Lack of fines for Casey cluster rule-breakers expose hypocrisy of Andrews’ police state
Multicultural Victoria is insane. It’s again proven in the Premier’s decision to spare a group of Afghans spreading coronavirus from punishment and instead fine protesting grannies in a park. Showing, once more, we’re really not all in this together, writes Andrew Bolt.
Opinion
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Multicultural Victoria is insane. The Premier has said yes to handcuffing protesting grannies in a park, but no to fining Afghans actually spreading the virus.
In an extraordinary press conference on Saturday, Daniel Andrews said his police would not charge the 34 Afghans from five families who’d just got — and spread — the virus by breaking social distancing rules.
Their information was too good: “The value of the information that allows you to take one test result and then find the 33 other people who’ve got it, is much more than $1652.”
Outside, meanwhile, Andrews’ police again showed no such mercy to non-Afghans posing a health threat to no one.
Once again, they chased away women protesting in sunny parks, gang-tackled and handcuffed a man at the beach, and told an old woman to not stop for breath on her walk.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Andrews has been nailed for ideological-driven hypocrisy.
He still struggles to explain why police did not fine a single one of the 10,000 people at a Black Lives Matter protest, but did handcuff a mum in her pyjamas for posting on Facebook about a protest against Andrews’ police state.
But Saturday’s press conference was different. It didn’t just expose how much race politics is corrupting Victoria’s fight against the virus, but how desperately the government tries to hide that fact.
That was clear from the apology issued by Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton. No, he didn’t say sorry for the bungling that let the virus get out of quarantine hotels and into aged-care homes, killing hundreds.
Sutton instead said sorry for telling the truth about some of the people responsible for a fresh Melbourne outbreak last week.
“Wabekhai,” Sutton said to Afghans in Pashto.
“Mazerat mikhayom,” Sutton said to Afghans in Farsi.
Sorry, for having revealed that those five families were Afghans and “singling them out”.
But don’t Victorians deserve to know something about the people who break basic social distancing rules and endanger the rest of us?
True, many people spreading the infection are actually born-here Australians, but it is also true that most seem to be immigrants — perhaps poorer, less trusting, harder to reach.
This terrible second wave of infections started with guards in quarantine hotels, mostly immigrants, and then spread in heavily multicultural suburbs and workplaces.
The government complained that issuing health warnings in 53 languages didn’t seem to be enough, and even today the Melbourne suburb with most new infections has twice as many immigrants than the average.
That already showed that turning Australia into a nation of tribes makes us less safe.
But now we’re also learning how much Andrews’ multicultural policies helped to unleash the virus and create this catastrophe. Here are just some examples:
ANDREWS’ government gave a $44 million contract for hotel quarantine security to Unified Security, which wasn’t a preferred tenderer but did claim to be “Indigenous-owned”. More than 90 per cent of second-wave infec
tions came from a hotel Unified was hired to make secure.
UNIFIED got the job “in keeping with the state government’s procurement objective of utilising Aboriginal businesses”, said the public servant responsible, even though its owner has a white complexion, and few — if any — of the casuals then hired were Aboriginal.
A CO-ORDINATOR of Victoria’s response said many security staff at the two hotels from which the virus escaped had cultural and “language barriers” in following health instructions.
YOUR Nursing Agency, which supplied nurses to quarantine hotels, said guards told it “they were concerned about using hand sanitiser because it is against their religion”.
BOTH co-ordinators of the disaster response warned that using police or soldiers instead of private security could intimidate people in quarantine — often dual nationals returning from India or the Middle East.
A PUBLIC servant at the hotels told an inquiry he’d got an hour of training in “equity and diversity”, but none on protective equipment.
ADS for senior staff for the government’s COVID-19 Forward Strategy and Co-ordination Branch had four paragraphs of job description stressing a commitment to diversity, but not one stressing a commitment to stopping infections. They declared: “We encourage job applications from … people from culturally diverse backgrounds.”
So: diversity above competence. Afghan virus-spreaders not punished, while white social media posters are handcuffed in their homes. And the Chief Health Officer apologising only if he’s caught telling the truth.
More than 700 people have died not simply from the virus. Many were killed by the most crazed multicultural policies in Australia.
Originally published as Lack of fines for Casey cluster rule-breakers expose hypocrisy of Andrews’ police state