Andrew Bolt: Daniel Andrews still has no clue on how to keep us
For more than 100 days Daniel Andrews has turned up to his press conference looking like he feels no shame and knows what he’s doing. How can he sound so sure of himself when he’s got the blood of hundreds of people on his hands? And why has he kept his job, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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Every day I watch Daniel Andrews give his virus press conference – more than 100 now – and I feel sick.
I hear Victoria’s Premier drone through that day’s statistics and say his “thoughts and prayers” are with the dead, like he’s doing tick-and-flick paperwork.
I hear him say how “grateful and proud” he is to Victorians who follow “The Rules”, like he’s some Dear Father casting a benevolent eye on children whipped into obedience.
I feel sick. How can this man still be Premier? How can he sound so sure of himself and his Rules when he’s got the blood of 791 people on his hands?
This is what makes the debate about whether the Premier is a liar seem beside the point. Just look at all the dead! What are we still arguing about?
This is the Premier whose mistakes – and those of people he micromanages – let the virus get out of his quarantine hotels, run riot in his suburbs and go on a killing spree in aged care homes.
As a direct consequence of those mistakes, 791 people died, 80 per cent in aged care homes that we knew from the start urgently needed better protection.
So why is Andrews still Premier? Why does he turn up to his press conference looking like he feels no shame and knows what he’s doing?
It chills me, his confidence.
That’s not just because 791 people are dead, but because Andrews’ “Rules” have taken the state’s economy apart, job by job, brick by brick, and needlessly made millions of Melburnians prisoners in their own homes for more than two months.
Yet with confidence, Andrews announced on August 2 that his lockdown of Melbourne – shutting shops and keeping people in their homes, banned from travelling even 5km – would end on September 13.
With confidence, Andrews then announced he’d extend that lockdown until September 29.
With confidence, Andrews then announced he’d extend that lockdown until October 19, but lift the pointless curfew.
And on Sunday, with confidence, Andrew said he’d extend his state of disaster until November 8 and his lockdown until who knows when, with just some easing.
That’s because Victoria still has around 10 new infections a day, when Andrews insists on no more than five, a target several epidemiologists warn is too tough and unrealistic.
And look at the cost! More young Victorians are harming themselves. More young men and older men are killing themselves. More people are in despair from loneliness and losing their jobs, business and savings.
Yet as he’s done for months, Andrews on Sunday urged Victorians to “keep this going for just a few more weeks”.
All this toughness, yet all this failure. All this ruin, all these deaths.
So to argue over whether Andrews, a notorious control freak, himself decided to hire badly-trained private security guards at his quarantine hotels seems almost a side show.
He denies it, but the inquiry into his hotel quarantine fiasco now wants him (and his senior staff) to hand over phone records so it can find the identity of the mystery man that then police commissioner Graham Ashton says told him private security, not police, would guard those hotels.
Good, but what’s really the difference whether Andrews made that decision or let others make it for him, without him bothering to ask what the hell they were doing?
Either way, the result is the same: dead people. Besides, this is just one of several examples of lethal bungling presided over by Andrews. For instance, he also had undermanned and under-equipped contact tracers taking days to warn people who might have been infected.
And just two weeks ago a Sky reporter put a critical question for me to the Premier at his press conference: why were people in aged care still dying?
Andrews’ amazing response: he didn’t know! The very next day he announced aged care staff would now be tested fortnightly to make sure they weren’t bringing the virus into the homes.
Why hadn’t that been done since March?
That’s not the only sign that the Premier still has little clue about how best to keep people safe.
Victoria is the only big state that won’t let international flights bring in passengers, because Andrews still can’t trust his government to even run quarantine hotels.
Victoria has the world’s toughest lockdown, even with just 12 new infections on Sunday, because Andrews still can’t trust his contact tracers to manage even so few cases.
So why is he still Premier?