Coronavirus Australia: the culpability stare down with Daniel Andrews the PM refuses to cop

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, left, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Pictures: AFP/NCA NewsWire

Daniel Andrews has picked a fight he can’t possibly win. Any former minister for defence could have given him that advice for free.

Visibly feeling the pressure, the Victorian Premier this week again sought to blame-shift the crisis engulfing Victoria onto the Commonwealth, by dragging the ADF into the argument.

And again, the Morrison government has shot him down.

Andrews’s claims that the federal government had not offered the support of the Australian Defence Force to deal with the state’s hotel quarantine debacle on multiple occasions defies belief.

That is because it is wrong.

The question is whether Andrews had not bothered to inform himself of what he had acknowledged long before giving evidence to the parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday or simply engaged in deliberate bamboozlement.

There had been extensive discussions between Victorian officials, including the State police and emergency management officials, throughout March, April and May.

Andrews’s own Emergency Management Commissioner said he never asked for, nor was he ­offered, ADF assistance for manning the hotel quarantine. Yet a formal request to the federal government for just such assistance shows that he did.

Andrews could well argue procedural technicalities that the offer was made to agencies rather than at a Cabinet level.

But this is also wrong.

A press release that was sent out on March 27 written on the Premier’s own letterhead, and sent out by his own office, in fact saluted the offer of ADF assistance.

This was in response to the prime minister making a very public offer in a press conference after the meeting of the National Cabinet that same day.

This was what Andrews’s press release said at the time when the National Cabinet agreed to forced quarantine in hotels for returning overseas travellers: “...it has also been agreed that the Australian Defence Force will be engaged to support the implementation of these arrangements.”

This is what Andrews said on Tuesday to the Victorian parliamentary estimates inquiry: “I don’t believe ADF support was on offer and ADF support has been provided in very limited circumstances in NSW, not to provide security, as such, but to provide transport from the airport to hotels.

“I think it is fundamentally incorrect to assert that there were hundreds of ADF staff on offer and somehow, somebody said no. That’s just not, in my judgment, accurate,” the Premier said.

Apparently Andrews has about 100 staff working in his office. It may have only required a Google search by one of them to cross check what the premier’s office had said on the issue in the past and the many occasions that Morrison had publicly made such an offer.

The ADF will have extensive official records of its offers of support to Victoria and the rejections of it from the Andrews’ administration.

Not surprisingly Defence Minister Linda Reynolds was straight out of the blocks on Tuesday after Andrews’ comments.

“(The ADF) had discussed requirements with relevant state and territory authorities” on March 27 and the following day, her statement said.

“Victorian authorities advised that Victoria was not seeking ADF assistance with mandatory quarantine arrangements.

“The ADF was consistently advised that its assistance was not required for any ‘public facing roles’ in Victoria,” Senator Reynolds’ statement said.

Daniel Andrews told a Parliamentary Committee “I don’t believe ADF support was on offer.”

Read the below statement from Defence Minister @lindareynoldswa ADF personnel were offered in March.

Daniel Andrews refused the offer.

Andrews has lied, this man cannot be trusted. pic.twitter.com/yzFuYQ0D7R

— Tim Smith MP (@TimSmithMP) August 11, 2020

This statement, clearly authorised by the prime minister’s office, was yet another warning shot to the Victorian Labor leader that the federal government isn’t going to tolerate a narrative that shifts blame to the Commonwealth for a crisis that increasingly appears to be of the Victorian government’s own making.

He poked Scott Morrison in the eye over the suggestions that it was the Commonwealth that was responsible for the crisis in aged care facilities – which may not have been a crisis if the security staff contracted by the Victorian government hadn’t allowed the virus to simply walk out of the hotels they were meant to be securing.

Now Andrews has once again blindly or deliberately provoked a fight with the federal government over the tragic failures of Victoria’s hotel quarantine policy.

Public trust in Daniel Andrews’ was the highest of all the premiers in the early phase of the pandemic.

In an attempt to further obscure the bungled management of this Victorian disaster, by pulling the ADF into the fray, he only risks further decay of public confidence in his own administration rather than taking some bark off the Commonwealth.