Patrick Carlyon: Truth about state’s virus woes lost in quest for power
The state government has been fighting two enemies in recent days. One is from nature and the other is transparency. Daniel Andrews and his cohort don’t want us to explore the truth when they are more concerned about the optics, writes Patrick Carlyon.
Patrick Carlyon
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The truth will set you free, Health Minister Jenny Mikakos tweeted the other night. She was wrong.
Yes, we want to know why we are trapped in our homes. And why old people have been condemned by systemic incompetence. Yet our understanding has been stymied by Mikakos and others who ought to have done better.
They have bewildered and bamboozled us with their obstinacy. They are the rawest of reminders that politics is not about persuasion, but the pursuit of power and its preservation.
Mikakos referred to Ancient Greece. She picked the wrong ancient civilisation if she was trying to describe the modern politics of pandemic Victoria. The Roman Senate, after all, was big on knives and self-interest.
The state government has been fighting two enemies in recent days. One of them is from nature. The other is transparency.
Jobs Minister Martin Pakula fronted a parliamentary committee on Wednesday. He has been besieged since Victoria’s hotel quarantine program was shown to be bungled.
Many close observers suspect that Pakula, in a nod to Byzantine machinations, has been nominated from within as the fall guy. Self-deprecating and witty, Pakula is warmer in real life than some of his ministerial colleagues. But his response to a question was telling.
Asked which government minister was responsible for the error that directly led to dozens of avoidable deaths, he said: “I’m not going to engage with you on what can only be described as a gotcha-type question.”
Pakula doesn’t want us to explore the truth. Nor does Mikakos or Premier Dan Andrews or Transport Minister Jacinta Allan. They are more concerned about the optics.
The greatest economic and health crisis of generations has been reduced to game-playing, as if the players are channelling Selina Meyer, the fictional vice-president of TV comedy Veep. Her institutionalised contempt for the public flared in the first season: “I’ve met some people, OK. Real people. And I gotta tell you, a lot of them are f.....g idiots.”
This glistening underbelly of disdain was exposed last week when former judge Jennifer Coates, who is heading a judicial inquiry, announced what informed observers already grasped. Government ministers had always been free to offer insight about the bungle.
The default response — “no, I can’t, because of the inquiry” — is the kind of cookie cutter politicking that has been applied by Andrews to every scandal throughout his time as premier.
Mikakos’ unbidden espousal of democratic touchstones has been well examined. She believes in democracy, apparently, when it suits her, and democracy can get inconvenient when you are asked tricky questions in parliament.
She has since said, straight-faced, that she will not commentate on her Twitter commentary. Does it need to be pointed out that “do as I say, not as I do” is unworthy of someone who boasts about a bust of Pericles in her office?
Andrews and his cohort have dangerously underestimated the community resentment of their approach. They have cast the search for truth as an obstruction to the challenges ahead, and never mind the logic of cause-and-effect.
Melburnians want the virus stemmed, desperately, but they also need to know how it came about, from its dubious origins in China to the unmitigated stuff-ups that characterise the Victorian response.
The federal government has maintained that it offered military support for hotel quarantine. It did so in other states.
But the hand-picked morsels of available facts are not simple. They confuse, confound and demoralise.
The ADF did ready for the possible deployment of personnel to Melbourne hotels. But Victoria says their presence was neither offered nor requested. Answers lie in interdepartmental meetings, lathered in Yes Minister dollops of ineptitude, in late March.
Andrews has claimed t Emergency Management Victoria commissioner Andrew Crisp’s statement “clears the matter up”.
Crisp’s statement amounted to 117 words. It lacked context and detail, and whiffed of spin rather than explanation.
Why Victorian authorities did not want ADF support, nor follow through on plans for Victoria Police to assist in hotel quarantine, smacks of fatal errors of judgment.
Crisp did not explain these issues. He sounded like a politician. His statement served to confuse rather than clarify.
The ideal of enlightened federal-state harmony was hoisted on naivety and illusion. Instead, the pursuit of truth has been enveloped by arse-covering antics. We are served by politicians whose overweening instinct for self-preservation compounds the tragedy of their misjudgements.
To borrow from Julius Caesar: “(Political) cowards die many times before their deaths.”
Or, as Meyer says: “You know, you do your best, you try to serve the people, and then they just f... you over. And you know why? Because they’re ignorant and they’re dumb as s..t. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is democracy.” So it goes, it seems, for the simple folk of Victoria.
Patrick Carlyon is a Herald Sun columnist