidance of stray footballs at the Crows-Pies game is comical and strange. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Mariuz

There is an internal logical problem with the granting of permission for this Collingwood game. On the one hand we are being told it’s safe for people to attend, that all players have been tested and will be in and out on a chartered flight; yet at the same time we are being urged to avoid touching the ball at all costs should it fly into the crowd or immediately sanitise in the event that we mark it and throw it back.

The first problem with this advice is it bears no resemblance to the way football games have been played all of this year. Last year, during the hard lockdown when all games were played without crowds, we saw the brief odd spectacle of the ball being washed in detergent and then sanitised during games. That has not happened this year. There have been repeated instances where the ball has entered the crowd and been thrown back in so play can resume.

Advice given by SA Health these past two days is completely different from anything we have seen this year.

Beyond that, the chief problem with this health warning is it simply beggars belief anyone could catch Covid off a football anyway.

At work on the radio yesterday we literally had hundreds of texts from people asking tongue-in-cheek whether you could mark it if a Crows player kicked it out, or if it depended on whether they had touched a Pies player first.

All this is the stuff of front bar chat and good fodder for radio sports shows. The bigger question is who is ultimately responsible for running the state as this pandemic continues?

As a successful former businessman, Steven Marshall’s instincts hold that it’s the job of the boss to surround himself with good people and to delegate and let them all get on with their jobs. That approach only works up to a point in politics. People want to be led by the person whose party they voted for.

Premier Steven Marshall. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

There have been times – and this is most certainly one of them – when the Premier looks almost like a bystander as Professor Spurrier and the Police Commissioner are left to explain huge judgment calls that in my view require the backup and authority of the state’s political leader to sell them to a confused public.

The exemption for the Black Lives Matter protest last year was a case in point. That was an operational call made by Grant Stevens but it needed the forceful and candid backup from the state’s political leader to sell the thinking behind it, at a time when everyone else was still locked down.

Aside from the obvious and horrible human toll through illness and death, the two worst features of the pandemic have been the erosion of individual liberties and the job-wrecking and profit-destroying impact of social distancing rules, lockdowns and border closures on people working in and managing businesses.

The public sector is chugging along beautifully but the private sector has not done it this tough in living memory.

It should disturb the Premier that the people in SA who are most distressed and unhappy with management of the pandemic are predominantly Liberal voters.

They support the party as the champion of individual freedom and the champion of business – the two things smashed by Covid.

And by my reckoning, the people who argue most vehemently that the Premier has outsourced his job to unelected officials all appear to be Libs. Almost everyone I speak to in business has qualms about what they see as his hands-off approach. There are people in the Liberal Party itself who have a similar view.

And that was the problem this week. To use the saying – “You had one job to do” – Nicola Spurrier is actually the dictionary definition of the person who has one job. It’s her job to consider issues purely on their public health ramifications. The broader question of how you keep the community onside is a political one.

Telling people to play dodgeball and duck to avoid the flying Sherrin of death was only ever going to invite guffaws. It needed someone to step in and lead, and say: “Seriously? This won’t play with the public.”

Or conversely, if he was so convinced of the apparent wisdom of this health directive, to stand up and own it with her. Neither of those things happened, which explains why this panned out the way it did.

Anyway, good luck if you’re going to the game. Just keep your head down.