ABC gives Daniel Andrews a free pass despite evidence he misled public over coronavirus

ABC’s 7.30, hosted by Leigh Sales, ignored hours of evidence presented to Victoria’s hotel quarantine inquiry showing that despite Daniel Andrews’s denials he was offered ADF support for quarantine. Picture: ABC

Some key ABC programs last week seemed unwilling to examine changes to the pandemic overseas or to discuss the failings of Victoria’s government on COVID-19.

Yet ABC radio current affairs, and the 7.30 program, always seem to find room to give state premiers a free kick in favour of border closures, and to interview anyone wanting extensions of JobKeeper and JobSeeker to make their case for more government spending — something always supported at the public broadcaster.

On Radio National and on the AM program, journalists are quick to point to the second and third waves of COVID-19 infection in Europe any time a politician or businessman, such as Qantas CEO Alan Joyce last Thursday, complains about border closures, especially between states with zero cases. On Friday, AM reported surging European infection rates but did not mention low mortality rates.

Once the nation’s premier current affairs television show, 7.30 last week ignored hours of evidence presented to Victoria’s hotel quarantine inquiry showing that despite Daniel Andrews’s denials he was most certainly offered Australian Defence Force support for quarantine multiple times between March and July. The show was incurious about evidence concerning the sidelining by Victorian health bureaucrats of the state’s Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton.

The Drum found plenty of time to discuss the failings of aged care, a federal responsibility, the 2000 Sydney Olympics, domestic violence and gas power but Justice Jennifer Coate’s inquiry and evidence that Andrews had misled his daily press conferences did not make the cut by Friday morning.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews at his press conference on Sunday. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Wayne Taylor

This is a pity because people who don’t pay for newspapers or subscribe to Sky News also have a right to know how Victoria ended up with almost 90 per cent of Australia’s COVID-19 deaths and was forced into a longer lockdown than Wuhan, the Chinese city that was the source of the virus. To be fair to all the ABC’s hardworking journalists, ABC online has done an excellent job on the quarantine inquiry, while radio current affairs and 7.30 have covered the wider effects of the virus well. Of the daily radio showpiece programs only Linda Mottram’s PM covered the inquiry last week.

ABC viewers, given a six-month diet of panicked overreaction to the virus, should also be told what is really happening in Europe and why. There is indeed a second wave with thousands of new cases recorded each day for much of the past six weeks. But death rates are low and scientific reporting suggests several reasons for this. Scientists have also reassessed Sweden’s refusal to lock down during the first wave, as the country now reports far fewer new cases than its neighbours.

Spain is doing less well on mortality but in Britain, Italy, The Netherlands and Germany — with between 1500 and 10,000 new cases a day — deaths are in the low double digits. France is up to 10,000 cases a day but deaths last week peaked at about 40, a far cry from six months ago when many countries in western Europe were recording 1000 deaths a day. French President Emmanuel Macron is resisting a second lockdown.

Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine says the virus is now mainly affecting the young, treatments are far better and hospitals are not overcrowded. Separate statistical research suggests that in many countries the high death rates of the first round of infection followed a particularly benevolent flu season last year. That is, many of the elderly who died in the first round would have normally been expected to pass in the previous year’s flu season.

In Australia the virus continues to kill mainly the very old in aged care. The average age of all COVID-19 deaths in Australia is 83, slightly above the national average life expectancy of 82. This newspaper has reported federal Health Department data showing total deaths in aged care across Australia were down almost 1000 in the first seven months of 2020, compared with 2019.

London’s Financial Times on August 25 asked another important question about lower death rates in Britain despite rising infection numbers. As infections were kept out of aged care, people catching COVID-19 received much lower viral loads, it reported. This goes to a point made in this column last month. The US Centres for Disease Control has specifically warned the communal nature of aged-care facilities makes them particularly dangerous.

Remembering the US CDC says total infections may in fact be 10 times higher than known cases, it seems the threat to life of the coronavirus has been wildly exaggerated, especially in the media. With almost a million deaths worldwide nine months into the pandemic, its scale is small compared with the 50 million to 100 million deaths during the Spanish flu pandemic in 1919-20.

Yet Australia’s politicians maintain closed state borders against other states with zero cases, even while the EU and most of the US remain open. ABC’s 7.30 gave WA Premier Mark McGowan a soft interview on Tuesday to justify his closed borders. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk claimed across the media last week that she was prepared to risk re-election to keep Queenslanders safe. As if.

This newspaper on Wednesday revealed former Labor MP Mike Kaiser, forced to quit state parliament in 2001 for branch stacking, was paid in his role as KPMG state chairman to poll Queenslanders’ attitudes to COVID-19. Real leadership, that: give them what they want to hear.

It did not surprise me. I flew to Queensland for a funeral in late July during the state’s brief border opening. A senior Labor figure told me the party’s research showed border closures were “incredibly popular”.

Something else became clear on that trip. I was on the same flight as the two Brisbane women who dodged quarantine by switching flights out of Melbourne to get to Brisbane. They took the virus back to Queensland and triggered the second border closure.

Despite all the ADF staff at the airport, the paperwork with contact details and required show of ID, I received no call from Queensland Health and none from Virgin about the presence of the infected women on the same flight. I did wear a mask and was glad of it when I saw details a week later of the flight taken by the infected pair. I was tested at my own initiative and was fine.

Yet it was a glimpse at how easily Palaszczuk’s fate could have mirrored that of Andrews. Maybe she and the state’s Chief Health Officer, Jeannette Young, know exactly how the Queensland system would cope with an outbreak?