Daniel Andrews trumps Gillian Triggs with ridiculous award nomination

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: Getty

Last December, when the Berejiklian government responded to the Sydney’s northern beaches outbreak by targeting hot spots and focusing primarily on mass testing and contact tracing, some commentators demanded firmer action.

Saying “NSW is not doing enough”, the ABC’s medical reporter Norman Swan called for a two-week lockdown of Greater Sydney, a population of 5.3 million. “You know, any Victorian watching us chat just now knows this and they’re looking askance at NSW [asking] ‘why haven’t they learned this’,” he told ABC News. “But in Victoria they’ve learned their lesson.”

Exactly what lesson Victoria, or more specifically the Andrews government, has supposedly learned, we can only guess. Last week it ordered the entire state into lockdown – yet again – after an outbreak at the Holiday Inn hotel quarantine site reached 13 cases. Conversely, NSW recorded 151 cases linked to the northern beaches cluster, yet the government skilfully managed the outbreak without locking down Greater Sydney. This week NSW recorded 28 consecutive days without a locally acquired case, the state’s longest period with no community transmission since the pandemic began.

When NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian pointed out on December 21 there was no evidence of “massive seeding” outside the northern beaches, her Victorian counterpart portrayed her as a ditherer. “The kind of baseline measures we already have in Victoria are stronger than those in NSW,” said Daniel Andrews as he announced he was closing he border. “I’m not going to wait around while they add to their rules.” How ironic, given Victorians spent a great deal of last year and most of this week waiting around for their government to do something.

This week we learned Andrews has been nominated for the McKinnon Prize in Political Leadership. I have seen some hilarious piss-takes in my time, but I thought nothing would surpass Liberty Victoria’s awarding Gillian Triggs, then president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Voltaire award for freedom of speech in 2017. Not even two months before she had publicly lamented that so-called anti-hate speech laws did not go far enough. “Sadly, you can say what you like around the kitchen table at home,’’ she said at a fundraiser for former Greens leader Bob Brown’s foundation.

Gillian Triggs speaking at the Power to Persuade Symposium in 2017. Picture: Gary Ramage

As risible as that award was, the McKinnon Prize now rivals it. “Throughout the crisis, [Andrews] based key decisions on expert health advice — a brave approach which led to some less popular decisions,” reads his nomination. A key decision based on health advice such as the one on August 2 to impose a six week 8pm-5am curfew on Melburnians?

Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton admitted on September 8 that neither he nor other officials gave this advice. When confronted with this, Andrews implied that police had asked for the curfew to bolster their enforcement of stage four restrictions. “Some of that’s public health advice, some of it’s law enforcement advice,” he said, when asked who had pushed for the curfew.

Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton. Picture: Getty

That was news to Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton. “I was never consulted,” he told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell, confirming police had not asked for it. “Our policy area was provided a copy of the proposed guidelines for our information a couple of hours before they were signed off.”

When asked at his daily press conference who had made this decision, Andrews prevaricated. “Decisions are made by groups of people,” he said. “And I can’t necessarily pinpoint for you the exact individual and the exact moment that it was suggested that we put a curfew on.” A sterling example of leadership. We are talking about the greatest mass restriction of civil liberties in Victoria’s history – quite innocuous really, and just another item on the agenda. Incidentally, is there a McKinnon Prize for mendacity?

But this nomination gets even better. “Although Andrews was criticised for the devastating failings of Victoria’s hotel quarantine system, he was acknowledged for swiftly calling an inquiry into the system, and for committing to act on its recommendations,” it reads.

Few things could symbolise Andrews’ commitment to acting on the inquiry recommendations, or his recent declaration that the state’s quarantine program had “higher standards” compared to those in other jurisdictions, than the forlorn sight this week of those in hotel confinement – some wearing garbage bags over their heads – being transferred from the Holiday Inn to alternative accommodation. As The Age reported yesterday, Professor Lindsay Grayson, one of Australia’s leading infectious diseases experts has called for the state’s quarantine program to be shut down. “Victoria’s approach to quarantine appears to be placing the rest of the country at risk,” said Grayson, who as expert witness gave evidence to the hotel quarantine inquiry.

Central to that inquiry was who made the decision to use private security firms instead of police and ADF personnel for quarantining overseas arrivals. When Andrews announced the inquiry on July 2, he declared “we need to know exactly what has happened” regarding the debacle that led to Victoria’s second wave and the deaths of around 800 people. “Every Victorian can be confident that [Justice Coate] will oversee a thorough and independent inquiry to deliver the answers that Victorians deserve,” he said. And how did that assertion turn out? As the AFR’s Patrick Durkin observed when Coate reported her findings last December, “The Premier used the inquiry as a shield for months and now the inquiry has failed to produce any concrete answers, the political heat has largely subsided.”

Leadership requires taking responsibility for one’s team. This was hardly evident when Andrews told the inquiry that then Health Minister Jenny Mikakos was “primarily responsible” for hotel quarantine, thus throwing her to the wolves and ensuring her ignominious resignation. And when Andrews told the inquiry chair in his closing remarks “I await the final report … so we can understand better what has occurred, and [ital] so that I, as leader of the government {ital], can take the appropriate action to ensure that these sorts of errors never occur again,” he had no intention of taking responsibility. Rather, he was sending a message to his party rivals and to the public that he would survive the findings.

As for promising that these errors would “never occur again,” the current situation speaks for itself. Spare a thought for author Monica Dux who last July wrote in The Age that she found herself “transfixed” by Andrews’ press conferences. “Every time he addressed journalists, he communicated in a firm, concise manner, without spin or hackneyed phrases and with such clarity and sincerity that I believed every word he said,” she wrote.

“Even in the face of a huge stuff-up, Dan defied my expectations once again,” Dux continued. “Instead of obfuscating and shifting blame, the way politicians always do, he faced up and took responsibility. He admitted fault, and he kept talking straight. And I kept trusting him.” I cannot wait for the next instalment.

As expected, the latest fiasco has only reinvigorated the #IStandWithDan crowd. Their fawning and state of denial are reminiscent of a scene from an old movie, Conan The Barbarian, starring James Earl Jones as necromancer Thulsa Doom. His acolytes were so deluded they would literally jump off a cliff at his command. Thulsa Dan, perhaps?

Who knows what to expect next from a government obsessed with social engineering and a Premier who fosters his own personality cult. Maybe some philanthropist should fund a ‘deprogramming’ service to help Andrews’ loonie followers see him for what he is, but that would probably result in the government expanding its Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill to outlaw it. What fun times we live in. Who’s getting on the beers?