Andrew Bolt: Hotel quarantine inquiry reveals pandemic of amnesia
The inquiry into how COVID got out of Victoria’s quarantine hotels, going on to kill more than 750 people, has exposed staggering levels of incompetence and revealed a pandemic of amnesia in the state government, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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Never mind the virus. Who will treat this pandemic of amnesia in the Victorian government?
Or is the government stacked with bosses who learned management from Sergeant “I know nothing” Schultz?
The inquiry into how the virus got out of Victoria’s quarantine hotels, going on to kill more than 750 people, has exposed staggering levels of incompetence.
Take the answers to this critical question: who made the catastrophic decision to hand the hotel security — the most vital part of the state’s defences — to untrained private security guards, and not professionals like the army or police?
I don’t know, said Lisa Neville, the Police Minister. I don’t know, echoed Martin Pakula, the Jobs Minister who set up the hotels.
I can’t say, or won’t, said Premier Daniel Andrews, who’ll front the inquiry on Friday.
And witness after witness can’t recall who made the call, either: not the Police Commissioner, former police commissioner, Emergency Management Commissioner, Chief Health Officer, head of the Premier’s department, head of Pakula’s department, or head of the Health Minister’s department.
Isn’t that unbelievable? Or it would be if this inquiry hadn’t exposed this Andrews government as a rabble, with no direct lines of authority and no accountability.
It’s just the mess you’d expect under an authoritarian premier, jealous of power and keen to make sure his juniors didn’t have much.
Here’s one example from the inquiry on Wednesday.
The Jobs Minister was asked how his department was given the critical task of setting up the quarantine hotels.
Pakula: “I found out about it on March 27 … as a consequence of a phone call from Mr Phemister (his department secretary).”
Asked if he’d discussed it with the Premier: “No.”
Did Phemister say who’d passed on this order?
““No, I don’t believe that he did.”
Did Phemister say what the job meant?
“We didn’t have a lengthy enough conversation.”
But then hotel quarantine was taken off Pakula and given to Health Minister Jenny Mikakos. Again the same Sergeant Schultz incuriosity. How did Pakula learn of this change?
“Again, it would have been a phone call from Mr Phemister … It was something that had seemingly been determined at a bureaucratic level.”
Ever asked why he wasn’t in charge any more?
“No.”
How bad must a government be to make such lethal mistakes?