David Penberthy: Vaccine squabbles and empty promises are a sickening sight

Our pandemic and lockdown management was the envy of the world. Not so the vaccine rollout, writes David Penberthy.

When it comes to our management of the COVID vaccination program, Australia is like a cocky, unbeatable football team that has suddenly been thrashed by the wooden spooners.

Our pandemic and lockdown management was the envy of the world. Even with its mismanagement in Victoria, the number of deaths and infections was minimal by world standards.

Not so with the vaccine rollout. It is almost as if our leaders have been basking for so long in their own apparent glory they assumed vaccinating everyone so life could return to normal would somehow take care of itself.

We are the team that won last year’s grand final by 10 goals then turned up with our chests puffed out for round one this season to get pantsed by a bunch of stragglers.

The events of last week, where premiers and health ministers openly squabbled with the commonwealth over the vaccination program, was a political low point. It sickens me to contrast this with the extent to which people in the private sector are agonising over every economic decision and the impact it has on their staff.

Meanwhile, Canberra and the states decide to embark on an orgy of finger-pointing and name-calling, none of which did a single thing to speed up or explain the latest on where our country is at with vaccinations.

The truth is both the commonwealth and the states have got a lot of explaining to do when it comes to their performances.

The Federal Government deserves condemnation for the manner in which it made empty promises setting target dates and then failed to come up with a Plan B when it encountered problems with supply.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Finance Minister Simon Birmingham in Adelaide. Picture: NCA NewsWire /Dean Martin

Scott Morrison promised that by March 31, four-million Australians would be inoculated. As of Wednesday that figure stood at 670,349 people, almost 3.5 million shy of his promise. Missed it by this much, Scomo.

Part of the problem with all this is the PM has for much of the past month looked like a broken shell of a leader, wholly distracted from the task at hand by sexual assault allegations, paralysed by indecision over his treatment of rogue MP Andrew Laming, hopelessly incapable of providing clarity around his thought-bubble on gender quotas.

Against that backdrop he has looked incapacitated on the key issue of what is being done to vaccinate our nation so businesses can survive and people can maintain a living income. All of this while Jobkeeper expires.

This federal leadership vacuum has resulted in a situation where a first-world nation such as Australia, which showed the world the way on managing the pandemic, has managed to find itself 108th placed in the world when it comes to vaccinations.

The roll call of countries that are blitzing us is almost hilarious. There are Caribbean islands such as Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, war-torn and impoverished Central American nations such as Mexico and Belize, the windswept lands of Mongolia and the African republic of Rwanda, still rebuilding after one of the world’’s most brutal civil wars. Even Lebanon, reeling from the devastation of that shocking explosion in Beirut, is ahead of us.

Where the states come in is failing to get their act together to distribute and administer the limited vaccine that Australia actually has. The states have administered less than half the vaccine they have received via the commonwealth, in some cases as low as 35 per cent of what is stockpiled.

vaccination clinic set up inside the Derby Arena at Derbyshire, UK. Picture: Oli Scarff/AFP

While Great Britain is using football stadiums to vaccinate people and is 12th placed in the world with more than half the population having had its first jab, we are flat out getting 50 doses a week into many suburban GP clinics, and many don’t have any.

And then there are totally mind-blowing cases of mismanagement, none worse than Queensland where hospital staff who should have been vaccinated ended up contracting the virus while tending to infected patients.

It almost seems the states have not even trusted themselves to roll out the vaccine, having resisted moves within national cabinet for detailed statistics about how the program is being implemented on a state-by-state basis.

I have heard people talk about how hard it must have been for our political leaders to get through the past 12 months. I think it was a fair observation when the lockdown started and no one had any idea what trajectory the infection and death rate would follow.

But a year on, I reckon we can spare them any sympathy.

The best place to be working right now is the public service. Government has been wholly inured from the job losses and personal financial and acute mental pain that have ravaged so many industry sectors as a result of the social distancing rules our leaders have been quick to apply.

If you want to know what stress looks like, talk to someone running a coffee shop, not a premier who is getting much of the hard work done by their police commissioner and chief health officer, and is riding high in the polls anyway as most people want incumbent leaders to succeed.

They might have succeeded with the lockdown but they’re making a total hash of this.

The worst thing is no one – not the PM, nor any premier – has demanded the nation’s leaders all clear their diaries for a full day or two to resolve this shambles.

Instead we have the pathetic spectacle of NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard, whose department was rightly smashed in the Ruby Princess inquiry, demanding Canberra apologise for its handling of vaccine supply. Spare us all.

These people are lucky to have jobs, compared to many of us. It’s high time they got back to doing them.

Failing that, they could just ring the people who are currently running Rwanda and ask them what’s their secret.