James Campbell: Victoria now the laughing stock of the cross-border rivalry thanks to contact tracing blunders
For years Victorians have had the upper hand in the rivalry with our northern neighbours, but now New South Wales has finally put us to shame. And all it took was a contact tracing program that’s evolved past a pen and paper, writes James Campbell.
James Campbell
Don't miss out on the headlines from James Campbell. Followed categories will be added to My News.
No one in Melbourne likes to hear Sydney does it better. For years we’ve sniggered at the incompetents who run NSW from their failed pub lockouts and the fact they couldn’t seem to build a tram.
Nobody’s laughing now. Yesterday the Government dropped the pretence that everything is fine with Victoria’s contact tracing regime.
Victorian health officials will now fly to Sydney on the company of the nation’s chief scientist and personnel from the ADF to learn how NSW does its “gold standard” contract tracing system.
One wag on Twitter jokes it’s like the moment in “Chernobyl” when the Soviets finally caved in and reached out to the west for help.
Professor Brett Sutton has now admitted our system didn’t cope and we’ll be moving to decentralised tracing like NSW, and replacing pen-and-paper with an up-to-date digital system.
Why has it taken so long for the Government to concede what has been obvious from media reports?
Insiders have been saying quietly for weeks that however bad the hotel quarantine debacle was, the failure in contact tracing was worse.
Both stemmed from a Government and bureaucracy too arrogant to think they had anything to learn from anyone else.
The same arrogance that led to the bizarre decision to refuse help from the army and didn’t wouldn’t listen to the federal government and health experts outside its own team.
The Premier now talks about “continuous improvement” as some kind of virtue.
As Victoria settles in to the longest hard lockdown in the world it’s clear this improvement is coming off a pretty low-base.
Hearing Scott Morrison praise NSW as the gold standard must have been bad enough for the Premier; having to cede we are now sending officials to Sydney to learn how to get it right was too much to bear.
Instead of admitting the obvious he played word games by trying to claim it was just for a “triple check’’ we were on track.
Victorians would be leading a normal life by now if Daniel Andrews and his Government hadn’t been too proud to ask for help or acknowledge their shortcomings.
Remember that in the long months ahead.