Coronavirus Australia: ‘The tweets speak for themselves,’ Jenny Mikakos said. Health Minister, they certainly do.

Jenny Mikakos and some of her late-night tweets. Pictures: Getty/Twitter

There are two things Victoria’s hapless health Minister Jenny Mikakos should never have been given, the first being her current portfolio, and the second, access to a Twitter account.

Late on Saturday evening she sent a series of rambling tweets, which began with her saying she was inspired by the Athenian statesman Pericles, a bust of whom is situated in her office. Declaring that she had “worked every day to keep everyone safe” from the COVID-19 pandemic, Mikakos said “If it wasn’t enough, then I’m deeply sorry”.

If? Just to clarify, of the 22,127 cases and the 352 resultant deaths in Australia, around 70 and 75 per cent of them respectively belong to Victoria. All but 20 of the state’s 267 pandemic deaths have occurred since July 5. The state is in lockdown for at least another month, NSW is desperately trying to contain cases from Victoria’s second wave, hard border closures look like being the norm indefinitely, unemployment is forecast to rise to 10 per cent, and the economy – just as it was showing signs of recovery – is now bracing for a $12b hit. Aside from all that, what gave you the impression we thought there was a shortfall in your performance, Minister?

A thread: I’ve grown up inspired by Greece’s most enduring contribution to civilisation - democracy. A bust of the great Athenian statesman, Pericles, who built the Parthenon and governed during its golden age of educational and cultural achievement sits proudly in my office.

— Jenny Mikakos MP #StayHomeSaveLives (@JennyMikakos) August 8, 2020

Since that fateful day on 25 January, when we had our first-ever case, I’ve worked every day to keep everyone safe. I have put every ounce of energy I’ve had into that effort. If it wasn’t enough, then I’m deeply sorry.

— Jenny Mikakos MP #StayHomeSaveLives (@JennyMikakos) August 8, 2020

We can only surmise Mikakos is suffering a rare form of conjunctional cognitive dissonance. Perhaps she read Rudyard Kipling’s great poem of the same name but has a skewed understanding of its content e.g. “If you can’t keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs, well, blame it all on them”. Maybe they should replace Mikakos with that bust of Pericles – surely it could not do any worse.

Right now, her performance is little better than that of the late Manta Tshabalala-Mismang, the former South African health Minister who encouraged AIDS patients to forego antiviral drugs in favour of a beetroot, garlic and lemon juice treatment. As for the Department of Health and Human Services, which Mikakos is supposedly responsible for, it appears none of its bureaucrats could organise a piss-up in a brewery.

I take that back. As this newspaper reported yesterday, a senior DHHS manager was suspended this week for running a sly grog trade at two Melbourne CBD hotels used for the COVID-19 isolation program. I feel sorry for the poor fellow. If anything, he is the only DHHS public servant to show initiative in this crisis.

What rankles most about Mikakos’s tweets is her self-righteous declaration “I believe there is nothing to fear in seeking the truth”. Like Premier Daniel Andrews, she has consistently refused to answer questions about Victoria’s quarantine hotel debacle – from which most of the state’s second wave cases can be traced – stating last week she “will not be providing a commentary while the inquiry is ongoing”.

Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos arrives to speak to the media on August 10. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

But only hours before she said that, the head of that particular inquiry, Justice Jennifer Coate, made it clear that no such restrictions applied. “Unlike court, there is no general restriction or prohibition which would prevent a person from commenting publicly or answering questions to which they know the answers on matters which are the subject of examination by this board of inquiry,” she said. Translation: DO NOT USE me as an excuse for your stonewalling, Minister. Again, faced with a choice of directing questions to Mikakos or the bust, one would be better off choosing the latter.

But this is not the first time Mikakos, or Andrews for that matter, has refused to answer questions about an issue concerning the government’s fitness to hold office. For example, State Ombudsman Deborah Glass found that in the 2014 election, Labor had misused $387,842 in publicly funded electoral allowances for campaigning purposes. The Andrews Government spent $1 million in legal fees, all taxpayer-funded, in an unsuccessful attempt to shut down the Ombudsman’s inquiry.

When police announced in 2018 they would conduct a criminal investigation into the misappropriation, Andrews rejected calls for the ministers named in the Ombudsman’s inquiry – including Mikakos – to stand down, stating that all named would co-operate in the investigation. “Everybody should co-operate and everybody will,” he said.

So how many of the 16 serving Labor MPs, including Mikakos, agreed to police requests for interviews? Answer: none. Mikakos was among those later exonerated by police of wrongdoing. Nonetheless Shadow Attorney-General Ed O’Donohue labelled their refusal to co-operate with police a “disgrace”. This is a government contemptuous of transparency and the public’s right to know.

Yet some commentators who should know better are in denial. Writing regarding Mikakos’s tweets, Age columnist Wendy Tuohy asserted “Victorians, with our excellent BS detectors, largely received them as they were clearly sent: openly and sincerely, the authentic sentiments of someone working into the wee hours on our behalf”. Where to begin? For starters, anyone remotely familiar with Twitter knows it has nothing to do with authenticity. But if the majority of the readers’ comments in response to that article are any indication, Victorians’ BS detectors were working just fine that day.

And it is fair to say those detectors have been on overdrive recently, particularly regarding Andrews’ evidence on Monday to the Victorian Parliament’s Public Accounts and Estimates Committee regarding the hotel quarantine debacle. “I don’t believe ADF support was on offer,” he said. “I think it is fundamentally incorrect to assert that there was hundreds of ADF staff on offer and somehow someone said no. That’s just not, in my judgment, accurate.”

As The Australian reported today, those assertions – as well as the claim by Victorian Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp that ADF assistance for the hotel quarantine program was neither sought nor offered during planning meetings on March 27 and 28 – are contradicted by Department of Defence records. According to those documents, ADF liaison officers repeatedly reported from March 21 that Victorian authorities would not be accepting this offer, despite 100 ADF personnel being ready for immediate deployment to enforce quarantine compliance at designated hotels.

Now think back just to last month. “When the COVID-19 crisis struck, I suddenly found myself transfixed by [Andrews’] media conferences. Dan had stepped up and he was suddenly hot, too.” No, this is not Vogon poetry, nor was it found in a Mills and Boon reject bin. “Even in the face of a huge stuff-up, Dan defied my expectations once again,” wrote Age columnist Monica Dux. “Instead of obfuscating and shifting blame, the way politicians always do, he faced up and took responsibility. He admitted fault, and he kept talking straight. And I kept trusting him.” For pity’s sake, even a Chinese Communist Party propagandist would refuse a direct order to write this.

You might recall republican and professor Jenny Hocking, who last month, in response to the release of confidential letters concerning Governor-General John Kerr’s dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, claimed in a rather sad attempt at triumphalism: “The Palace letters have proved to be every bit the bombshell they promised to be”. Responding to a Guardian Essential poll yesterday which showed most Victorians supported the latest public health restrictions, Hocking was ecstatic. “NewsCorp minions fail to read the room,” she tweeted. “Victorians stand with Dan!” Had Hocking bothered to read the survey, she would have learned that Andrews’ approval rating for his response to COVID-19 has fallen from 75 per cent in June to 49 per cent.

Barrister and former Greens candidate Julian Burnside also embarrassed himself when he tweeted for the benefit of ABC QandA on Monday that “Dan Andrews has done a great job….” This level of denial is unsettling. A question for Burnside: How long must Victorians remain in lockdown and how many of them must kark it before you concede Andrews’ handling of this is a dog’s breakfast?

#QandA Dan Andrews has done a great job...and I don’t even vote Labor

— Julian Burnside (@JulianBurnside) August 10, 2020

In April Victorian Deputy Chief Health Officer Annaliese van Diemen mused via Twitter that Captain James Cook’s landing in Australia was analogous to the introduction of COVID-19. No offence, doc, but I wish that great mariner and leader, as opposed to your incompetent department, was managing hotel quarantine.

The last word should be that of Mikakos. When asked at Monday’s press conference to elaborate on her series of tweets she declined. “The tweets speak for themselves,” she said. Minister, they certainly do.