Piers Akerman: Coronavirus pandemic reveals scale of Labor incompetence
The pandemic has exposed the failures of Labor governments in Queensland and Victoria — both have showed a wilful lack of understanding of their responsibilities, writes Piers Akerman.
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Most Australians can be grateful for the coronavirus for exposing the failures of the Labor governments in Victoria and Queensland and their public service heads.
Residents unable to see they’ve been hoodwinked through a deliberate policy of lies look like idiots.
In Brisbane, the Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk caroms like an unguided billiard ball around a landscape littered with allegations of corruption made against her most senior ministers and presides over an illogical lockdown that is both extremely cruel and distressingly inhumane.
To the south, Premier Daniel Andrews seems to live only for his farcical daily televised appearances during which he spouts nonsense and out-and-out untruths and is supported by a phalanx of public servants who must be among the worst the nation has ever produced.
They don’t remember critical points and decisions made at meetings where pivotal decisions were made and they didn’t keep notes of their discussions nor aide memoires or even diary jottings, nor did they bother to inquire about those decisions before giving evidence.
In both states they showed a wilful lack of understanding of their duties and responsibilities.
Ministers are not appointed to accept unquestioningly every suggestion made by their public service advisers. The advisers are there to do just as their name suggests — advise — but ministers are meant to have the intelligence and skill to probe and question that advice to ensure that it is in the best interests of the public before being implemented.
Mr Andrews and his senior ministers patently failed this test.
Victoria has recorded about 89 per cent of the nation’s deaths and the overwhelming majority were as a result of government failure.
Yet Mr Andrews persists in saying he’s done a good job, the public servants have done a good job, everyone (except a few citizens who haven’t been fined or punished in any way) have done a good job in keeping the numbers down.
Meanwhile, his disgraced police force have been diligently charging and fining innocent civilians who have not spread the virus but who have had the temerity to suggest that a protest against the Andrews regime might be in order.
The #standwithdan hashtag warriors look as foolish as their leader.
Let me give just one example of Mr Andrews’ blatant deceptions — his denial that he ever knew that ADF personnel were on offer to all premiers to assist the states in whatever area assistance was deemed necessary.
After national cabinet on March 27, he put out a press release on hotel quarantine in which he specifically thanked Prime Minister Scott Morrison for the ADF support offered and in a subsequent press conference repeated his thanks.
It read in part: “Following agreement by the National Cabinet, all travellers returning from overseas to Victoria will be placed in enforced quarantine for a self-isolation period of 14 days to slow the spread of coronavirus.
“It has also been agreed that the Australian Defence Force will be engaged to support the implementation of these arrangements.”
At the inquiry he set up to investigate hotel quarantine, he denied ever knowing that ADF assistance was on offer.
Despite this undeniable evidence the Counsel Assisting the inquiry never asked about either of those well-recorded events and just asked its most senior witness a leading question which roughly translates as — so you are saying you left National Cabinet with no understanding that the ADF were on offer?
The transcript from his videoed press conference after National Cabinet shows he said: “We will use private security, the police and I thank the PM for his generous offer of the ADF.”
Last Saturday, September 26, though he said for the second time when asked about the post National Cabinet press conference: “In that press conference after national cabinet I said we would use private security, the police and public health. I made no reference to a fourth or fifth group.”
He consciously and deliberately tried to rewrite the facts by erasing the ADF out of those he initially listed and inserting “public health” to disguise the fact he set in train events that killed 700 Victorians.
They should erect a statue to George Orwell in Melbourne.