Anna Caldwell: NSW Covid crisis unmasks true leaders

Just when we thought we were managing Covid well, the Government has let itself, and the rest of the state, down with deficient health orders and buck-passing.

This time, Sydneysiders are right to be angry. After more than 15 months of living in a pandemic, a glaring oversight by the NSW Government has left this state on the brink of a lockdown.

Entirely insufficient health orders — drafted and issued by the government — have stopped short of making it an offence for drivers who pick up air crew to fail to wear a mask or not be vaccinated.

Further, there is either no process, or a process that’s not working, to check if the drivers are undertaking daily swabs.

The problems here are so painfully obvious.

We were talking about the vulnerabilities in our covid armour caused by aircrew and foreign arrivals way back at our last significant outbreak before Christmas.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian removes a face mask during a newss conference. Picture: Getty

The federal government’s own advisor Jane Halton even raised air crew and their transport arrangements as a vulnerability that needed to be a higher priority.

We really didn’t need an advisor to tell us that, but it’s handy she did because it makes it that much more ridiculous that the government’s health orders don’t mandate masks or vaccines.

Asked on Thursday by 2GB’s Ben Fordham if it was a health order for air crew drivers to be wearing a mask, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard simply pointed to general airport guidelines which apply to everyone.

Asked if it was now compulsory for all drivers transporting international arrivals to be vaccinated, Hazzard replied “it is not at the moment as I understand it but it will be”.

Asked when this would happen, Hazzard replied: “I instructed Health actually this morning”.

“I want it done,” he said, a mere eight days after the limo driver tested positive.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian had an even stranger take on the rules yesterday, declaring “it doesn’t matter where it’s written” and noting that people know what’s expected of them.

Huh?

It matters where rules are written because legally enforceable rules are how we enforce compliance in this country.

A week ago, the government announced with some fanfare police would be investigating the transport driver in question.

“You have obligations that are legal and they are to get saliva-tested every day and to make sure you wear appropriate PPE. If you don’t do that you’re breaching the orders and the police will investigate you,” Hazzard said sternly last Thursday.

The new Delta variant strain of COVID is causing chaos in NSW with greater restrictions in place and even some members of parliament testing positive. Picture Terry Pontikos.

Now here we are a week down the track and police haven’t laid a finger on the driver because he actually hasn’t breached any of their deficient orders.

Yesterday, as pressure mounted on the government, the Premier and police said the investigation was now “broader” than just the health orders.

“As we think more about the offences that may have been committed, it’s not just about a breach of that transport order,” Deputy Commissioner Gary Warboys said yesterday.

“We’re thinking now around how we look at this, these actions of transport drivers and indeed this particular driver around transport offences, work health and safety offences, not just the driver but the organisation that employs the driver.”

It sounds an awful lot like looking very hard for a crime to match the punishment they feel this bloke deserves.

And maybe he does deserve to be punished — but it’s hard to look past the government not bothering to make sure the rules were explicit and enforceable, isn’t it?

In a full circle moment, NSW parliament — the place where the insufficient health orders originated — is now at the heart of this latest outbreak.

Almost every minister and MP in the building has either had a test, or will need a test, and to isolate until getting further information from NSW Health.

People in workplaces all over this city are also being told to test and isolate as case numbers grow slowly.

Berejiklian should be commended for holding her nerve on a total lockdown. She has so far issued a proportionate response to each daily announcement.

That takes courage in such an unprecedented situation and this sets her apart from all other premiers in this country.

But that doesn’t make every day a case announcement comes along any less scary. Because the Delta strain, and its ability to jump from person to person with fleeting contact, is an entirely new test for this city.

It is an entirely new test for our contact tracers. They are the best in the world but they have never been tested against this iteration of the virus.

All this against a backdrop of an utterly hopeless vaccine rollout.

Scott Morrison engaged in some good old fashioned buck passing yesterday. When quizzed by Labor’s Mark Butler on the debacle of a transport driver not being vaccinated, he said it was a responsibility of the state.

Even if you accept that as true, the bigger problem of vaccine supply falls right at the PM’s feet.

We will continue to be held hostage to slip ups, human error and downright stupidity until we have a sufficiently vaccinated population.

But, in the meantime, we should probably make sure our health orders are air tight.