a modern day

Marie Antoinette

in other words...

The great lesson of Watergate,” said veteran reporter Bob Woodward, who broke the scandal that toppled US President Richard Nixon, “was that if Nixon had apologised early, or even midway through the scandal and demonstrated some soul-searching introspection, he would have been forgiven.”

The very same can be said of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews over his government’s decision to use private security instead of police and defence force personnel in the management of Victoria’s hotel quarantine plan.

The difficulty of a crisis is that it requires momentous decisions in rapid fire time frames and that, often, it’s only long after the worst of it passes that the impact of decisions become known. What might seem like a small decision at the time can, later on, become one of the most critical. It’s important, when we look back at the events of Friday, March 27, not to forget this.

Do I think, knowing what they know now, that coming out of the National Cabinet at 1pm, the Andrews government would have made the decision and announced it at 3.15pm in the Premier’s media conference, to use private security in quarantine hotels? No, I don’t.

In a crisis, mistakes will be made, and while you must do everything to mitigate them, delay is just as risky. So, it requires a weighing of both.

This is where the words of Woodward are so relevant to Victoria right now.

The Premier is being pursued over the question of who made the decision to use private security guards, not so much because it was an error but because he has used every political device available to him to avoid telling the truth.

As always in political crises like this, it’s the cover-up that brings the leader down.

For months, the truth about the origins of the state’s second wave outbreak was hidden from Victorians until the Premier was forced to admit the disease had leaked out of the failed hotel quarantine operation when genomic testing confirmed 99 per cent of new cases were linked to hotels.

With things so clearly out of control, the federal government’s repeated offer of ADF troops was finally taken up in late June – 850 personnel on their way – only to be abruptly withdrawn by the Andrews government the next day lest the “optics” of the ADF coming to the rescue in Victoria showed up the Premier, Police Minister Lisa Neville and their police and emergency union mates.

We will never know what might have been the outcome if the troops had arrived.

It was only after he could no longer spin away the need for an investigation that the Premier established the Coate Inquiry but, by its very terms of reference and powers under the state’s Inquiries Act, it lacked the grunt needed to get to the truth.

Of course, the Premier wants Coate to find that somehow no one made an actual decision to jettison police and instead employ private security, because any person who had made that decision would be culpable for the deaths of 800 Victorians out of the state’s second-wave outbreak.

Powerful new industrial manslaughter laws in Victoria have put the wind up ministers, political staff and bureaucrats, and led to the farce of weeks of testimony where “I don’t know”, “I can’t recall”, “it wasn’t me”, and “I don’t remember” has replaced any semblance of accountability in the state.

The line being put to the inquiry is that no one person made a decision here and that, instead, there was a government-wide “creeping assumption” that private security would be used, rather than Victoria Police or the ADF, to guard returning travellers.

I regard this as wrong and nothing close to the truth.

Key decisions are made, they don’t just happen. The notion that no one made this decision cannot be allowed to stand because it erodes the fundamental principle we have in our democracy of responsible government.

I’ve been on the inside of government for 16 years — in times of crisis like the Martin Place siege, the downing of MH17, and the deployment of troops to fight against Islamic State — and let me tell you, every decision is made deliberately, the head of power to make that decision is carefully confirmed, and every decision is authorised.

The decision to use private security in Victoria was made between 1pm, when National Cabinet concluded on Friday, March 27, and 3.15pm, when Daniel Andrews publicly announced it.

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/peta-credlin-decision-to-use-secu...

Prime Minister for Canyons wrote on Sep 28^th, 2020 at 10:08am:



so you dont believe in honest govt bo?...the less questions they have to answer the better...

mmmm

i take it thats only if its a left govt...

dan has become the dodgy premier of the year...

surely you can see that?