Rita Panahi: Only matter of time until Daniel Andrews finds his next scapegoat

Dan Andrews is nimble at finding convenient scapegoats when the going gets tough. So will he make Emma Cassar the next Jenny Mikakos?

Will Emma Cassar be the next casualty in Daniel Andrews’ quest to dodge responsibility for Victoria’s hotel quarantine fiasco?

As the head of the newly created COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria, Cassar has cause to be worried.

The premier is adept at finding convenient scapegoats when the going gets tough; former health minister Jenny Mikakos and former emergency services minister Jane Garrett could attest to that.

Cassar, who has a doctorate in forensic psychology, was appointed to the role after serving as Victoria’s Corrections Commissioner for two years.

The Victorian government set up the dedicated agency late last year to run the state’s trouble-plagued hotel quarantine program after the decision to use private security guards led to breaches resulting in hundreds of avoidable deaths and a devastating 112-day lockdown.

At the time Premier Andrews assured Victorians the revamped program would deliver world’s best practice.

“There are many lessons that have to be learned in relation to hotel quarantine and we have learnt those lessons,” he said. Alas, they had not.

Victoria's Quarantine Hotel Commissioner Emma Cassar. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

Just two months after the new quarantine system was relaunched, it’s again in disarray with the state not taking any further overseas arrivals until further notice.

The premier announced on Tuesday Victoria would again overhaul its quarantine program by constructing a new facility away from the CBD. Shambolic doesn’t begin to cover it.

Meanwhile, another scapegoat who authorities hoped would quietly cop the blame has come out fighting. Patient X, or if you prefer “nebuliser man’’, has every right to feel aggrieved after the Premier, along with his underlings, blamed the returned traveller’s use of the medical device for the “superspreader event” that led to the panicked five-day lockdown.

It doesn’t get much lower than blaming a man in ICU for your government’s continued failures but that’s precisely what the Premier did while claiming he was doing nothing of the sort.

The Andrews government maintains Patient X never declared he was using a nebuliser but the 38-year-old father says he told them more than once first at the Holiday Inn at Tullamarine and then at the Holiday Inn medical hotel in the CBD, where he and his family were moved after testing positive.

Not only were authorities made aware of the nebuliser but according to the returned traveller, who suffers from chronic asthma, they offered to provide the medication administered by the device.

“Nebuliser man’’ was so distraught by the government spin he reached out to authorities from his hospital bed but when the record wasn’t corrected he contacted the media saying he was being made to feel like a “criminal”.

Only after media attention did chief health officer Brett Sutton and then Cassar call the man but he is yet to receive an apology from the Premier. On Wednesday he called for a “federal inquiry” during an interview with Peta Credlin on Sky News Australia.

“I really felt that the way it had been presented by Daniel Andrews was misrepresenting what actually happened,” he said. “We need someone outside the state of Victoria to look into this.”

Not only were staff at the Holiday Inn made aware of the nebuliser but according to the returned traveller, they offered to provide the medication administered by the device.

Far from starting the outbreak, there’s a possibility “nebuliser man’’ and his family were infected in Victoria’s poorly run quarantine system. The family tested negative before flying to Australia and tested negative again in quarantine but they all returned positive tests on Day 11.

The man said the initial room they checked into at the Tullamarine Holiday Inn did not look like it had undergone a deep clean with crumbs on the couch and table and hairs on the floor.

Expert opinion on the dangers of nebulisers in a hotel quarantine setting are mixed with a number of leading scientists, professional bodies and health departments, including Public Health England and International Society of Aerosols in Medicine, determining nebulisers do not increase the risk of the infection spreading.

Throughout this saga Cassar has been thrust into the public eye with the Premier deferring a number of questions about “nebuliser man’’ to the public servant.

Cassar has been at the centre of the he-said-she-said-he-said allegations and has fluctuated from all but calling “nebuliser man’’ a liar to phoning him and apologising for what he has endured.

Some may say there’s rich irony in Cassar potentially being in Andrews’ crosshairs given her own complicity in blaming a patient for the bureaucracy’s failures. But in the end “nebuliser man’’ was not willing to be the sacrificial lamb.

He has also wisely kept his anonymity and spared himself a vicious pile-on from the Dan Cult. It’s little wonder COVID positive patients are donning garbage bag disguises; why would they risk being identified when they could be blamed for the next quarantine breach.

IN SHORT

Australia got a taste of Big Tech tyranny with Facebook wiping news sites along with the pages of hospitals and charities. The tech giant’s bully-boy tactics, to avoid paying for news content, was condemned far and wide and made headlines across the globe. What an own goal.