We all make mistakes and the PM has made a few during COVID-19

Scott Morrison holds a national cabinet meeting at Parliament House on August 7. Picture: Adam Taylor/PMO

The challenge for oppositions in the time of COVID-19 is to offer constructive ideas to tackle the crisis, hold governments to account when they get it wrong, and do it in ways which do not undermine confidence in the integrity of regulations, laws and institutions set up to deal with it, nor incite people to defy the measures designed to protect them.

It is inevitable that at times like this governments and leaders will make mistakes. They stuff up during the very best of times, so how much harder is it to avoid errors when the pressure is so much greater and the consequences deadlier. When they do make mistakes, people deserve to know how or why they happened and who was responsible, particularly if those mistakes lead to the deaths of loved ones.

Oppositions and journalists have a duty, when those mistakes are made, to pose questions and make criticisms, otherwise there will be swabs for hostage syndrome as well as COVID-19. They are not doing their jobs if they suspend their critical faculties, paper over or cover up blunders.

Nor should they be put off by accusations of partisanship or political game-playing or bullying from opponents or their surrogates and supporters on Twitter. That will only cost more money and more lives. So long as everyone accepts there is a line and doesn’t cross it.

Which brings us to Victorian Liberal backbencher Tim Smith. A few weeks ago when Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews mandated the wearing of masks in public, Smith complained Victorians were muzzled like dogs. A few days later, with the virus rampant, after a few Victorians had proudly filmed themselves defying instructions to muzzle up, Smith accused Andrews of having blood on his hands.

Smith has taken a novel approach in his campaign to become Victorian opposition leader. He has decided the best way to wrest it from the more measured Michael O’Brien, is to run it from the studios of Sydney shock jocks. O’Brien has managed to make the same points about Andrews in a far less frenzied and less dangerous way. Smith might revel in the notoriety he has bought, but he does himself and fellow Victorians no favours.

Andrews and his ministers still have many questions to answer. They will be held to account firstly by the board of inquiry he instigated, then by the voters, depending on what happens between now and the next election. The escape of the virus from hotel quarantine because security was left in the hands of untrained guards will be his mistake to carry. One look at him tells you not only that he knows it, but that there is no way he will go without an almighty fight both in Spring Street and Canberra.

Despite the veneer of unity, bipartisanship within the national cabinet has fractured over the use – or not – of defence forces to help with quarantine, and responsibility for nursing homes, where the death toll rises each miserable day.

Ultimately responsibility for the aged care sector lies with Scott Morrison. On Monday, after a procession of his ministers and backbenchers had gone all out to blame Andrews for the quarantine disaster as part of a deliberate strategy to shield Morrison and the federal government from any fallout, the PM said nobody will get a leave pass for their mistakes.

Truer words were never spoken. But the person who ensured Morrison will wear blame for the failures in nursing homes was not Andrews nor was it Anthony Albanese. It is Peter Rozen QC, counsel assisting the aged-care royal commission.

Last week Justice Jennifer Coate stripped bare Andrews’s attempts to deflect questions by deferring to her ongoing inquiry into the quarantine breach. Coate said flatly there was no point of law preventing him answering.

Rozen was as direct and as devastating when he said on Monday: “While there was undoubtedly a great deal done to prepare the Australian health sector more generally for the pandemic, the evidence will reveal that neither the commonwealth Department of Health nor the aged-care regulator developed a COVID-19 plan specifically for the aged care sector.”

He also accused the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner, Janet Anderson, of failing to develop or implement an appropriate COVID-19 response plan, and of failing to investigate the major outbreaks at Sydney nursing home Newmarch House and Dorothy Henderson Lodge in March and April.

“It may come as a surprise to some that the aged care regulator has not investigated the circumstances of the Dorothy Henderson Lodge and Newmarch House outbreaks,” Rozen said.

“Incident investigations are normally one of the key tasks of any regulator for obvious reasons. An investigation into the facts can inform future regulatory action.”

He went to the nub of it, and therein lay the rub.

Rozen’s remarks cut deep. They provoked an extraordinary response from Brendan Murphy, the former chief medical officer, now head of the Health Department, who appeared on Wednesday before the commission (which Morrison established) at the request of the commonwealth. Murphy sought permission to correct what he said were “inaccurate” statements.

His request was denied.

Morrison has made many mistakes during this pandemic. At almost every critical point on almost every contentious issue, he has been forced to shift position. He stopped travel from China but waited too long to block travel from the US. He opposed lockdowns, he opposed school closures, he opposed state border restrictions, he opposed wage subsidies he opposed pandemic leave and he suspended parliament.

Many of the switches have come about because of internal and external pressures, including from medical experts and Labor. Nevertheless his ability to pivot in the nick of time on all those fronts has helped him and helped the country get through to this point.

Something else he has mastered is the conduct of press conferences where he refuses follow-up questions from journalists he doesn’t like on issues he doesn’t want to discuss. Journalists intent on getting their own questions answered or with different agendas, have tended not to back up colleagues enabling the prime minister to switch to a more agreeable topic or a more agreeable questioner. The line that gets up is almost always the one he has carefully crafted.

Morrison will face many more questions about his actions, or missteps, when parliament resumes on August 24. He will not be able to avoid them as easily, unless Labor crosses that line.