The 65 government mistakes behind Melbourne’s marathon Covid lockdown
Melbourne is set to hit a pandemic milestone as the world’s most locked down city, and a series of government bungles are to blame.
Victoria
Don't miss out on the headlines from Victoria. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Melbourne is on the cusp of notching up a grim pandemic milestone, with Premier Daniel Andrews refusing to rule out further extensions to stay-at-home orders.
The marathon lockdown has been compounded by a series of mistakes which helped to transform Melbourne from the world’s most liveable city to its most locked down.
VICTORIAN GOVERNMENT’S 40 PANDEMIC MISTAKES
1. Entered the pandemic with the nation’s most under-resourced public health team
2. Bypassed the traditional cabinet process by creating a smaller Crisis Cabinet – a decision criticised by former Health Minister Jenny Mikakos in the wake of hotel quarantine failures
3. Failed to set a clear chain of command for staff across departments leading the pandemic response
4. Delayed the rollout of critical health information available in multiple languages
5. Consistently provided less information on daily cases and virus trends when compared to other states
6. Failed to establish clear guidelines for testing protocols, with people who had attended high-risk locations knocked back if they did not have symptoms
7. Refused to name specific sources of infection during early outbreaks
8. Used private security firms as frontline hotel quarantine staff
9. Allowed returned travellers being quarantined to walk freely in and out of quarantine zones in some instances
10. Failed to insist all people in hotel quarantine undergo tests before being released into the community, falsely claiming it didn’t have power to compel tests
11. Lacked accountability for decision-making on the bungled hotel quarantine program
12. Failed to call in Australian Defence Force troops on offer from the federal government
13. Retracted a request for 850 ADF troops after it was made by Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp
14. Failed to identify numerous breaches within the hotel quarantine program
15. Failed to contain the virus once it escaped hotel quarantine, which later sparked the deadly second wave
16. Failed to boost contact tracing staff numbers early in the pandemic despite warnings about gaps in contact tracing capacity
17. Initially relied on a centralised model for contact tracing instead of localised units
18. Relied too heavily on outdated technology, including fax machines, in sharing test results and tracing
19. Failed to promptly contact businesses and secondary contacts of positive cases
20. Relied on positive cases reporting reliable information to contract tracers without accessing backup information including phone data, GPS data and bank records
21. Forced hospitals to conduct their own contact tracing for staff after identifying delays and problems with department efforts
22. Dropped the ball on contact tracing, in some cases failing to contact businesses with positive cases for days, forcing small businesses to become their own health department
23. Failed to close an exercise loophole that let at least a quarter of people who were supposed to be self-isolating free to roam among the community
24. Delayed implementing a day 11 testing policy for households in quarantine
25. Disbanded parts of the contact tracing team after the first wave leaving Victoria vulnerable ahead of the second wave
26. Decided not to follow the state’s existing emergency plan for a pandemic
27. Decided against making the chief health officer the state controller in charge of the response
28. Imposed an arbitrary curfew without the advice of the CHO
29. Delayed recommending masks on public transport and other high-risk locations despite strong support from experts
30. Grossly underestimated the number of healthcare workers contracting the virus at work
31. Failed to fine attendees of the Black Lives Matter protest in Melbourne’s CBD where 10,000 protesters broke health rules
32. Breached the human rights of thousands of public housing tenants with a hurried lockdown
33. Allowed Melbourne’s “ring of steel” to be compromised on multiple occasions
34. Failed to initially listen to healthcare workers calling for better rollout of PPE and more supplies
35. Refused to provide PPE to aged-care facility staff waiting on federal stockpiles because of fears it was being stolen, according to documents from the hotel quarantine inquiry
36. Set virus suppression targets that world-leading scientists said were unduly onerous
37. Blamed a controversial playground ban on transmission between children but Premier Daniel Andrews later said the closure was “never about the kids”.
38. Chief health officer Brett Sutton consistently refused to provide the concrete evidence which justified his bans
39. Failed to ensure all close contacts exited quarantine on time because of significant procedural delays inside the Health Department
40. Delayed in issuing government grants to businesses
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S 25 PANDEMIC MISTAKES
1. Didn’t order enough vaccine for the start of the rollout, triggering lengthy delays when some shipments were blocked overseas
2. Asserted the rollout was “not a race” at the start as initial vaccinations targets were missed
3. Failed to lock in a deal with Pfizer to secure vaccine supplies when the company began to engage with the government in the middle of 2020
4. Failed to act quickly enough to bring online more GP clinics to distribute the vaccine in high-risk areas in Melbourne’s north and west
5. Sparked confusion over the rollout with mixed messages describing the advice from the expert immunisation panel on the risk of blood clots posed by AstraZeneca
6. Bungled the design of the CovidSafe app which only managed to identify 17 close contacts throughout the pandemic and was abandoned by state health teams
7. Waited too long to design and build purpose-built quarantine facilities beyond Howard Springs, leaving thousands of Australians stranded overseas for months
8. Temporarily prohibited Australians returning from India during a horrific Covid outbreak, with some dying before they could be brought home
9. Bungled the rollout of the vaccine for people with disabilities with the Disability royal commission describing the rollout as “seriously deficient”
10. Secretly “deprioritised” people with disabilities in the vaccine rollout to focus instead on aged care residents
11. Failed to explain to aged care workers that a commitment to vaccinate them at nursing homes where they worked had been quietly abandoned
12. Allowed at least 14,000 Australians to leave the country multiple times during the pandemic, despite the border closure, which placed further pressure on the quarantine system
13. Failed to learn lessons from initial outbreaks in NSW aged care facilities on infection control and division of responsibilities between governments
14. Failed to develop a specific Covid-19 plan to protect aged care
15. Acted too slowly to ban aged care staff working across multiple sites during the first wave, allowing the virus to spread
16. Moved quickly to shut the border to China at the start of the pandemic but was too slow to close off travel from other countries including the US
17. Failed to provide adequate transparency about the vaccine rollout, sparking several political fights with the states over supply
18. Moved too slowly to send extra vaccine doses to Victoria as the state’s sixth lockdown spiralled into its biggest outbreak
19. Failed to secure a consensus between the states on border rules
20. Moved too slowly to develop priority plans to vaccinate vulnerable Indigenous communities
21. Missed its own deadlines to open pop-up vaccination clinics for aged care workers
22. Delayed introduction of pharmacies in vaccine rollout
23. Took too long after ending JobKeeper to establish a nationally consistent system of income support for workers affected by further lockdowns, short-changing some Victorians
24. Did not re-test eligibility for JobKeeper wage subsidies, meaning more than $13bn was paid to companies that turned a profit
25. Grossly missed the mark with a $4bn JobMaker hiring credit designed to help 450,000 unemployed young people get back to work that only supported about 1100 jobs
Allan govt facing first police walkout in 25 years over pay fight
Victoria Police officers will ramp up industrial action over their long-running pay dispute with the government, preparing to strike at the police academy and across dozens of stations from Thursday.
Wealthy suburbs biggest winners of Albo’s student debt policy
Young voters in affluent, highly educated electorates will be the biggest beneficiaries of Labor’s move to wipe 20 per cent from student debts, analysis of taxation data has revealed.