Pollie barbs over vaccination rollouts and Covid quarantine camps must stop
Australians deserve better than the ‘open warfare’ and pointscoring between our political leaders over Covid.
Opinion
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At the end of 2019, while eastern Australia struggled with the deadly and destructive bushfires on a massive scale, Prime Minister Scott Morrison conducted a radio interview from his holiday break in Hawaii.
It was December 20 and he was getting smashed over leaving Australia while we were in the middle of a natural disaster. The PM defensively explained it was a planned break with his family and that he would be coming back given the seriousness of the fires.
He then made the silly mistake of saying: “You know I don’t hold a hose mate, and I don’t sit in a control room.”
The public reaction was swift, brutal even, and the ill-advised Hawaiian getaway came to an abrupt end.
Aside from spending the past two weeks in quarantine at The Lodge in Canberra, that Hawaii trip would have been the PM’s last time away from the office — his last holiday.
Like all of us he has been trapped in Australia by border closures.
Labor and the Greens, of course, leapt on the holiday stumble and Morrison’s critics will never let him forget it.
A comment from Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk this week, defending her Government’s handling of their latest Covid outbreak, reminded me of the hose stumble.
Questioned at a media conference about an unvaccinated worker being attached to a Covid ward as a receptionist, the Premier defended her previous boast that by March all frontline workers would be vaccinated.
Asked why her Health Minister shouldn’t be sacked over this policy failure, the Premier said “she doesn’t go and do the vaccinations of these people”.
The outrage was nowhere near what the PM copped because hardly anyone in Australia knows who the Queensland Health Minister is (Yvette D’Ath) but it again highlights the arrogance of politicians when cornered.
The next day Queensland chief health officer Dr Jeanette Young – who will be that state’s next Governor – doubled down and aggressively defended her comments that an 18 year-old could die if jabbed with Astra Zeneca.
It was, and is, an irresponsible comment that threatens to blow up any co-operation between the states and Canberra and she should have apologised.
Thursday’s media conference was chaotic, with reporters and the Premier and her CHO abusing the media and dodging questions.
After 15 months of pretend co-operation the dam wall has burst, and it’s now open warfare between some of the states and Canberra.
I’m sure Scott Morrison didn’t need any reminding of the hose quote but he must have taken some pleasure in the Queensland Premier’s discomfort this week.
Clearly the pair do not like each other and now the disintegration of the so-called national cabinet seems complete and that should have us all worried.
Imagine that instead of a remote meeting over Skype, that these people were forced to be in the same room together face-to-face.
I think it’s a national disgrace that during a time of destructive crisis these people can’t get on the same page.
The rock-throwing over vaccination rollouts and remote quarantine camps needs to be called out for what it is — self-interested posturing.
We all know there have been issues and mistakes with vaccinations and that remote camps should have been built but what about fixing the problems and ditching the fighting.
Then we have state premiers doing cute little backroom deals to pander to voters who would like to see our borders shut to returning Australians. That makes me sick.
The Labor trio of Palaszczuk, Daniel Andrews from Victoria and Mark McGowan from Western Australia must think Australians are stupid.
This issue was raised at national cabinet last Monday night and magically the Labor trio all agreed that the numbers of returning Australians should be cut.
On ABC radio Premier Andrews put a figure to the cuts suggesting they be slashed by up to 80 per cent.
Then up bobs Premier McGowan saying he thinks Andrews is right and we need to have a national conversation about returning flights.
This from the bloke who shuts his WA border because there is a strong wind blowing, while Queensland of course is the state that needed to be dragged kicking and screaming to let a son in to see his dying dad.
As for Victoria and quarantine – we know what happened here, with more than 800 people dying through a system that leaked.
Australians deserve better than the Covid response being managed through partisan politics.
No doubt parts of the vaccination rollout — mainly supply — have been badly managed. Returning travellers should never have been housed in budget hotels, we all now know that.
But Labor premiers ganging-up to ease pressure on their failed hotel quarantine systems, while leaving NSW and Gladys Berejiklian out of the plan because she’s a Liberal, is pathetic.
NSW has taken far more arrivals that any other State and has handled the hotel lockdowns better than any other state.
Playing politics with the mental wellbeing of Australians who have every justification to come back to their own country is shameful.
To use it as some state Labor sledgehammer to again pressure the Federal Government says more about those Labor premiers than anything else.
Whatever happened to the saying ‘we’re all in this together?’ That lasted about five minutes.
And when Queensland and WA voters returned their premiers off the back of border lockdowns, any sense of togetherness disappeared.
As Australians again cope with snap border closures and fresh Covid outbreaks wouldn’t it be refreshing if our politicians could work together?
Fifteen months into this nightmare we deserve better from all sides of politics — but don’t hold your breath.
DISLIKES
> Victorian’s school holidays being cut short interstate because of border closures.
> National’s MP Darren Chester the former Veterans Affairs Minister being cut by Barnaby Joyce from his Ministerial team.
> A family permitted to fly into Australia via Adelaide on a private plane even though they had Covid.
> Idiotic panic buying of toilet paper in of all places Alice Springs and Adelaide fearing shortages.
LIKES
> Prince George sitting between his mum and dad at the Euro match between England and Germany.
> The standing ovation at Wimbledon for the scientist responsible for developing Astra Zeneca.
> All 18 AFL teams in Melbourne – given last year – we should all be celebrating.
> Not having to wear masks in the street.
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