Daniel Andrews still not answering questions on quarantine
A parliamentary inquiry into the state’s handling of coronavirus was a farcical pantomime that allowed Daniel Andrews to continue to evade the tough questions, says James Campbell.
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There was once a time not very long ago when Government MPs were allowed the liberty of asking their own questions when ministers attended the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee.
But Steve Bracks and Ted Baillieu aren’t in office any more.
Now we are into the sixth year of the reign of The Dan and under his regimen Labor are given questions to read.
In COVID-19 times, when everyone is appearing via videolink from their office, the low-res images of their halting delivery brings a touch of the hostage to proceedings.
Which is appropriate really if even half the stories you hear are true about what life is like as a member of Daniel Andrews’s caucus.
Even under the tightly controlled conditions that operate in PAEC these days, the committee is still the best opportunity opposition MPs get to question the Premier at length.
The first MP up was the Committee Chair Richard Riordan, who appears to be modelled his delivery and interviewing style on Alan Jones.
Which is to say his questions weren’t really questions but points of view expressed with a question mark at the end. Which isn’t to say his points weren’t good ones.
It was hard not to notice the Premier’s rapid response to 60 Minutes’s report on his factional enemy Adem Somyurek and his evident lack of interest in the Herald Sun’s revelations this morning about who exactly was running the bungled hotel quarantine program.
Naturally Andrews was having none of it.
The only enemy he was focused on was the wicked enemy of the coronavirus and he wasn’t interested in playing silly political games.
Riordan was keen to pin the hotel quarantine bungle on Jobs Minister Martin Pakula, a line of attack that one suspects the Premier won’t be entirely unhappy with, as it avoids the bigger and more pertinent question.
That being why the quarantine program was left to the folks at Global Victoria aided by people from Rural and Regional Victoria, Agriculture Victoria and the National Gallery of Victoria.
Next we had Labor MP Gary Maas, who sounded like he was speaking on the line from Calcutta in 1943.
He wanted to know more about the great things in the Government’s mental health package. Luckily Dan had a whole bunch detail at this elbow.
This farce over it was time for the bearded presence of Greens MP Sam Hibbins to appear on our screens.
He was focused on things that had gone wrong in the public housing tower lockdowns – people forced to reuse insulin needles, mothers with newborn babies in hospital who were unable to get their expressed milk to them.
Dan wasn’t moved. He’d do it again.
If you’re looking for someone who could have run the lockdown perfectly “no such person exists, Mr Hibbins” he said, with a note of barely suppressed contempt for the member for Prahran. Then it was Nats MP Danny O’Brien who wanted an answer to the question all of Victoria has been asking: Why had the Government relied on private security contractors for the hotel quarantine program?
Looking like butter wouldn’t melt, Andrews answered there was another process in place to look into these things.
Almost pleadingly, O’Brien retorted: “But you asked us to do this inquiry – you’re here now.” Why wouldn’t he answer the question? No dice.
“There are some questions that can be answered and some which simply cannot,” Andrews said.
O’Brien then wanted to know about leaked emails which showed the public servants in March had warned police needed to be on site at all times during the hotel locked.
Dan was ready for that one, reaching into the draw for that favourite word of evasive witnesses since time immemorial: “purports”.
“Mr O’Brien I’m not going to respond to an email that purports to be from a person in government,” Andrews said with a look on his face that suggested he couldn’t believe they would be so naive as to think he would be stupid enough to respond to that one.
He was unaware of that email. There were hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that had been provided to the Coate inquiry. Surely he couldn’t be expected to be across all of them?
O’Brien then moved on to the question of why the Government had first sought the help of 1000 ADF personnel before dialling back the request.
“That request was not made by me. That request was not made by the Crisis Council of Cabinet.”
The question Andrews said was best referred to the person who made that request which “was not made by any person of authority in the Victorian Government.”
O’Brien suggested it had been made by the Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp.
You can ask him about it when he appears, the Premier responded, in a way that suggested Mr Crisp is that popular with him at the moment.
After scripted muzak from a Labor backbencher who deserves to remain anonymous Liberal Democrat MP David Limbrick then asked the most sensible question of the morning: What is the end game?
The Premier answered that we were still suppressing the virus not seeking its elimination and that if we hadn’t entered the present lockdown things would have been in diabolical state.
But as to how we break this cycle from lockdown into flare-up, answer came there none.
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