Piers Akerman: We’re beating the coronavirus despite the bungling of our state governments
Don’t fall for the line that Australia has handled the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic brilliantly. We may be ahead, but gross mismanagement by the NSW and Victorian governments led to unnecessary risks and resulted in death, writes Piers Akerman.
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Don’t fall for the line that Australia has handled the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic brilliantly.
Blessed by geographic isolation, we have been lucky but gross mismanagement by the NSW and Victorian governments led to unnecessary risks and resulted in death.
In NSW, the arrival of the cruise ship Ruby Princess under cover of darkness and the possibility that health workers may have subsequently spread the extremely infectious virus to the Newmarch House Anglicare aged care facility, reflected a failure of the state’s healthcare system.
NSW Health acknowledged that more than 340 confirmed cases of the virus have been diagnosed in patients who all acquired their infection on the Ruby Princess or, in some cases, possibly before boarding. More than 650 cases of the virus and 21 deaths have now been linked to the ship.
Even if the health workers who visited the cruise ship and later were sent to Newmarch, where 16 coronavirus deaths have been recorded, didn’t accidentally carry the disease from the ship to the home, the handling of the virus in that facility has been disastrous.
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In Victoria, the spread of the virus at the Cedar Meats meat-processing facility, which is now linked to more than 70 cases of the virus among workers and close contacts, was mishandled by the state’s healthcare system and subjected to an appalling cover-up.
As the nation’s chief medical officer Professor Brendan Murphy said on Friday: “You will see some little spike in numbers in the last few days. Most of that, 50 per cent of the cases in the last week, have related to two outbreaks, the Cedar Meats outbreak in Victoria and the Newmarch aged care outbreak in NSW.”
In NSW, a royal commission headed by Bret Walker SC, one of the smartest and toughest of the nation’s senior silks, is investigating the handling of the Ruby Princess.
Last week, NSW health official Kelly-Anne Ressler broke down under questioning by Commissioner Walker, inducing Prime Minister Scott Morrison to comment to 2GB talkback host Ray Hadley: “I think to see her reduced to that under the aggressive line of questioning, you’ve got to get the balance right on this one and I hope Mr Walker would reflect on that.”
Mr Morrison was totally out of line but spared a tongue lashing on Friday by Commissioner Walker, who diplomatically dismissed the politician’s imprudent remark.
Before Ms Ressler teared up, the commissioner had asked her why he shouldn’t rule there had been a “reprehensible shortcoming” in NSW Health. An excellent question.
Commissioner Walker must be brutally direct in his questioning if he is going to cut through the fog of obfuscation that has been thrown up by NSW Health over its handling of the spread of the Chinese-sourced virus.
Before this inquiry winds up, he should call Ms Ressler’s superiors and ask them why they put the senior epidemiologist forward when she, patently, was not the person responsible for the department’s failure.
Indeed, not only should the head of NSW Health be called but Health Minister Brad Hazzard should also be ready, because the buck stops with him and if he proves again to be inadequate, Premier Gladys Berejiklian should be asked to explain exactly who she holds responsible for the failures of her government.
The Berejiklian government’s greatest weakness has been its appointment of laughably incompetent ministers because of its reliance on appeasing the competing factions within the Liberal Party.
In Victoria, the politicisation of the public service is transparent and dangerous. Not only has socialist ideology corrupted the state’s education system and pushed such nonsensical but extremely harmful issues such as gender-bending identity politics to the fore of the curriculum, but the pervasive left-wing culture has even infused senior figures in the health department.
Deputy Chief Health Officer Annaliese van Diemen is so swept up in the culture wars that she conflated Captain Cook’s voyage of discovery with the arrival of the deadly coronavirus.
Overlooking the fact that Captain Cook and his crew killed no one and that the expedition led, some 20 years later, to the settlement of our continent by one of the most enlightened European nations then competing for colonies in the Pacific region.
We’ve been fortunate. But we could have been safer. The challenge now is to find the new normal, and there is little confidence that the Victorian or NSW governments are up to that task.