The basic systems breakdowns that caused Victoria’s hotel quarantine industrial disaster have not been rectified and have been repeated again in the latest northern suburbs outbreak.
As a result, this time, a major part of the blame for the business losses and personal tragedies resulting from the outbreak sits squarely on WorkSafe.
Victoria maybe lucky and be able to contain this outbreak but the systems breakdown means there is a grave danger of a third wave.
And, as I will explain below, Worksafe’s failure to act is enabling the anarchist movement and professional protesters to start harnessing the protesters.
In theory, the Labor politicians outside the inner group could act but they are frozen with fear.
WorkSafe has the power to fix the management systems failures by recommending the prosecution of ministers and public servants as is required by the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
An alarmed Prime Minister now understands the crisis Victoria faces because its government and public servants have embraced systems that don’t work.
In a carefully worded statement partly directed at WorkSafe, Scott Morrison said: “This is a profound disappointment. Victoria’s public health systems are either up to the task of dealing with future outbreaks or they are not.
“The decision to keep businesses closed suggests that there is still not sufficient confidence within the government that their systems can support reopening.”
Former Labor premier Steve Bracks devised Victoria’s excellent occupational health and safety rules for exactly this situation: a breakdown in systems causing death or substantial community harm.
Self-Employed Australia has requested that WorkSafe recommend prosecutions but that petition gives the organisation until December 29 to act. The nation can’t wait that long. Under the Bracks rules WorkSafe has to prosecute people who use dangerous and faulty systems. Any failure to do so is endangering the nation and Victoria as well as causing huge losses. It may trigger of loss if life.
Mission failure
Victoria abandoned cabinet responsibility in the crisis and set up a unique “mission” system, which completely failed and led to the deaths of hundreds of people.
Considerable improvement was later made in contact tracing and testing but the basic flawed systems remain and caused this latest outbreak to become very dangerous.
A Somali family with three children became infected. Each member of the family had a case manager and there was also an interpreter. But, as we saw in the hotel quarantine systems breakdown the government employees were not trained to work together and communicate. The interpreter was not used properly.
The family actually tried hard and went to the school for advice. But public servants in the education OHS wing didn’t know how to co-ordinate with the case managers: exactly the same systems break down that occurred in the hotels.
An infected boy went to school and naturally the outbreak spread in exactly the same way as the hotels. The government puts blame in the Islamic community instead of itself.
WorkSafe chief Colin Radford was a press secretary to Steve Bracks and if he feels that his mateship with politicians and public servants prevents him from recommending prosecution then he should stand aside.
Yet because of his involvement with the excellent Bracks occupation health and safety legislation he is well placed to do his job. It is not easy to prosecute ministers and senior public servants but Bracks made sure they were covered by the legislation.
But unless prosecution action is taken, the Victorian government will not embrace cabinet responsibility like the rest of the nation and in accordance with its disaster plan. Only when prosecutions start will the Victorian government fix its broken systems.
The legislation states: “It is an offence under the OHS Act (s23) to fail to ensure that persons other than employees are not exposed to risks to their health and safety arising from the conduct of the employer.”
And elsewhere: “If the body corporate commits an OH&S offence and the contravention can be attributed to a failure by any officer of the body corporate to take reasonable care, the officer is also guilty of an offence.”
It will not be easy for Bracks to advise Radford but he set the legislation up for exactly this sort of situation.
Had there been a major disaster where private enterprise systems broke down prosecution would have been swift so that the accident could not be repeated again and again.
Victorians now hope that the latest outbreak can be contained. But there is a new danger. The fury of the small enterprises that have been ravaged by the continued systems breakdown has been harnessed by anarchist and professional protest groups.
The next set of protests will be massive and will be professionally organised. And because people will not be wearing masks they will most certainly create a third wave of infection devastating Victoria and the nation.
Only one man can stop this happening — Colin Radford.
Please Mr Radford do the job that you are required to do. It will not be pleasant but nation and the state of Victoria depends on you.
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