I think the one thing we can all agree on is that Dan is responsible for the decision - whoever the *smile* made it.
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- Thread starter Tigers of Old
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I think the one thing we can all agree on is that Dan is responsible for the decision - whoever the *smile* made it.
Non-career pollie - Turnbull. He had a career preceeding politics. As many do. Dan has been an Arts student/electorate officer/labour party secretary. He knows nothing else.
I didn't ask him t hold an inquiry. It's essentially useless, other than helping Dan survive. He knew the outcome would be Mikakos gone. Eccles will be lucky to survive but he'd have some dirt on Dan so you'd think will continue.
Agree on ICAC. Labour/Liberal are the same - they both have bad eggs. And members with selfish motives.
I agree on seeing the restrictions through. Pointless otherwise. Need to see it through and then manage it.
Disagree on the alternative path, the more appropriate examples are the other states. NSW is the covid management benchmark for VIC.
And agree on contact tracing, lets hope we pour more resources into this area.
There it is in a a nutshell. We don't elect bright people. In a crisis we want people that don't need the benefit of hindsight. There aren't many uber talented people that go into the public service. But someone with a bit of nous may have identified pretty early in the piece returned travellers were the main source of the virus entering the state. The main risk. And should be dealt with appropriately. And may have determined that private security firms full of poorly trained migrants may not have been the best vehicle to supervise the travellers. Or may have ensured appropriate protocols were in place.
What was the security contract worth? The owners of those firms should be paying back every cent.
As you suggest easy now in hindsight, but that's why people get paid big $$. Dan's on a salary of just under $500K, I would hope he'd be a few steps ahead of the average Joe.
C'mon, decision made as a matter of course in the bureaucracy? That's a slight cop out. I mean it was a pretty important decision. Creeping assumption is such an appropriate description. But I'm not sure it gives Dan a get out of jail free card.
So just the Vic's to blame? You understand NSW was in a far worse state than VIC 4 months ago?
But hey, you're the guy that says Short has more influence on games than Dusty. Nuff said.
Yeh, pretty accurate summary. And this Dan deal rumour hasn't even been published by the Herald Sun so its clearly *smile*.
But that doesn't really change anything as far as the ultimate decision making and management regarding hotel quarantine.
Dude, anyone who knows anything about Turnbull knows his goal was to become PM from the day he entered Federal politics - he's was just as ambitious as any other Pollie. Had one failed run as leader of the oppo before he got suckered in by Godwin Gretch, then finally made it but was held hostage by Abbott and the Right... but I digress. And before that he was head of the Republican movement. Would be truer to say he had three careers - lawyer, merchant banker, and politician.
Inquiry is useless? We do need accountability - and it seems from Maiden's article that they are close to finding out what actually happened in that decision making process. Reading between the lines Vicpol didn't want to do it and Vic Gov didn't want to force them to. Carve out blame from that if you wish.
Agree on your other points - learn from this, learn from other states in terms of contact tracing - it appears we have done so given current numbers, but good if we can get even better.
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No, you are misusing the term "responsible" there. Generally in management terms responsibility is for those who execute - they are given the specific tasks and make it happen - they are responsible for making sure the right firms were engaged, they were briefed and trained properly, etc etc. Accountability is when something goes wrong and someone owns the problem and seeks to make it right, eats the sh!t sandwich, sometimes resigns, etc etc.
This article has a good description of the distinction.
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So should Dan then be held accountable for the *smile*-up? Ultimately, as he's said, the buck stops with him. He's the premier, he may have delegated, others were responsible for the execution. So should he resign?
One thing I've learned in life is that people and organisations always will make mistakes, some big, some small. For me what is important is what they do about it. IMO Dan's shown great accountability so far - he owned the problem. He set up new restrictions while harsh have worked fantastically well. He's worked tirelessly to help Victoria get through this. So he's done a great job in that respect.
Should he still go at the end of all this, once we are out of it? Is it enough? That's the debate. Given his popularity no doubt he could stay in the role. Will he want to? dunno.
You can believe what you want Lee, you usually do, but I am telling what I believe to be true. There was no conscious political decision to use private security nor was there a conscious decision by the senior bureaucrats. This is not a cop out , in fact when that was put to the premier last week he said if that was true it was actually worse, but as a few of us have posted over the last few weeks when you work in and around the public sector it is totally believable that it could happen. It has to be remembered that noone was talking about hotel quarantine and security being the sort of risk we see it as now at that time, we only do now because we have the benefit of hindsight.
As I have posted many times before the making of decision and whether people like the Health Minister and the DHHS secretary should have known about these operational arrangements are different questions. I have been very critical of both and still am.
As for the conspiracy theory my only comment is that those sorts of things are usually peddled by those wanting to support their own political and other biases.
Sort of correct imo. There are some uber talented people in the public sector but they usually get consumed by the "system".
The hotel quarantine program was seen as important and some of the issues with it have been spoken about before. What we also need to remember is that there were plenty more hotel quarantine hotels than the 2 where the problem was and there is plenty more to it than security. The previous Health Minister spoke about the difference between the way health is managed in Victoria and other states as an issue in this and she was right. Because of the centralised nature of public health in other states they had access to more experts in the centre whereas in Victoria those experts are spread around in hospitals and our CHO is more junior. Unfortunately the DHHS took on something they couldn't handle but they also got many things right given there were no problems in other hotels. Security firms didn't just provide labour to the two hotels where the problems were.
The training that they missed was nothing to do with them being migrants btw, it was because the DHHS didn't provide sufficient training. A private security firm has no expertise in infection control and shouldn't be expected to have it, they needed training. Neither has the police or the ADF by the way.
I am just stating what I believe to have happened MDJ which you can accept or not. Whether you think that gives the Premier a get out of jail free card or not is for you to decide.
After being around the sector for quite a few years now my own view is that the general public has an inflated view of how much politicians know about what happens in their departments and how close they are to individual decisions.
Many = about 5% of all aged care beds in Vic?
And given the incompetence of private aged care then regional private centres would also have high infection rates as there is no correlation with community transmission? But maybe there are not many private facilities in the regions?
There were about 2000 infections in aged care in Melbourne of which less than 1% were in the public run facilties. Draw your own conclusions . You wouldn't have expected private resicare to have high infection rates in rural victoria because there was little community transmission of COVID i.e. nothing to catch
Strange thing is that people criticising Daniel are still obeying his rules. Not seeing parents for 6 months, shuttering business, seeing children slide into academic malaise, single people ignored for months whilst 20 year olds were free to come and go between their family home and their ""intimate partners" family homes etc.
The age of all sources reported that cardiac survival rates have halved due to time consuming protocols ambulance paramedics have to employ now.
And yet the Dan cheer squad sees any criticism of him as treason. We are obeying the laws. Criticism is not anarchy.
The age of all sources reported that cardiac survival rates have halved due to time consuming protocols ambulance paramedics have to employ now.
And yet the Dan cheer squad sees any criticism of him as treason. We are obeying the laws. Criticism is not anarchy.
Who says you can't criticise? Say whatever you like but expect to be challenged if facts are wrong or opinions differ.
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from critique.
And literally no-one has been accused of "treason" in this thread.
On the responsibility/ accountability thing, many who would be happy to see the CEOs of Westpac and Rio resign / be sacked for failings of ther companies are going blue in the face arguing that the same standards don't apply to Premier Andrews.
However as is said in my post above we continue to follow the rules and see where it takes us.
Dan should go the distance. I don't see any of ministers having the capacity to take over. And as leader for 10 years that is a direct product of Andrews leadership style. Merlino might be closest but I'm not sure if he is enough of his own man.
The clean up gang is not the Vic govt, only the Federal govthas the moolah but we don't want to get our hopes up as other states have their begging bowls out too and don't particularly give a *smile* whether we go down the gurgler.
However as is said in my post above we continue to follow the rules and see where it takes us.
Dan should go the distance. I don't see any of ministers having the capacity to take over. And as leader for 10 years that is a direct product of Andrews leadership style. Merlino might be closest but I'm not sure if he is enough of his own man.
The clean up gang is not the Vic govt, only the Federal govthas the moolah but we don't want to get our hopes up as other states have their begging bowls out too and don't particularly give a *smile* whether we go down the gurgler.
And the one thing Premier is very clever with his words when he says all his decesions are "based on the best medical advice"
Discounting the fact that we can never prove what is "best" (getting a second opinion was invented in the medical world)
" Based on" does not mean followed.
Today building sites with hundreds perhaps thousands of workers are back open but two landscape Gardeners aren't allowed in a house property. That says to me big business / Union pressure / govt projects over ride medical advice. Based on though!
Discounting the fact that we can never prove what is "best" (getting a second opinion was invented in the medical world)
" Based on" does not mean followed.
Today building sites with hundreds perhaps thousands of workers are back open but two landscape Gardeners aren't allowed in a house property. That says to me big business / Union pressure / govt projects over ride medical advice. Based on though!
