There are two issues this committee should be dealing with in my opinion. Firstly, to unravel what occurred to discover the breakdown in process so that it does not occur again. Lessons need to be learned from such a disaster.

Secondly, the committee should look at whether Parliamentary transparency and governance has been harmed by the way the Government has conducted itself during these times of declared emergency and disaster periods.

Transparency first. Parliament does live stream the committee hearings but does not allow them to be viewed at a later date other than at 6pm the same day. Transcripts do occur at a later date so a tick of approval for this part of the process. 

I listened in for a couple of sessions the other day and noted the member for Gippsland South, Danny O’Brien, grill one witness. From what I heard, the line of questioning did not seem to be too concerned about either the process breakdown or the transparency issue. Rather, Mr Obrien seemed dogged in his determination to have the witness give a name for who was responsible for the decisions taken. Mr Obrien appeared aggressive towards the witnesses, interrupted them often and appeared to badger them rather than attempt to discover any information that would assist the Parliament to improve a process and keep people safe in the future. Mr Obrien was reined in by the committee chair on several times being asked to allow the witness to answer, and to stop talking over the witness.

Disappointing from our local member. Mistakes were made in the hotel quarantine matter but improving the process and saving lives rather than finding a scapegoat is what matters, not scoring political points.

Looking at events back in early March. I recall one day when Scomo said he was going to the footy next day and next day he did a 180 and stated he was following medical advice and would not attend for covid safety reasons. From that point Scomo has not looked back. He has handled the coronavirus with an unexpected professionalism and judgement. His “form” did not suggest that he had this ability within, and it has been a huge relief that this occurred. Well done Scomo.

Dan Andrews has risen to the challenge in the same way that Scomo did and but for the disaster with the hotel quarantine has been the model for how to handle the coronavirus event.

Let’s compare with UK and USA. Those two countries appear to be led by indecision, misinformation, and erroneous judgement leading to huge numbers of cases and deaths. Britain for example at three times the population of Australia has around 50,000 deaths compared to Australia’s 352. If Scomo and Dan had behaved like those other two “leaders” we would have around 17,000 deaths in Australia. Or another way of looking at this, UK would have around 1000 deaths, not 50,000 if they had behaved like our two leaders.

This pandemic approached in stealth and steamrolled over the Country almost overnight. Over 7 days in March, the world turned upside down. In such a disaster and with that timeframe, it is incredible that any government managed to react quickly enough to prevent the virus overwhelming us all. The fact that this government established and put in place the mechanism to deal with this threat as it has done, and despite the one major incident with the hotel quarantine, deserves our thanks and praise. They should be allowed to continue the excellent work without suffering abuse from those who have a differing political persuasion. We should be all in this together.