Andrew Bolt: Daniel Andrews shows the fish rots from the head
Ever since the virus escaped hotel quarantine, Daniel Andrews has smashed Victoria with lockdowns without admitting he didn’t trust the likes of Brett Sutton to just do the basics — tracing, quarantining and protecting the aged. Now that lethal fraud is exposed, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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Sack him now. On Tuesday, the madness and menace of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was totally exposed.
That afternoon, police arrested nine people for breaking virus bans on mass gatherings by protesting outside the Premier’s office.
Yet Andrews’ Racing Minister, Martin Pakula, was meanwhile announcing it was actually safe enough to allow 500 owners and their connections to gather at the Cox Plate on the weekend.
Of course it is. Very few people have caught the virus in the open air, and Victoria is down to four or fewer new infections a day in a state of more than six million people.
But by Tuesday night, Pakula realised — oops — he’d exposed the con of Victoria’s 13-week lockdown.
He was allowing 500 racing royalty to meet, when his crazed Premier was still banning more than 10 people from gathering at a funeral.
He was allowing party time at the races, when virus border bans have caused the deaths of four babies – babies in South Australia who couldn’t fly in and out of Victoria for life-saving heart treatment.
What Pakula should have said was the Cox Plate gatherings should of course go ahead. And all other pointless bans should also be dropped.
Melburnians should be allowed to open their shops, attend churches, and invite friends to barbecues to watch Saturday’s AFL Grand Final, this year exiled to Brisbane.
But Pakula instead banned the Cox Plate parties: “The last thing that I wanted to do was create the impression that people who sacrificed so much were being treated differently.”
In fact, the last thing he wanted was for Victorians to realise so many of the virus bans have been pointless, and start asking questions.
Why, even after the worst bans were lifted last Sunday, is protesting still banned? Shopping at Bunnings? Walking alone in the open without a mask?
None of that made sense, but rather than admit the obvious, Pakula banned yet one more harmless activity that had actually been approved by health officials.
Too late. It’s now clear that little that this government does makes sense, yet nobody in power seems accountable.
Correction. Some people are finally accountable, but only if they’re junior enough to save the Premier — the control freak at the centre of this madness.
That, too, became clear on Tuesday, when Brett Sutton, Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, was exposed as an inattentive man out of his depth and seemingly desperate to keep secret the emails that proved it.
If you believe Sutton’s evidence to the inquiry into Victoria’s hotel quarantine disaster, he was kept out of the loop on the very decisions he should have been making.
For instance, Sutton testified that he had no “oversight” of how those quarantine hotels were run.
He also said he hadn’t known the government had hired private security guards for those hotels — untrained and ill-equipped, many with poor English and a religious objection to alcohol-based sanitiser. Some of those guards got sick and spread the virus.
But on Tuesday the inquiry’s solicitors announced they’d since found emails that Sutton must explain within seven days.
One showed Sutton on March 27 thanking a health bureaucrat for an email stating private guards would indeed be used.
Another, from April 1 and headed “Information — Chain of command — people in detention”, showed senior health bureaucrats being told that “policy and oversight of people in detention is being handled in a strict chain of command, from Chief Health Officer” down. Yes, Sutton was in charge.
So what’s Sutton’s excuse for telling the inquiry he never knew about those security guards?
The health department’s lawyers told the inquiry: “Sutton instructed us he had not read the detail of the email”. He’d therefore told them his evidence to the inquiry was honest and they should not give the inquiry the emails that damned him.
Seriously? But this goes much higher.
Those Health Department lawyers admitted the department itself had withheld the emails from the inquiry, not believing them “critical documents”.
Not surprisingly, the inquiry’s solicitors strongly disagreed.
And don’t forget a fish rots from the head.
As early as March 27, Andrews himself publicly declared security in the hotels would be provided by “police, private security”, yet still insists he never knew private security had indeed been hired.
And ever since the virus escaped those hotels, Andrews has smashed Victoria with lockdowns without admitting he didn’t trust the likes of Sutton to just do the basics — tracing, quarantining and protecting the aged.
Now that lethal fraud is exposed.
Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Daniel Andrews shows the fish rots from the head