Coronavirus: Ideological fervour must not trump good public policymaking response

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.

Victoria’s inability to contain the coronavirus outbreak brought on by hotel quarantine failures risks soon becoming NSW’s problem too.

There are indications that by the end of this week NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian may face some tough choices. The question is, will she make a similar mistake to Victoria?

By letting ideology restrict her options to contain the spread of the coronavirus. By not locking the state down — in part or in full — swiftly enough.

The Victorian experience has been hampered by a centralised public health bureaucracy: old-fashioned, slow and unwieldy in response to a virus that rapidly takes hold. It’s a sharp contrast to NSW, where the decentralised public health system is fit for purpose: able to rapidly deploy contact tracers and pop-up clinics in order to not lose control of the situation too quickly.

Contact tracing in Victoria has been ineffective and centrally organised. Pop-up clinics haven’t opened up quickly enough. The state’s Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, sits too far down the health bureaucratic food chain — three rungs below the minister — to make decisions quickly enough to see action fluidly follow.

Despite an impressive career, Sutton isn’t a career public health clinician, in stark contrast to NSW CHO Kerry Chant.

Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton.

NSW Chief Medical Officer Kerry Chant.

The centralised structure of public health in Victoria is a hallmark of how Dan Andrews likes to do business. The system has been years in the making, dating right back to the now Premier’s time as the responsible minister during the Bracks government.

The harsh lockdown Andrews announced became his only option to try and regain the initiative against a virus that shows little mercy. However, because of the many system faults, Victoria is starting the fight back a long way behind.

As of yesterday, there were 1583 cases still under investigation, which speaks to the poor contact tracing out of Victoria, not helped by the COVIDSafe app not working as effectively as promised, if, indeed, it’s working at all.

The six-week hard lockdown became a necessary evil for Victorians precisely because of the failures in Health Victoria’s old-fashioned structures. Polemicists on the right might like to mouth off about the hotel quarantine failures, which to be sure were the trigger for this disaster. But the magnitude of it has grown exponentially because of the structural failures outlined above. And those failures are ideological — red meat for right-wing critics of Andrews.

The Liberal government in NSW now has its own ideological choice. Does it reject a lockdown because of its stated desire to keep the economy open, risking the spread of the virus getting out of control? Or does it recognise that even though a lockdown goes against the Liberal Party’s mantra of opening the economy back up, in the long run, failure to contain this latest contagion will do more economic harm than a short (and perhaps limited) lockdown?

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

Andrews let his ideological preference for centralised power get the better of him, to the detriment of Victorians’ health. For the same ideological reasons, he found the re-embracing of lockdowns easier to stomach. The command-and-control nature of it suits his style. The economic cost of lockdowns aren’t front of mind.

Berejiklian can’t let her ideological opposition to lockdowns be her undoing, especially when the decentralised public health structure in NSW has so comprehensively shown up the Victorian model. Like it or not, lockdowns for NSW might be the lesser of evils, for both health and economic outcomes.

Sadly, the behaviour of some NSW residents has shown that if the virus becomes established, it may spread even more quickly than it has in Victoria. The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee has been presented with modelling highlighting this point.

NSW still has a chance to contain the virus, and avoid the fate Victorians are enduring. It may even get lucky and tiptoe through unscathed, because of its decentralised structures.

But if it doesn’t, NSW will need to let good public policymaking guide its response, not the ideological fervour of the government of the day.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.