The Tragedy of Sicktoria: The Sick Man of Australia.
Victoria, the sick man of Australia is currently a laughing stock of the land down under, the COVID19 capital, where it’s citizens have been reduced to pariahs of the country. This is entirely the fault of the stratospherically and hubristic Daniel Andrews Government & of the man himself who entered into the COVID19 crisis with unabashed arrogance which created a firestorm of spectacular incompetence, disaster and chaos thus plunging Victoria into a lockdown mess.
From the Cedar Meats cluster to the mind-boggling shambolic disaster that was of the hotel quarantine regime to failing to stop the illegal Black Lives Matter protest that was held some weeks ago, Victorian’s are now paying the horrendous price for the tyrannical arrogance of Daniel Andrews and his guilty party & Ministers who are responsible for the mess Victoria is suffering from.
And the Victorian political reporter for the Australian, Rachel Baxendale was right when she said that the state’s health authorities had lost control of the COVID19 virus when they had failed to contain the Cedar Meats abattoir cluster. And then there was the hotel quarantine disaster which only escalated the COVID19 crisis when the Andrews Govt confirmed that they had waived the tender process for private security companies to monitor the quarantining of returning overseas travellers and as it turns out, it was a monumental mistake.
And as the Herald Sun reported, the security guards allegedly violated the regulations by shaking hands, sharing lifts with infected patients, some slept with guests, faked names for non-existent workers, and even worse personal protective equipment were worn for up to eight hours without it being changed as well as six hours of infection control training before they were allowed to begin their work.
Such blatant low standards was as a result of going against the national cabinet’s decision to use either the police force or the ADF to manage the hotel quarantine process, and even wavering the tender process because of the “urgency” is completely unacceptable.
Now the infections have escaped the hotels and made it’s way into the communities which has resulted in postcodes throughout Melbourne in lockdown, the innocent residents of public housing commission forced into Wuhan-style tower lockdown and a looming 6 week lockdown for the entirety of Melbourne.
And don’t think that heads of the Executive (the Victorian Cabinet) will be rolled, as after the hotel quarantine bungle became known to the public, several state health bureaucrats were forced to walk the plank, but not the Health Minister nor the Police Minister and now we have both the CHO of Victoria & the Police Commissioner distancing themselves over this shambolic mess. Great!
Oh and if you thought it couldn’t get worse, according to The Age, it was revealed that several (anonymous) key players of the hotel quarantine system warned the Chief Health Officer of Victoria (Professor Brett Sutton) of the warnings a month before the first outbreaks were declared.
“Professor Sutton and other top public health officials were told about inadequate supply of masks and gloves, poor infection-control protocols and breaches of physical-distancing guidelines by hotel staff, security and health personnel.”
The Age – July 3
And now the deputy health secretary of the state health department in Victoria has lost her emergency management field position (but still retains her superiority), however the Health Minister still remains in her position.
Oh, but don’t expect them to accept any accountability because in order to try and deflect from it, Andrews has announced a judicial inquiry into the hotel quarantine system bungle.
All the while, small, medium & family size businesses, the hospitality industry & Victoria’s economy in general are going to be the worst casualties out of another COVID-19 pandemic induced lockdown, thanks to the extraordinary incompetence and prideful hubristic arrogance of Chairman Daniel Andrews who thought he knew better than the national cabinets.
Oh and did I mention that the NSW border with Victoria has shut down as well? First in a one hundred years as well.
Thanks Daniel Andrews. You’ve successfully (in a matter of months), reduced your citizens to the pariahs of Australia, on the path to destroying the Victorian economy & businesses, got NSW to shut their borders with Victoria all the while you deflect scrutiny no matter what.
All because of you putting ego ahead of doing the sensible thing and abiding by national cabinet decisions, all because you thought you knew better and that you won’t take responsibility or admit that you’ve failed your Victorian residents and thereby, threaten to hold back the rest of the nation and as federal Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg has said, that yet another lockdown could cost the economy up to a billion bucks per week.
In fact, Victorian businesses were ready to open up after the initial first lockdown but when Andrews reimposed the COVID19 regulations back onto Victoria, it devastated them as the pubs, restaurants & other businesses pertaining to the hospitality industry are now going to be further financially and economically harmed which’ll further devastate the livelihoods of their owners and employees as well as the economy.
And as the Victorian Liberal opposition leader, Michael O’Brien has rightfully said, that “we may need to learn to live with coronavirus” and therefore there must be a “sensible, slow and safe reopening of the economy”.
Victorian Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien says we may need to learn to live with coronavirus, and that there should be a “sensible, slow and safe reopening of sections of the economy”.
LISTEN HERE: https://t.co/JMEoBlZ4At pic.twitter.com/IiitQL3CHy
— MMM’s Hot Breakfast (@mmmhotbreakfast) July 6, 2020
After all, we cannot to continue shutting down our economy and sending it into a lockdown everytime we get a spike in cases. We can’t live like this forever and our economy wouldn’t successfully heal and fire back up if we keep putting it into lockdown mode and it’ll only further confuse businesses as well.
But to tyrannical Dan, it seems like he doesn’t care and only cares about doing what he can to try and preserve his political backside. Whether that’s shifting the blame onto innocent Victorians or launching expensive inquiries on a monumental stuff-up they themselves presided over, it’s not surprising that the timing of him announcing the reimposition of COVID19 regulations that his government and Labor party was under fire over 60-minutes expose that exposed industrial-scale branch stacking involving his former cabinet ministers.
And no matter what the cynic crowd says, it was nothing more than a political distraction to try and steer away from the branch-stacking scandal.
In the end, Andrews doesn’t care about the damage he’s doing towards Victorians & Victoria. Being in office for a long time, he’s become complacent which brought about his prideful hubristic arrogance & incompetence.
And now all of Melbourne will pay for the consequences of his Govt’s monumental gross incompetence and hubris and don’t expect it to get any better as cases continue to rise and they rush to contain the virus spreading like wildfire in Melbourne.
But I have no hope that the same incapable and bumbling helpless idiots who have presided over a series of disasters (all which were actually preventable) will be able to successfully fix it. After all, they won’t even admit their failures nor will the Premier admit that he’s presided over an ant mound of mess and chaos.
And what’s worse, is that parliament isn’t sitting therefore democracy is being trampled as the Andrews’s government isn’t being held accountable whatsoever. Without parliament sitting, the best thing for the Victorian Liberals to do is to have some mongrel & utilise the media and radio to strongly hold the government to account, call out on their stratospheric level of arrogance and mind-bogglingly stupid incompetence and when parliament eventually returns, to begin putting vote of no-confidence against them.
What a shame. As all of this is occurring, parliament isn’t sitting and the Labor chair of Victoria’s Parliamentary Accounts and Estimates Committee has used her casting vote to delay a probe into the Govt’s handling of the pandemic as well.
No accountability and democracy is being trampled whilst postcodes are thrown into another lockdown & we have residents trapped in public housing commissions. And with regards to the latter, I actually do agree with the Greens party concern about those residents in a Wuhan-style housing tower lockdown as it was enforced onto them without consideration of their well-being, the social issues concerning them nor whether they’ll be able to last through it.
But this didn’t need to happen but it has as a result of Daniel Andrews’s terrible negligence and incompetence. And if his Ministers do not resign then they deserve to absolutely pay for it at the ballot box at the next state election as it’s clear that power and complacency has seeped into their heads, they cannot be trusted with it and have abused it considerably.
From harsh and unnecessary lockdowns to stuffing up the hotel quarantine system, it’s now snowballed into a lockdown disaster and have utterly failed the people of Victoria as well as holding back the rest of the nation.
Enough is enough, it’s time for parliament to resume and for the Victorian Liberal opposition to launch a vote of no confidence against the Andrews’s Labor Government in both houses of parliament and for voters to send a crystal clear backlash against their shambolic handling of the pandemic.
Marcus Foo is a young Australian Conservative from Perth, Western Australia. He offers his perspective on Twitter and his personal blog where this article orginally appeared.
