Coronavirus: Victoria’s state of disaster now a state of exhaustion

A community that functions on permits to move is not in any way liberal or liberated.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton. Picture : NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

Daniel Andrews has adopted an implausible narrative while confronting an improbable health and economic crisis. His strategy is to delay the political pain over the hotel quarantine scandal and pray for a miracle. This position enables him to gamble that the spread of the virus in Victoria can be arrested and within two or three months children will be playing on the streets again.

This may yet happen but only after Australia pays an unbelievable long-term price. Collectively the Victorian community — the state’s political and medical establishment included — is reaching a post-anxiety state of exhaustion.

The deaths, the job losses, the daily threats to health, the skewered economic future, the loss of basic liberties such as freedom of movement and unfettered freedom of the press. A community that functions on permits to move is not in any way liberal or liberated, nor is one that must adhere to a night-time curfew.

These measures, taken on medical advice and with the support of Canberra, have been imposed by one of the most centralised political leaders in modern Australian political history. This power structure is why Andrews’s narrative is hard to accept.

Those who work closely with Andrews attest to this infamously controlling and relentlessly engaged behaviour. Everything is “Dan’s”. He is a notorious “war gamer”, debating and throwing up ideas with his inner sanctum. Andrews is a 24/7 political animal. It explains the way he has dominated Victorian Labor for 10 years and why his professed lack of knowledge on hotel quarantine is so bewildering.

“The lines of authority and accountability and exactly what has gone on here, it is not clear,’’ Andrews claimed on Thursday. And here: “There are questions that cannot be answered and the appropriate thing is to get those answers.” Really?

It is unreasonable to expect any premier running a $71bn government to be privy to granular operational matters such as security-guard rostering. But it’s pretty obvious that when a set of decisions occur that lead to potentially the worst economic and health crisis in Australia in 100 years that a war gamer like Andrews would want to know where his government is exposed.

Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos had a shocking week. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

In late March, governments were charged with setting up hotel quarantine regimens for returning overseas travellers. The Ruby Princess debacle had unfolded elsewhere, the Aspen skiers had spread their doses of COVID-19 and there was knowledge that travellers were where the virus would be found. The matter was discussed by the national cabinet with the view that police, the army and possibly corrections officers would help run what were ostensibly meant to be accommodation prisons.

Running flat out, the Victorian government instead opted to use security guards as the last line of defence, leading to catastrophic consequences where the virus leaked into the community due to poor hygiene, a lack of discipline and a stunning lack of oversight.

For months Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services was meant to be in charge. Genomic testing, when released, is expected to show these hotel quarantine failures are largely behind Australia’s, but really Victoria’s, second wave.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg spoke for the Victorian community yesterday when he lamented the devastation being felt across the city and regional areas.

“We are in a state of crisis right now. The emotional toll on Victorian families, on young women trying to homeschool their kids and hold down a job at the same time; on grandparents; on businesses that have had to close their doors with millions of people uncertain about their job future — they’re the real issues,” he told Sky.

“I’ll let Daniel Andrews explain what happened on quarantine, that’s for him to explain, that’s for him to account for. But there’s no doubt there’s been mistakes made. My job, the Prime Minister’s job, is to get help to the people who need it most.”

Andrews is not denying there were mistakes but he has hidden behind the formation of a board of inquiry into hotel quarantine that he set up. Due to Lockdown 3.0, the inquiry will now be delayed by six weeks, not reporting until November 6. Public hearings have been delayed until August 17.

This political shield was smashed this week when former judge Jennifer Coate said there was no legal impediment to people like Andrews explaining themselves outside the inquiry itself.

Leaked emails show that DHHS, overseen by Health Minister Jenny Mikakos, was warned on the first day of the scheme that police should be called in to take over from security guards. It was reported that a senior bureaucrat had warned DHHS that within 24 hours of the start of the program there were problems.

“We request that Victoria Police is present 24/7 at each hotel starting from this evening,” The Age reported. “We ask that DHHS urgently make that request as the control agency.”

Emergency Management Victoria was also responsible and there is speculation that it will be fingered for failing to demand police and army be involved in the hotel quarantine process. Police and the ADF both told Inquirer this week they had not received a formal request to become involved in the scheme.

Andrews must be exhausted. Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton took time off this week and who could blame him? There was someone to fill his shoes. His name is Professor Allen Cheng. But who is the obvious person to stand up for Andrews if he ever stays home to sleep?

Empty roads and freeways in Melbourne as strict stage 4 lockdowns are enforced. Picture: Aaron Francis

Mikakos had another average week when she refused to directly answer questions on the pandemic in the Victorian parliament. It was a terrible look. Deputy Premier James Merlino is competent and capable and appeared at the daily press conference yesterday to discuss changes to Year 12 exams and university entry scores. But the broader question for Victorian Labor is who would replace Andrews if the virus claimed his leadership.

Andrews was asked twice about leadership this week and showed no signs of wanting to engage on the question. Other colleagues get a sense that after a decade in the role, he is less wedded to the job but still focused on the legacy of having resolved the second wave.

“It won’t surprise us if he is gone by early next year. But no one’s pushing,’’ a colleague said.

(Yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of former Labor premier John Cain quitting, an anniversary that will have quietly slipped by for most.)

There is increasing talk about the sustainability of Andrews’s leadership. As for the Andrews legacy, it is still too early to say, although you can’t ignore his state building agenda. Asked yesterday what inquiries he had made into the oversight systems for hotel quarantine, Andrews responded: “I’m not going to grade my own paper or mark my own exam.

“As I understand it, there’s 100,000-plus pages of documents that have gone to Judge Coate. I’m more than happy to concede, I have not read 100,000 pages of documents in relation to this matter.”

Sutton, meanwhile, said on Friday that he first learnt about the problems with security in hotel quarantine through the media. He was aware there were coronavirus outbreaks at the Stamford and Rydges hotels but he did not know the extent of the deficiencies with the program. “So we were aware of the transmission that occurred, but in terms of other rumours and reporting around deficiencies with the workforce in those settings, the first I heard was when I read it in the newspapers,” he conceded.

More broadly, Sutton and others are not making any bold predictions about how Lockdown 3.0 will work. Victoria has 7637 active cases, with 181 dead.

The daily cases have been in the 400 to 500 range during the past week, which DHHS believes shows some stability in the numbers, notwithstanding the one-day spike of 725. But it will take a fortnight for the effects of the hard lockdown to become evident.

The expectation is that the numbers will drop significantly but maybe not by the six-week deadline. Like so many elements of the second wave of the pandemic, it will be best to believe it when you see it.