Politicians asleep at wheel on vaccination, quarantine and aged care

Aged care and disability care workers line up for their vaccine at the Melbourne Showgrounds. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Ian Currie

Politicians should focus more on public policy and less on public relations.

Why so much media obfuscation by federal and state ministers discussing Covid-19 failures and why the relentless focus on picture opportunities when health outcomes flounder? Federally, this is only a political danger rather than a threat to national prosperity. But at the state level, Victoria is in danger of slipping back to the torpor of the John Cain and Joan Kirner years in the 1980s and early 1990s.

It took two terms of reform under Liberal premier Jeff Kennett from 1992-99 followed by the strong Labor governments of Steve Bracks and John Brumby to reverse what had been a 30-year slide. Economist Saul Eslake in The Australian Financial Review on May 31 — and Kennett in the Herald-Sun last Wednesday — lamented Victoria’s income per capita was now $5300 behind NSW.

As Ross Gittins implied in the Nine newspapers on Wednesday, the pandemic may be showing the limits of public sector reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. Federal and state governments need to re-empower their public services and decide whether outsourcing functions such as the delivery of vaccination programs and quarantine is working. Had aged-care vaccination been left to state health bureaucracies rather than contracted to the private sector would the industry’s workers have been left out?

Much of the media coverage of the latest Victorian Covid-19 lockdown is as politicised as it was during last year’s 112-day winter lockdown. While the ABC could barely bring itself to question anything the Andrews government did then — despite more than 800 deaths — the national broadcaster has been running a pile-on against the federal government since the latest lockdown. It’s not surprising, given the ABC’s politics and the federal government’s inability to fix vaccination and quarantine, and protect people in aged care.

National cabinet seems to have been asleep at the wheel. Lessons that should have been obvious last year have not sunk in. Everyone knew winter was coming, the state and federal governments have known about vaccine hesitancy over AstraZeneca blood clots for months and it has been clear since before Christmas that quarantine hotels were infecting people who had returned to Australia healthy.

Melbourne streets are empty during the latest lockdown due to the latest outbreak of Covid-19s. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Paul Jeffers

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews claimed in February his contact tracing system was now “the gold standard”. How has national cabinet not highlighted Victoria’s failure to mandate QR codes, compulsory all year in Tasmania and the ACT? These have been enforced in NSW for 12 months.

The federal government has finally started running ads promoting vaccination with the telegenic federal deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth. They are hardly compelling and critics who argue it should be doing more to promote vaccination as a patriotic duty are correct.

Friday’s decision by national cabinet to appoint Lieutenant General John Frewen to oversee the rollout is an admission the federal health department has been too slow.

Former federal health department secretary Jane Halton completed her review of hotel quarantine last October, suggesting the system be modified to reduce risks of airborne transmission. Halton recommended a purpose-built national quarantine facility, arguing “the hotel quarantine system is vulnerable to breaches and these are hard to eliminate”.

Sabra Lane on AM on Thursday asked Treasurer Josh Frydenberg about the issue and was told the government had responded in the budget by expanding Howard Springs in the NT to 2000 places. Lane pointed out Halton had recommended 3000.

Slow process seems a mark of Canberra and Victorian pandemic responses. Professor Raina MacIntyre in The Conversation on May 13 noted how slow the health bureaucracy has been to accept Covid-19 is an airborne disease and aerosol transmission its main route. This is crucial in understanding quarantine risks.

Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton. Picture: Getty Images

Victoria has been complaining hotels are not built for quarantine, yet the states did sign on a year ago to run quarantine in their capital city hotels, and Andrews even claimed hotel quarantine was Victoria’s idea. Partly it was a way to keep large hotels solvent during an international travel ban. By now it is clear hotels are our weak link.

The latest Victorian outbreak highlights the risks. A returning traveller in Adelaide quarantine had tested negative before returning to Victoria on May 4. He most likely caught the virus in quarantine. Federal Labor says 17 outbreaks can be traced to quarantine escapes. It’s a political line, but that does not make it less true.

This column has argued the national strategy is one of virus containment rather than elimination. Yet it is now clear the politics championed by Queensland and WA premiers Annastacia Palaszczuk and Mark McGowan have persuaded Morrison the political runs are all to be scored on the elimination pitch. If this is his thinking, his government’s actions need to reflect it.

Morrison remains almost certain to win the next election. Yet to do so he will need to persuade voters he can fix the problems surrounding vaccination, quarantine and aged care.

Aged care is largely a federal responsibility outside state-run homes. Given most of Australia’s 910 Covid-19 deaths have been in aged care it is extraordinary that Richard Colbeck has not taken more control of the system. Colbeck, the Aged Care Services Minister, was hopelessly exposed last year over infections in aged care in Sydney and Melbourne, but last week in Senate Estimates appeared no closer to being across his brief. Morrison should sack him now.

The spin from Victoria has been even worse than Canberra’s. State chief health officer Brett Sutton on Tuesday claimed the Indian variant was a “beast” that could spread between people who had barely had contact. Several epidemiologists said this had always been the case with Covid-19, there was no evidence the present strain was any more infectious than the UK strain, and after a month in the community only 60 cases had emerged.

Norman Swan on ABC 7.30 on Wednesday could not quite bring himself to say Professor Sutton was spinning. But the ANU’s Professor Peter Collignon said exactly that 90 minutes earlier on Credlin on Sky News. Even The Age, much improved under new editor Gay Alcorn, called BS on the “beast” line in the paper’s splash on Thursday.

The World Today on Thursday focused on problems in Victoria booking a vaccination. The online system that has been in development since Christmas is still not working. I booked my AstraZeneca vaccine in Sydney online. It took two minutes. The state-run hub was efficient. I was in and out in less than 25 minutes, including a 15 minute wait after vaccination.

The week’s virus news culminated in Thursday night’s revelation that the two fleeting cases Sutton had used to justify his “beast” claims were false positives. Radio 3AW host Neil Mitchell told Network Seven viewers on Friday that lockdowns were “first choice” in Victoria because the state government did not trust its own health system. He’s right.