The COVID-19 resurgence in Victoria and the terrible toll of deaths in Melbourne aged-care homes has broken the boundaries of dubious claims to bipartisanship.
Anthony Albanese and the federal ALP are going for broke in blaming Scott Morrison and the federal Coalition for the deaths and mismanagement in some Victorian aged-care centres and expanding anxiety over caring for elderly parents into a broader political point.
The Opposition Leader, frustrated and under pressure because of the Prime Minister’s growing political and personal dominance during the pandemic, is seeking a moment of “cut through” in the national debate where he can damage Morrison’s standing and emerge later with a hold on a real issue of public concern.
The test for Albanese’s all-out attempt to hurt Morrison’s record standing is whether the public believes the Victorian outbreak, the need for draconian restrictions and deaths of the elderly are Morrison’s fault or Daniel Andrews’s responsibility.
This is the key to the political strategy now on full display: does the public accept the quarantine security breach in Melbourne, which started it all, was Morrison’s fault and does it believe the failure of restrictions and healthcare in Victoria is truly the commonwealth’s fault.
Albanese’s contention faces a tough test of evidence of failures in hotel quarantine, a markedly poorer performance by health officials in Victoria compared with NSW and evidence of delays and confusion in reporting and treating elderly coronavirus sufferers.
Since last week, Albanese and his senior frontbench colleagues have been seeking to shift the focus of blame away from the Andrews Victorian Labor government for the deaths of older Australians on to the Morrison federal Coalition government. As well, Albanese, who’s standing as a Labor leader since the pandemic has fallen below his fraternal premiers in Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia and who has been frozen out of the national cabinet process, is seeking to sow divisions between Morrison and the premiers and condemn commonwealth aid implementation.
Aged care is at the core of Albanese’s political argument, saying the federal government is responsible for the sector and ignoring multiple warnings about threats to lives, not learning from deaths in NSW and needing to address the wider issues of aged care.
It is the same logic as Labor’s so-far unsuccessful campaign to blame the federal government for the quarantine failure of the Ruby Princess cruise ship in Sydney, which created the previous largest COVID outbreak in Australia.
Labor Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers on Sunday linked the Ruby Princess and the aged-care deaths in Newmarch House in Sydney with the Victorian outbreak. “The Prime Minister’s responsible for the aged-care system.
“He needs to take responsibility for the horror show in aged care. The Prime Minister shouldn’t be allowed to wash his hands of this the way that he’s tried to wash his hands of the Ruby Princess debacle.
“It’s time for him to take this challenge more seriously than he has to date, and not just because of what’s happened during this crisis but because of the deterioration in aged care for some time,” he said.
Julie Collins, Labor’s aged-care advocate, wrote to Morrison demanding action and blaming the commonwealth for failing to learn from Newmarch House a few months ago that led to 19 deaths.
Albanese attacked Morrison for joining the commonwealth with Clive Palmer’s High Court challenge against WA border closures, accusing him of being against the Premier’s actions.
Morrison responded quickly, backtracking on the principle of involvement in a constitutional case and effectively putting the issue off for months.
This could be a turning point as Albanese sees it, but he is tying himself to the Victorian Premier’s precarious fate.
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