(09-28-2020, 03:23 AM)Thryleon link Wrote:One final point.  I am still gobsmacked, that we dont have a standardised national approach, and Scott Morrison and company are very absent from the running of the nation.

I would have thought that the steps to contain corona virus was a national concern, and sending an email about ADF support was likely a very half arsed measure to document what should have been a directive for the state to implement and one that clearly defined what was the expectation in the quarantine hotels.

Before anyone jumps on me for this, at our hospital accreditation is to do with quality, standards and models of care.  I would think quarantine would have similar checkpoints for everyone to hit, irrespective of public vs private security, whether or not things are done X, Y and Z, and the fact we dont have sound quarantine procedures for someone carrying an infectious disease during a pandemic is ridiculous.

Its just one more step along the way where our politicians have been found wanting.  Dan and co are not absolved in what I am saying here either.  Its just one more step along the way where I feel our national government has let us down.  If anything it speaks for how disconnected our government is from our state.

(09-29-2020, 08:26 AM)madbluboy link Wrote:I don't like Scott Morrison but unlike our premier he has done a great job through this crisis.

(09-29-2020, 08:36 AM)kruddler link Wrote:by diverting all international arrivals to Melbourne and washing his hands of it all?

Or by his governments inability to properly run aged care residencies so as to not see an excessive number of old people die from Covid?

(09-29-2020, 08:26 AM)madbluboy link Wrote:I don't like Scott Morrison but unlike our premier he has done a great job through this crisis.

(09-29-2020, 11:24 AM)Micky0 date Wrote:He’s hidden behind the premiers, taking potshots here and there to labor states but otherwise done. Whole lot of sweet fa. Guy is an embarrassment to Australia.

(09-29-2020, 10:03 PM)madbluboy date Wrote:Can't blame Scomo for Dictator Dan's failures.

(09-29-2020, 11:13 AM)ElwoodBlues1 link Wrote:CoVid hopefully is going to help the aged care system improve given all the bad publicity, residents were passing away of neglect and poor resourcing anyway, the public were just not aware of the numbers .A Covid outbreak is not too dissimilar to a gastro outbreak in terms of taking lives as far as aged care goes.
Every Government is the same they just turn their back on the elderly in those homes, its all too hard and too expensive to improve  conditions...you cant close all the bad ones down as there would be nowhere for the residents to go. Hospitals dont want them and they get shunted off to rehab units who shove an NFR sign on them and stick them in palliative.
Its a disgrace and not much better than turning them into biscuits like that movie " Soylent Green"..

Quote:One down, seven to go. The resignation of hapless health minister Jenny Mikakos is a start but by no means the end of a reckoning that should see every single member of the Crisis Cabinet, including the Premier, stepping down in disgrace.

Joining them should be the well remunerated department heads who oversaw gross incompetence on a scale unparalleled in the history of this state.

Counsel assisting the hotel quarantine inquiry, Ben Ihle, summed up the calamity when he said: “The failure by the hotel quarantine program to contain this virus is (to date) responsible for the deaths of 768 people and the infection of some 18,418 others ... One only needs to pause and to reflect on those figures to appreciate the full scope of devastation and despair.”

Dan Andrews says the buck stops with him. Why should Mikakos take full responsibility for the quarantine program when it was Jobs Minister Martin Pakula’s department that selected the security companies, giving the bulk of the work to a questionable outfit that was not on the government’s approved list of contractors?

Pakula’s department gave Unified Security a $44 million payday primarily because the identity politics-obsessed far Left Andrews government was more concerned with one of the company owner’s Indigenous heritage than the ability of the firm to carry out their work safely.

The Premier and his team of incompetent senior ministers and bureaucrats may soon have more to worry about than the findings of the Coate inquiry. The prospect of facing prosecution for industrial manslaughter charges grows stronger by the day.

Indeed, it was the fear of facing criminal charges that saw so many struck with selective memory loss, according to commentator Robert Gottliebsen.

“The Victorian politicians and public servants caught in the hotel quarantine saga do not have amnesia but rather have a genuine fear that any admission of liability will cause them to be prosecuted under Victorian law,” he wrote.

“Some of those involved in the quarantine fiasco were actually part of the plotting that designed one of the most vicious industrial manslaughter acts in the Western world.”

Members of the Victorian government and bureaucracy could be prosecuted under occupational health and safety laws that carry prison terms of up to 25 years. Never has the expression “hoist with his own petard” been more apt.

Labor’s industrial manslaughter laws came into effect on July 1 this year after passing the upper house in late November. According to WorkSafe Victoria: “... for the purposes of workplace manslaughter, conduct will be considered ‘negligent’ if it involves: a great falling short of the standard of care that a reasonable person would have taken in the circumstances, and a high risk of death, serious injury or serious illness.”

Just as terrifying for the bureaucrats and responsible ministers, under the act negligent conduct also includes “a failure to act” such as failing to adequately manage, control or supervise employees, or failing to “take reasonable action to fix a dangerous situation, where failing to do so causes a high risk of death, serious injury or serious illness.”

Under Victorian law, any citizen can request WorkSafe, and then the Director of Public Prosecutions, to prosecute individuals for breaching the state’s OHS laws.

On Tuesday WorkSafe Victoria was sent a letter by Ken Phillips, executive director of Self Employed Victoria, requesting a number of individuals including the Premier, ministers Pakula and Lisa Neville, Mikakos, and 16 top public servants, a number of departments and Victorian Trades Hall Council, be prosecuted under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004.

The public servants named in the letter include Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton and deputy Annaliese van Diemen, Department of Premier and Cabinet secretary Chris Eccles, State Controllers Jason Helps and Andrea Spiteri, Health and Human Services secretary Kym Peake, Jobs, Precincts and Regions secretary Simon Phemister, Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp, former police chief commissioner Graham Ashton and incumbent Shane Patton, plus several other bureaucrats alleged to have failed in their duty to provide a safe worksite.

Phillips believes that the evidence heard at the Coate inquiry shows that the government caused the second outbreak and thus is culpable under the Act.

The next step will see WorkSafe chief Colin Radford, a former staffer of Steve Bracks, John Brumby and Tim Holding, either undertaking prosecutions or writing to Phillips to explain why the matter is not proceeding. If the latter occurs, Phillips can request the DPP to prosecute. Expect to see this process drag on well into 2021.

IN SHORT: Medical experts say wearing a mask when outdoors and socially distanced from others has no health benefits but Dan Andrews knows better. The Premier admits his mask edict goes beyond health advice, yet he expects Victorians to be masked even when alone at the beach. Another daft captain’s call.