James Campbell: Daniel Andrews sends press pack on wild goose chase after runway Kiwis
After a rough three weeks, Daniel Andrews needed a political miracle, and it came from across the ditch. But don’t be fooled by his smoke and mirrors – the runaway Kiwis are not a scandal but a mere distraction from a new problem plaguing his government, writes James Campbell.
James Campbell
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Could there be a bigger furphy than Daniel Andrew’s concerns about a Kiwi “invasion” of Victoria?
Fair play to him, after the three weeks he’s had – losing his Health Minister and top bureaucrat, while having to defend his answers to hotel quarantine inquiry – you can understand why he was happy to have something he could attack Canberra about on Saturday.
Except there was no issue. No scandal. No stuff up. Nothing.
It was a non-event designed to draw attention away from a real issue.
And the assembled journalists of the Spring St gallery sat up like trained seals catching fish the Premier tossed to them.
The whole reason there is a travel bubble with New Zealand is because there is little or no coronavirus there.
And certainly a lot less than there is in Dan’s Victoria.
Once someone enters Australia they are free to travel wherever they like subject to the rules of entry of the state.
Victoria doesn’t have any border restrictions so they are free to come here.
And the reason Victoria doesn’t have any border restrictions is because when it comes to COVID-19 Dan’s state is an exporter.
If someone enters Victoria they are subject to the same rules as everyone else here.
If they want to leave they have to go through whatever rules are in place for people coming from Victoria.
Maybe the Premier was feeling the feels for the time back in March when Canberra was on the hot spot over the Ruby Princess.
That would explain why he said “we are still waiting for Australian Border Force to provide us with the passenger cards for each of those 17 people.”
People might have been lined up for six hours in Shepparton last week waiting to be tested but the Victorian authorities are apparently really keen to visit 17 who have arrived from a place with less coronavirus than there is here.
“As soon as we get that detail, we will be visiting each of those people and making sure that they are fully up to date, as it were, when it comes to the rules, the regulations, the structures that we have in Victoria,” he said.
Apparently these foreigners can’t be trusted to read or watch the news on the situation here and might just start walking around unmasked, so they “need to be briefed on those things so they are doing the right thing”.
Seriously. This bloke must think we’re idiots.
The real story on Saturday was the revelation in the Age that Prof Brett Sutton was included in an email chain in March that mentioned the plan for security guards in hotel quarantine.
This is a problem because the Prof told the Coate inquiry he didn’t know about it until May.
The newspaper also reported there had been a debate inside the DHHS legal team about whether or not the email needed to provided to Coate, with the decision ultimately being taken to withhold it.
Legal sources pointed yesterday that it was interesting that alone of the departmental submissions, DHHS’s was not signed by its barristers but by its solicitors.
This is usually a sign that there has been some sort of, um, difficulty with the information.
We’ll see what Coate has to say when she comes back next week for her unscheduled hearing which was called after the Age drew the inquiry’s attention to the email.
In the meantime keep a look out for those 17 escaped Kiwis!