Andrews, Sutton pandemic spin comical if it wasn’t costing lives
We’re no closer to knowing who in the Andrews camp ordered private security for hotel quarantine, Sutton’s testimony has been called into question, and now he’s claimed he wasn’t at a meeting he, in fact, attended. When is it enough? asks Peta Credlin.
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How bad does it have to get, how rotten, how many lies have to be told before Victorians are prepared to rage, “enough is enough” over what’s been the most catastrophic failure of government policy in Australian history?
Saturday at the daily press conference with Premier Daniel Andrews, Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton was asked questions about how NZ arrivals into Sydney ended up in Melbourne without much in the way of checks and balances.
Not that we should expect these New Zealanders to pose a COVID risk given NZ is COVID free (and of course Victoria is not) but it highlighted the government’s less than optimal process management yet again.
When trying to plead ignorance, reference was then made to a meeting of Australia’s state and federal medical chiefs (the AHPPC) on Monday where this was matter was discussed, to which Prof Sutton declared: “I wasn’t there on the Monday … as far as I know.”
Only he was.
Last evening, the Commonwealth’s Department of Health confirmed Prof Sutton represented Victoria at the AHPPC meeting on Monday, October 12, where the matter of onwards travel of NZ arrivals into other states was discussed, and that no objections were raised.
Given Victoria has an open border with all other states — it is just other states that have closed their borders with Victoria — Prof Sutton was aware of possible NZ arrivals into Tullamarine as early as Monday.
To say he wasn’t at the meeting is more than dishonest, it was a bald-faced lie.
What does he now want us to believe? That after saying he wasn’t at the meeting; that now he’s suddenly remembered he WAS there but … what? He went to the toilet for that discussion?
Please, we have had enough.
This latest reinvention of the “truth” comes after emails were published yesterday that showed Prof Sutton had been actively involved in advice regarding the use of private security guards on the same day the National Cabinet made the decision — on March 27 — to establish hotel quarantine for returning overseas travellers. These emails now sharply contradict both his written evidence and testimony to the Coate Inquiry where he says he wasn’t aware that private security was used until late May.
As I wade through more and more of the contradictions in the Coate Inquiry’s evidence, if accountability to the caucus is to mean anything, Daniel Andrews’ parliamentary colleagues should be telling him it’s time to go.
It’s not just his ludicrous attempts to assert that no one in his government actually made the decision to use private security in these quarantine hotels, rather than the ADF or police as in every other state, but it’s the payment of millions of dollars to companies without due process, and the direct medical link between these failures and Victoria’s second wave.
I mean, what unapproved, unvetted security firm gets a $30m contract in under six hours flat?
And how can Premier Andrews get away with claiming he never knew that ADF help was available, even though on the day the PM offered it, again March 27, Andrews issued a media release saying: “It has also been agreed that the Australian Defence Force will be engaged to support the implementation of these arrangements.”
Only as we know, 816 dead Victorians later, Daniel Andrews never made good his promise to use the ADF.
This week gone, it’s been the tale of two inquires hasn’t it?
In NSW, Gladys Berejiklian fronted an ICAC hearing that put her under real pressure, unlike in Victoria, where everyone has parroted their own version of “I can’t recall”, and “I don’t remember”.
Compare the ICAC Counsel-Assisting with Counsel-Assisting in Coate and it’s like a rottweiler squaring off against a Dachshund.
In NSW, phone taps were aired; in Victoria, they didn’t even pursue basic phone records until they were shamed, and even then, what’s being provided is not much more than what’s available on your phone bill. It is not the full phone record information: incoming and outgoing calls, deleted texts, or encrypted messages; all of that material can only come via a warrant under federal law and the Coate Inquiry, as it has been set up, is powerless.
This is an important point. But by pursuing this issue at all, the point was made, the obfuscations rang hollow and last Monday, it forced the resignation of Chris Eccles, the head of the Department of Premier and Cabinet. Mr Eccles should now be recalled and pursued over his earlier evidence. So too should others.
As a matter of course, any inquiry worth the name should have already recalled the Premier and the former Health Minister, as soon as Jenny Mikakos resigned declaring that she “strongly disagreed” with Andrews’ sworn testimony and then later, in a further statement that warned his evidence “should be treated with caution”.
Also concerning is Justice Coate’s failure to yet recall Victoria’s Emergency Management Commissioner, Andrew Crisp, after he told a parliamentary inquiry in August that he regularly briefed his Minister, Lisa Neville, around the time that Victoria went it alone on private security (as he is required under law) yet recanted that evidence after it differed from what Neville said under oath to Coate in September.
What about the decision by the head of the Jobs Department Simon Phemister to give a security company with a shady past a $30m contract for three months’ work in under six hours flat?
Made worse of course because this security company wasn’t even on the government’s own list of preferred providers, there was no tender process, the security company’s owner didn’t give oral testimony at the Inquiry and the Minister, Martin Pakula, says he knew nothing about the company or the contract, until “July or August” in his sworn evidence to Coate.
And don’t even get me started on Daniel Andrew’s chief of staff — that she’s never been called and never given a statement says everything.
A “creeping assumption” they say to use private security over police and ADF? Give me a break! It’s like an episode of Fawlty Towers; except this Christmas, more than 800 Victorian families will have an empty chair at the table.
Late on Friday, there was a brief announcement that the Coate Inquiry will hold an extraordinary sitting this Tuesday at 2pm. Whether it might be a sign that they’re finally getting serious about finding out the truth is yet to be seen.
I will only start to believe it if witnesses are recalled and counsel-assisting does more than bowl up a full toss to political operators who bat it away like Bradman.
As all Victorians know, even the good Labor people, this isn’t the usual story of internal political party intrigue. This is a state that’s now on its knees, businesses in ruin, and 25 per cent of the nation’s economic grunt gone; therefore, as much as it affects us, every taxpayer in Australia will pay.
In personal terms, Melbourne has had 14 weeks of the most severe lockdowns in the world and the toll is real with mental health visits up 30 per cent in the past four weeks alone, the highest ever number of boys under 18 committing suicide, as released by the Coroner recently and never ever forget, the families who have lost someone they love, and the dead who died alone.
The fact that today, Gladys Berejiklian is probably in at least as much danger from a mistake in her private life as Dan Andrews is from an epic failure of government says something about political culpability.
I’m tempted to say that governments of the right are held to a different standard than those of the left, but it’s actually much more than that.
To the electorate, personal errors are more easily understood than what’s really going on in Victoria, given how far and wide the Andrews-disease has infected Labor, the public service and other key institutions in that state.
It would be a travesty if Australia were to lose its best performing premier and keep its worst.
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