Terry McCrann: Victoria’s Premier must quit over his government’s ineptitude
Sunday’s announcement of an extension to Victoria’s lockdown was all about incompetent government — and Daniel Andrews must walk, writes Terry McCrann.
Terry McCrann
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How come Daniel Andrews did not resign as Premier of Victoria on Sunday?
This is not posed as a rhetorical question or just to have a cheap shot.
His immediate resignation is the simple, unarguable and utterly undeniable logic of the fact that he has presided over the greatest public policy catastrophe in modern Australian history.
I am not talking only or even mostly about the direct failures in relation to the virus — the, to put it bluntly if brutally, 675 deaths, and counting.
But of the massive economic and financial — as well as similarly massive personal and health — havoc that Andrews has been mandatorily imposing, and will continue to impose, on the state and its 6.5 million citizens as the “cure” for his and his government’s stunning failure.
Let us be very and again undeniably clear: Sunday was all and only about incompetent government making all 6.5 million Victorians pay, and pay a crushing price for its governance failure.
If there were any accountability, if Andrews possessed the slightest shred of self-awareness of his own failure, how could he not resign?
What, it was so absolutely vital that the person who had presided over the catastrophe, was the only one who could preside over the even more devastating journey out of it?
It’s not even like the captain of the Titanic demanding that he and only he could command the lifeboats, pulling away from the sinking ship.
No, it’s much worse than that. Andrews is like that captain demanding that we entrust to him the management of even getting into the lifeboats and — hopefully — clearing the ship in the first place before it sinks.
And indeed no; not even demanding we entrust him, but just taking the right to do so. I’m the captain and you will do what I command.
The facts of the catastrophe are raw and simply undeniable. They are not a matter of subjective opinion or projection.
Victoria has had a staggering 89 per cent of the all the virus deaths in Australia. That is only “so far”; the percentage will continue to rise inexorably above 90 per cent.
Perhaps the Premier can tell us where he thinks it will finish? Indeed, will he feel vindicated in his management of his own catastrophe if he can keep it below 95 per cent?
Almost all of those Victorian deaths — something like 655 of the 675, and counting — were a direct result of the criminal negligence of the quarantine debacle.
It’s not me claiming that, it’s what the Premier’s own Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, has said; that genomic tracing indicated that almost all the cases in the “second wave” came from that source.
The quarantine catastrophe was a direct result of decisions made by the Andrews Government.
The cases and deaths alone were bad enough; what has made it worse, so much worse — in terms of governance failure — is the economic, financial and broader destruction, seeping deep into the lives of all 6.5 million Victorians, that the Premier has mandated.
That he has mandated, arguably unnecessarily and even punitively.
It doesn’t seem to have even occurred to the Premier — silly me, of course it wouldn’t occur to him — that all this devastation he has mandated is precisely the most crushing and irrefutable condemnation of his and the government’s inexcusable failure.
In any functioning parliamentary democracy, the premier would have held ministers of the relevant decision-making departments accountable and sacked them.
By not sacking them, the Premier has assumed to himself their governance culpability and should have resigned.
It is of course not his style; as Premier he has never held anyone inside his tent accountable for even misfeasance far less malfeasance — “high crimes and misdemeanours”, to quote from the US constitution, which now look like petty theft in comparison with this governance catastrophe.
He of course blusters and deflects in the embarrassingly childish way he goes about it. “It’s not for me to comment”; “that’s for the quarantine inquiry”; I’m totally focused on fixing things” etc.
And what of his supine, silent, spineless, uniformly incompetent cabinet?
I’m reminded of the Spitting Image skit of Margaret Thatcher presiding over a dinner with her (all-too similar) cabinet.
The waiter asks how does she like her steak? Rare she replies. And what about the vegetables? They’ll have the same as me.
MINISTER ANNOUNCES: SACK ME
The WA Attorney-General, John Quigley, should resign or be sacked by the Premier, Mark McGowan.
He of course won’t and nor will the Premier.
Quigley is after all just doing the Premier’s bidding — to draft and deliver legislation to enable WA to steal up to $30bn (actually, at most $4bn-$5bn) from Clive Palmer.
Now we’ve seen Quigley claim in an article in our sister newspaper, The Australian, that it’s not an exception to the rule of law because, well, “it was passed by parliament and represents the law of this state”. I have to applaud Quigley for his transparency — telling all Australians, including those in the west, that WA has as its first law officer someone who hasn’t got the slightest clue of what the rule of law means.
Originally published as Terry McCrann: Victoria’s Premier must quit over his government’s ineptitude