Welcome to the column where you provide the content. Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos told the hotels inquiry yesterday that private security guards were working at quarantine hotels for two months before she found out. She was the latest in a cavalcade of top officials and ministers claiming ‘I know nothing’, ramping up pressure on Daniel Andrews as he gets set to front the inquiry this afternoon. My heroes, said John:
“One Sgt Schultz impersonation at the inquiry would be a bit of a laugh. But a whole platoon of Sgt Schultzes at the one Inquiry, now that really is a totally unbelievable rib cracker.”
Peter agreed:
“Sounds like an episode of Hogan’s Heroes, with Sgt Shultz and his famous line: “I know nothing”.
Bruce was gobsmacked:
“Can we run the Benny Hill show music. It is beyond farce.”
Quoth Geoffrey:
“It reminds me of Fawlty Towers.”
According to Andrew:
“This crossed the threshold of farcical and is now completely bizarre. The Victorian government is clearly out of control — or at least out of the control of the Cabinet and its ministers. Faceless persons are directing actions and Ministers are told nothing, ask nothing and aren’t surprised.
“Getting to the truth however, should be an easy fix. Assuming the security firms did not turn up unexpectedly and without any expectation of being paid, they will have a contract authorising their appointment. Presumably that will have been signed (but assume nothing nowadays). Get that name and work up the chain to see who authorised what. Obviously you need to work from the bottom up in Victoria.”
John was jaded:
“All ministers Liberal or Labor are taught by media specialist how to avoid answering questions. The Westminster system of responsibility and accountability has been lost. Politicians and senior public servants no longer accept responsibility even when it’s a no-brainer they were accountability.”
Roger was ropeable:
“For crying out loud! All they have to do to find out who ordered the hotel security guards is to interview the head of that service, and secure the papertrail. Its not rocket science.”
Loony, said Lawrence:
“It’s true that these ministers are beyond ridiculous. Can you imagine the managing director of a company in the dark for two months about a critical part of his company’s operation. These folk would be hard pressed to run a chook raffle and it says little for the senior bureaucrats for not keeping the minister informed. No doubt about it some or many have simply lied to the inquiry and of course they are lying to the electorate as well. I doubt any will fall on their swords.”
The Peril pointed out:
“There is a website that has just put up a video of a press announcement dated 29 March 2020 showing both Pakula and Mikakos. Pakula is announcing (among other details) that private security guards will be used at quarantine hotels. How did the Health Minister manage to miss that announcement when Pakula is only 2m away.”
Another Andrew observed:
“It seems that social distancing includes the 5 human senses.”
Diana got the green light:
“It is not the fault of the Andrews Government. ‘It is the foul wind which blows in it’s wake’.
(The Great Gatsby)”
Heather went haruspice:
“Dan will probably come out today and say condescendingly ‘well the buck stops with me, so I take full responsibility’. Knowing that he has 62pc support of the adoring electorate he will think he can get away with it.”
Alan was angry:
“In short, the clueless bureaucrats kept information from their clueless minister probably because they thought she was more clueless than them. She obviously had little curiosity because an inquisitive, responsible person would have demanded information and inspected things.
“Equally curious is that these eight clueless ministers who have no idea about anything sat in emergency cabinet meetings frequently and yet none of them are any the wiser about anything. What did they talk about? What did they decide?
“Surely the minutes of the emergency cabinet meetings would have specified what the tasks decided to be done were allocated to and who was responsible for doing them. What we are being told is either a huge pack of lies or they are incompetent and irresponsible beyond comprehension. Or maybe, ample doses of both. Come to think of it, the third option is the most likely.”
::JD:: was grateful:
“Thank you The Australian for providing Victorians with this forum to express our disgust at the absence of ministerial responsibility, enforced lockdown, limitation of free movement, curfews, and removal of right to protest.
“There is no Stockholm syndrome here, just removal of human rights with arrests and fines to enforce it. We’re prohibited from peaceful protest and restricted in our social contact. And to think that additional laws are now been presented to arbitrarily detain anyone simply thought to be ‘a risk’! Why have Australia’s civil rights protesters and lawyers gone missing?”
–
Joe Hockey, in a guest column, asked: What are the odds of Nancy Pelosi being sworn in as president on the steps of the Capitol on January 20? Not as remote as you may think. Remarked Mark:
“President Pelosi isn’t the only outlandish possibility. If Democrats lose the House, a new Speaker will be chosen before 20 Jan, and that person, probably Kevin McCarthy (55), would be next in line to the presidency.”
*Christine cautioned:
“Hi Joe. You’ve skipped several procedural steps to get to Nancy Pelosi becoming President on 21 January 2021. That’s a column in itself. Two of the key steps you’re assuming are that:
– Nancy retains her seat at the election, and
– The Democrats retain the House after the election,
… neither of which are certain.”
Anon’s analysis:
“The Dems are pushing hard for mail in ballots for a reason. They want the chaos and uncertainty. Covid is just an excuse. The many methods used to tamper with ballots has been published recently (NYT if I recall correctly).
“If an own policy flouting, sans mask-wearing Nancy Pelosi can get her hair done in a salon, that is closed for business to the ‘unimportant’ people, then I think it’s safe for people to go to the ballot box and vote.
“America is so combustible right now that any sniff of rigging a democratic election through fraudulent means could result in civil unrest on a large scale.
The Democrats are playing with fire, but then this is what we’ve come to expect. They stood back and let anarchists and Marxist BLM rioters burn their cities and harass citizens because they thought people might blame Trump (they didn’t).
“People are fleeing Democrat cities in their thousands. Gun ownership has skyrocketed because of out of control crime rates in Democrat controlled cities, that have deliberately defunded police. Even Democrat mayors (6 in Minnesota alone) are backing Trump over Biden out of fear of their far left and the Sanders policy platform Biden has adopted that 90% of moderate Americans reject.
“The most responsible course of action would have been to open even more polling stations and allow the people to vote as they always have so that the election outcome was known quickly. I sure hope it’s decisive for the world’s sake too.
The outcome in the USA has implications for the rest of the world. You can absolutely bet that countries such as China will be cheering for a Biden win — they need a weak America and will opportunistically take advantage of the USA in chaos.”
Robert reckoned:
“My son lives in Los Angeles and had to experience the wrath of BLM/Antifa groups approaching his workplace. After a phone call from management that they were approaching, he quickly closed his workplace and placed a ‘weapon of sorts’ in his backpack for protection. “He has filmed them looting and destroying business in their woke wake. He was impressed and felt much safer when Trump ordered in the army. He asked one of the foot soldiers if it was OK for him to film them and they said of course as its your first amendment right. A quick google to Antifa will take you straight to Joe Biden website for donations to his campaign. The threat of defunding police has scared many US citizens and therefore there is a lot of secret support for Trump. If Biden gets in, my son is getting out of the US as his feeling is that it wont be a safe place to live anymore.”
John agreed:
“Spot on Robert. My daughter lived in NY and her experience was similar. Unable to express her opinion when asked at work in fear of being shunned or worse fired. They had to read and discuss white privilege and why they are inherently racists without knowing it. Thank goodness she came home and enjoying isolation for another week. Quarantine is heaven compared to exposure to American insanity.”
Said Skitragic:
“It is a very high possibility that the Democrats will retain the house (predicted by US observers) and, the only way Pelosi will not be re-elected is if she does not stand because her electorate supports her blindly and it’s in socialist California.”
Michael was confident:
“Trump will win in a land slide to the extent that the Democrats will be left in the wastelands fighting among themselves.”
Grim, said Tim:
“The state by state voting arrangements in the US are confusing and opaque. Maybe the UN should send in observers to monitor the election. The US already resembles a broken third-world nation.”
–
Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 has become the left’s latest totem. But the real deadline for Australia is not 30 years hence but 30 months away, by which time we will have made the decisions that will determine where we will find the additional 19 gigawatts of dispatchable power the market operator says we’ll need by 2040, according to Nick Cater. Mark1 mused:
“In the meantime our vast reserves of coal are dug out of the ground and exported all over the world to be used to power other nations cheaply, and of course their use of our coal won’t affect us at all because as you know each country is covered by its own glass bowl to keep emissions in the actual country producing them. We, conversely just puddle around trying to come up with different ways of making our own energy as expensive as we can possibly make it, whilst stupidly showing our virtue to the rest of the world by progressively shunning our own coal.”
Tiffany’s husband was terse:
“Correct. We are a laughing stock.”
Said Mea duce tutus eris:
“China is building 600 new coal fired power stations over the next five years and India 300.
If we shutdown three however, we can save the world! This green maths lesson is brought to you by the Member for Melbourne, got it?”
Nuclear, said Nom de Clef:
“James Lovelock in 2004: ‘Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen.’”
Zanda said:
“Wind and solar farms? A blight on the landscape. You drive in the country, round a corner, and instead of a pristine vista, giant sticks waving their arms.”
No said Joy:
“Wind turbines look much better than coal plants and cleaner.”
Allen argued:
“You only need a very few coal-fired power plants to provide Australia’s needs, and these take up tiny areas compared to the vast tracts of land wind and solar farms require. And wind farms are often situated in places of natural beauty because that’s where the wind is.”
Last word to Brad (the quiet Australian):
“I support the idea that the Commonwealth is putting up cash to build a new baseload power station in the Hunter Valley – Australia’s electricity capital. There are a few issues that have to be overcome however?
1. Why pipe gas to the site when there is already anabunance of coal?
2. Why build a station with 50pc of the capacity of the current station?
3. A priority should be placed on Australian-made. Liddell’s Australian content is around 75-80pc. So it should be with the new station.
“The USA has 210 coal-fired power stations. We should have nothing to fear from having between 20 and 30.”
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