Coronavirus: Perfect credentials and imperfect response

Andrew Crisp is an authority in policing, emergency management and governance. In a distinguished career, he has led responses to natural disasters and serious crimes.

The Emergency Management Victoria commissioner’s resume — all 3211 words of it spanning nine pages — makes impressive reading. By his own measure, Crisp is a “strong, loyal, supportive, collaborative and visible leader with proven executive management who demonstrates the ability to deliver results in strategic, project and operational roles”.

Submitted as part of his evidence to the Coate hotel quarantine inquiry, Crisp’s resume notes his “sound judgment when making decisions in strategic and operational scenarios”.

He possesses “exceptional stakeholder and community engagement skills, excellent interpersonal and communication skills” and has the “ability to lead and influence at a state, national and international level”.

In a 40-year career at Victoria Police, Crisp rose to deputy commissioner and was charged with leading the anti-terrorism unit, co-ordinating regional policing and being responsible for “leadership of over 13,000 Police, Protective Services Officers, Police Custody Officers and Victoria Public Servants and a budget in excess of $1.5bn”.

Crisp is well-educated, holding a masters of leadership and management, and his resume lists a six-month stint working in the Department of Premier and Cabinet in 2014.

It makes a convincing case that he’s the perfect fit to lead the state’s emergency response to the coronavirus pandemic, the gravest of all emergencies.

So what’s gone so wrong? Outside of testifying at various inquiries, Crisp has hardly been seen in public. He doesn’t do press conferences, interviews or even respond to reasonable questions via text. It’s perplexing he’s had to make three statements to the inquiry, clarifying his version of events around the hotel program, including issues around the non-deployment of Defence Force personnel.

Most damning of all is his letter to the public accounts and estimates committee — released by it on budget night — in which he claims to have misspoken.

Crisp says he incorrectly told the PAEC three times he had briefed Police Minister Lisa Neville about establishing the hotel program on March 27-28. Now he says he was wrong; he didn’t brief his minister.

It’s an important concession that distances his minister from the debacle.

Crisp has said he was not directed to correct the record, but he won’t answer questions about how he managed to make such a blunders in the first place. Not once, but three times.