Peta Credlin: Labor’s record on dealing with crises is appalling
The Victorian COVID crisis is just the latest disaster presided over by Labor governments, with 50,000 illegal arrivals on our borders, Rudd’s GFC response and the ‘unlawful’ live-cattle export ban all part of a shocking record that stretches back to Whitlam. Why do Liberal governments run things better than Labor, asks Peta Credlin.
News
Don't miss out on the headlines from News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- States should not be in charge during a pandemic
- Andrews needs to step up to save Australia from virus spread
After a week of escalating infections came the sobering truth that if Victoria was a country, Thursday’s record of 723 new COVID cases and 13 deaths would have put it in the top 20 worldwide, in per-capita terms.
To say Victoria is in crisis would be an understatement as it faces stage four restrictions and economic collapse.
Many are now questioning the state government’s capacity to turn things around and, as it gets worse, the disaster risks Australia’s broader recovery.
The incompetence has been breathtaking — from hotel quarantine to woefully inadequate contract tracing, testing delays of up to nine days and, until recently, refusal of military assistance. It’s as though the government lurches from one stuff-up to another and can’t learn from its mistakes.
Indeed, ministers should count themselves lucky they’re not likely to be caught by the state’s new industrial manslaughter laws that commenced on July 1 because if they were, they would be facing 20 years in jail or fines of up to $16.5 million for any employees who contract coronavirus and die.
MORE NEWS
Suspensions, violence rise in NSW schools
Teen killer changes key evidence against murder co-accused
Checkpoint COVID: Cops battling bitter border conditions
How has Victoria got it so wrong when other states are starting to recover?
Even in NSW, where every recent case has been scientifically linked to Victoria, emerging outbreaks are being dealt with swiftly; people potentially exposed contacted, testing done within 24 hours and quarantine tightly managed.
It’s not lost on anyone that while they had the calamity of the Ruby Princess on their watch early on, NSW clearly learned from their mistakes.
Indeed, Premier Gladys Berejiklian showed she meant business when, only days after the cruise ship disaster unfolded, she pushed her Health Minister to one side, put the Police Commissioner in charge and set up a proper judicial inquiry with all the powers needed to get to the truth.
So is that the difference? Is it as simple as Liberal governments running things better than Labor?
It’s a fair question to ask if you look at recent history.
The last time any government in Australia had to respond urgently to a largely unanticipated crisis was the Rudd government’s response to the global financial crisis (GFC).
That spawned the notorious school hall program which gave every school in the country overpriced new facilities whether they needed them or not; the disastrous pink batt program; cash for clunkers; taxpayer cheques to dead people and so on.
Post-GFC, it was the live-cattle export ban recently found by the Federal Court to be “unlawful”, the establishment issues plaguing the NDIS and, worst, the crisis of 50,000 illegal arrivals on our borders.
But Labor‘s management failures aren’t new.
In Victoria, most families will remember the collapse of the State Bank in the 1990s, a similar State Bank failure also presided over by Labor in South Australia, and, again under Labor, the Western Australia’s Inc scandal.
Go back to the Whitlam government and you will find more Labor waste, mismanagement and shady dealings on an epic scale.
Why is it that Labor just can’t seem to run things?
Part of the problem is Labor’s fixation with big government. There’s hardly an issue where they don’t think government wading in and displacing the private sector is anything but a good outcome.
Given Labor’s not-so-subtle drive to shape the public service in its own ideological image, the focus becomes more on what the bureaucracy espouses rather than what it actually gets done. Headlines, stunts, and spin; making the announcement is the easy part, the real challenge in politics is getting the vast machine of modern government to implement it successfully.
This is where Labor falls down.
I have no doubt Daniel Andrews didn’t plan to be where he is today and I have no doubt he’s putting in the hours to sort out the mess.
The problem is that his background, and that of most of his ministers and staff, makes this a challenge. So too does his pig-headed unwillingness to test the advice he’s given.
Almost to a man and a woman, Labor MPs are former union officials, party officials or public sector employees. Their expertise is politics rather than organisation (other, perhaps, than organising the “numbers” to branch-stack preselections). At their best, Labor MPs are skilled political advocates and political campaigners.
But to what, in the real world, have most of them ever added value?
On the point about testing advice, time and time again Daniel Andrews says he is acting on the basis of expert advice; that he’s doing what the experts tell him.
Given he now has over 5000 active cases on his hands, a catastrophe among the most vulnerable, no immediate hope that he’s getting community transmission under control and the economic king-hit of these lockdowns, surely this expert advice can’t be much chop if this is where it’s got him?
Experts aren’t elected, leaders are; and the job of a good leader is to consider and contest advice, not take it without question.
In Victoria, too much “expert” advice is contradictory and untested, and that’s partly why the state is in crisis.
Over recent years, as the state public service has become less hands-on and made up of more and more theoreticians and policy analysts, its ability to get things done — and done well — has fallen away. So much so that any new challenge requiring urgent and substantial mobilisation of personnel and resources can easily be beyond them; certainly, that’s the case in Victoria.
Perhaps there are fewer disasters on Liberals’ watch because they’re generally in favour of less government in people’s lives not more.
Or perhaps it’s because most Liberal and National governments have some MPs in their ranks with a small-business background, where an ability to work with others to solve practical problems is an essential survival skill.
As things have turned out this year, Dan Andrews can’t even run a political party, let alone a competent government.
Thanks to the latest branch-stacking disgrace, the Victorian Labor organisation is in administration and an inquiry under way to get to the bottom of the scandal.
No such powerful inquiry for Victorians living with this COVID crisis.
It’s little more than a PR exercise because it lacks the powers needed to compel witnesses or subpoena documents and in any event is limited to just hotel quarantine failures, and none of the other failures that have contributed to this calamity.
Regrettably, I fear it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
THUMBS UP: Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon — he’s telling Labor that they’re unelectable if they’re the party of higher electricity, anti-blue collar worker and anti-coal. The question is: are they listening?
THUMBS DOWN: NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard — for his decision to grant Auburn mosque an exemption to allow large prayer gatherings on Friday: 1000 worshippers spread across three groups of around 350.
The Minister’s office couldn’t even tell me if deep cleaning occurred between groups.
But then, he’s the bloke that presided over the Ruby Princess debacle.
Originally published as Peta Credlin: Labor’s record on dealing with crises is appalling