Will buck really stop with Dan after disastrous decisions?
While Daniel Andrews repeats the “we’re all in this together” mantra, the reality is only the private sector is making huge financial sacrifices as he refuses to face up to scrutiny over the hotel quarantine fiasco and contact tracing chaos, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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Dan Andrews’ slapdash attitude to other people’s money has been evident throughout his six-year reign as Premier so what’s another $10bn or so lost due to stage four restrictions?
Andrews came to power breaking an election promise that tearing up the East West Link contract would not cost Victorians a single cent. It ended up costing taxpayers more than $1.2bn not to build a desperately needed road.
One could argue Andrews’ big spending agenda has been a key part of his success. Even in the midst of an economy-destroying pandemic, the Labor largesse has not stopped, with his government last month granting a pay increase to public servants. Contrast this with the Queensland Labor government’s decision to freeze public service wages, deferring increases expected in 2020-21.
During his press conferences, Andrews is keen to repeat the “we’re all in this together” mantra but the reality is only the private sector is making enormous financial sacrifices.
Those in the public sector are secure on their full salaries with little fear their job won’t be there after stage four. They don’t have to worry about how they’ll pay the mortgage or save their business or find a new job. They don’t have to watch everything they’ve worked for be decimated through no fault of their own.
The Premier has not worked a single day in the private sector and it shows. He’s a career politician whose entire working life, after completing an arts degree, has been in the Labor Party machinery.
On Thursday, Andrews faced perhaps his toughest press conference yet and while he repeatedly said he takes full responsibility for Victoria’s perilous state, he also repeatedly refused to answer pertinent questions about the hotel quarantine fiasco and contact tracing issues.
This week I got an insight into the chaotic contact tracing process in Victoria. For a couple of days, I was in quarantine while waiting for the overworked contact tracers and support staff to confirm what I already knew; they had the wrong gal.
During that time, I of course followed the strict self-quarantine guidelines, which wasn’t that difficult given I spent half my waking hours on hold waiting to speak to someone who could tell me what in god’s name was going on.
That mystery is still not entirely clear but not for the first time the system the contact tracers rely on had merged my file with that of a nurse at a major Melbourne hospital and marked us as the same person.
But far more disturbing than cases like mine are those who have been exposed to COVID-19 but are not being contacted in a timely manner. Some are not receiving a phone call for days, sometimes over a week.
Given COVID-19 is at its most infectious in the early days it is critical every person identified as a close contact of an infected individual is contacted and quickly. But in Victoria many people who should be isolating are unaware they’ve been exposed.
My latest contact tracing mishap began with a text message on Monday morning from the Department of Health and Human Services COVID-19 Monitoring team warning me that I’d “been assessed as a close contact exposed to COVID-19” and would need to commence self-quarantine.
My first thought was the text was fake and that the link provided was a phishing exercise particularly since the message concluded with this: “How do you know this message and link are legitimate? A DHHS Case and Contact Management Officer will have advised you to expect these notifications.” A DHHS officer had certainly not advised me of anything of the sort and given my previous experience with the contact tracing team, I knew this was likely to be another “system error”.
What’s concerning is my case isn’t entirely unique. I’ve since discovered it’s not unusual for these text messages to be sent before a contact management officer has had a chance to call, such is the backlog at the department.
How many people who have received the message and should be in self-quarantine are disobeying the order because they do not believe it to be real? After all, the message itself says its legitimacy is established by the prior contact from DHHS.
Those working in the contact tracing team and call centre are being run ragged and are doing their very best in trying circumstances with limited resources and a mystifying computer system. It’s not good enough.
We are five months into this pandemic and the Victorian response remains inadequate. The Premier says the buck stops with him but he needs to articulate precisely what that means.
Will he step down if he’s found to be responsible for the catastrophic decisions that plunged Victoria into a state of disaster?
IN SHORT: Insufferable Leftie program The Project has removed a segment where a conspiracy theorist blamed Israel for the disastrous explosion in Beirut that has killed more than 100 people and injured thousands more. The baseless claims went unchallenged by the hosts including university lecturer Waleed Aly. Diabolical.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist