Ten scandals and the abnormal state of Victoria

It took a while for me to realise Victoria was not a normal state.

Before Covid I thought the Andrews government was like any other Labor one, a big spender whose profligacy would eventually have to be corrected.

I even bought some of the relentless propaganda that Dan Andrews was a can-do premier.

Then came the first Covid hotel quarantine debacle.

I expected Andrews and other ministers would be forced to resign – isn’t that what happens when a clearly dysfunctional government fails to contain an outbreak that causes 800 deaths and leads to a four-and-a-half-month crushing lockdown?

In Victoria the answer is no.

Yes, the health minister angrily resigned when Andrews dumped her in it before the inquiry. However, she accepted no responsibility and basically accused the premier, a former factional colleague, of being a liar.

And no one much seemed to think this was out of the usual.

I began realising the normal rules of accountability just don’t apply in Victoria, a state where one party has been in power for over 20 years with a short intermission of three years.

When damaging stories appear it is as if they are written in invisible ink, nothing happens and there is no outcry or follow-up.

Compare this to NSW where the previous premier resigned and has left parliament over accusations she turned a blind eye to her boyfriend’s dodgy dealings.

In choosing examples of the Victorian government appearing to be immune from any sort of accountability I had a mountain of alleged crimes, scandals, follies and failures to sort through.

I also asked Twitter for suggestions and have tried to pick some less highlighted or particularly outstanding examples where the normal political rules don’t apply.

It's a state where the government apparently can and does get away with everything and there are no consequences.

      1) Red shirts

Last last year The Age ran this astonishing story that suggests there is a police protection racket for the government. The story is disturbing enough but the even more disturbing thing is there seems to have been nothing done about this. I am unaware of any investigations. Clearly as the Victorian Police are under suspicion there needs to be an investigation held from outside their ranks and regular watchdogs, ideally by the Australian Federal Police, but who is calling for this and when is it happening?

2) Track-and-trace deficiencies

There are multiple scandals around the original bungled hotel quarantine but the state's woeful track and trace capability is less talked about. A parliamentary inquiry found the state's track-and-trace was unfit for purpose and, what is worse, it was known to be unfit for purpose even when Andrews kept insisting it was fine. ABC luminaries Waleed Aly and Norman Swan have also highlighted this as an abject failure of the government. Yet, as with all the government's multiple failures it is allowed to slide on by. 

3) IBAC confession

The IBAC investigation into branch-stacking began with a bang as Andrews minister Anthony Byrne made a stunning confession of grossly misusing public funds for political purposes. He then resigned his ministry – but he remains in parliament! It raises suspicions the IBAC referral is merely a factional hit that needed someone to “take a fall” with the promise they might get rewarded later. If Andrews is to have any credibility on issues of integrity why hasn’t he expelled Bryne from Labor and demanded he leave parliament?

4) St Basil's deaths and elderly neglect

The horrific story of the malnourished residents needing medical evacuation at the St Basil’s Home for the Aged prompted the premier to say he wouldn’t want his "mum in some of those places".  The recent inquest has heard that the pivotal culpable decision was made by Brett Sutton, who against the advice of doctors and the feds, thrust the home on the unsuspecting Commonwealth who did not have a workforce in place. This must surely raise questions about Sutton’s fitness to be CHO but they are questions no one with any profile seems willing to ask. It should be noted former health minister Jenny Mikakos is no fan of Sutton.

5) Refugee deaths

The brutal lockdown of inner-Melbourne housing commission towers was so egregious it even prompted the largely supine Victorian Ombudsman to condemn it as a breach of human rights. The government, naturally, refused to apologise for "saving lives". However, they didn’t save lives, the experience was so traumatic for refugees who had fled authoritarian governments that they refused any further official medical help and some died of Covid. There was some outcry at the time but almost none since and this might be because lawyers are being heavied off the case.

6) Child deaths

The still under-acknowledged and apparently deadly toll of Victoria's mammoth lockdowns on young people is not just reflected in the surging presentations of mental health problems but also the death of children the state was most directly meant to be looking after. 

7) Women and other cancer deaths

The lockdown-related deaths aren’t confined to children. A cohort of women are facing battles for their lives. The same is true more generally across a wide range of gender and age groups. Cancer Council Victoria estimated 3500 cases went undetected  due to Victoria's lockdowns. 

8) Cop stomping

In September 2020, a bi-polar man went to a hospital ER because he knew he was going to have an incident. Despite it being a period of no Covid cases he waited 17-hours without being seen. Eventually he did have an incident broke a window. He was a large man and a danger to himself and others but you might expect police would be trained to deal with this type of situation. Victorian Police officers "handled" it by ramming the man with a police car and then when he was on pinned ground an officer stomped on his head, which was captured on video. Government and top police immediately rushed out to say there was nothing wrong with “police culture”. The officer, who to my knowledge was never named, was suspended with pay. Eventually IBAC declared this act of thuggery, which put the victim into a coma, was "lawful force". In Victoria you might be forgiven for thinking the police protect the government and the government protect the police, which leaves no one to protect the citizens.

9) $25b budget blackhole

Respected economist Saul Eslake pointed out that there appears to be a $25 billion difference between the Victorian government's expenditure and the amount of debt recorded. This happens a few paragraphs into the AFR piece. It often seems the "lead" is often buried in stories about Victoria. In any other state such shonky budget shenanigans would undoubtedly be front page news.

10) TV producer threatened

This one is a bit out of left field and doesn’t directly concern the Victorian government but does speak to the state's political culture. Sam Maiden in her book Party Animals relates how she tried (unsuccessfully) to interview Bill Shorten’s rape accuser Kathy Sherriff. A Channel 7 producer was chasing the same story. The producer was in a Melbourne bar when a stranger approached and told her to drop the story if she “knew what was good for her”. The threat had sufficient credibility that the producer did drop the story and fled Melbourne. Maiden tells this story but makes nothing of it. However, if this is a true a major network representative was threatened off a political story, which is something we might more readily associate with Moscow than Melbourne.

In compiling this list the problem was what to leave out. I didn’t mention the over $1.3 billion lie Andrews told about not having to pay for the scrapped East-West Link or the other farcical hotel quarantine attempts, which at one stage had fully staffed facilities with no guests and at another saw the government attempt to pin a self-inflicted failure on a sick man with a nebulizer. 

I also left out Slug gate, dodgy CFA dealings, the hiding of State of Emergency medical advice in court proceedings, the disappearing $1.3 billion-worth of ICU beds, the Big Build blowouts stemming from a lack of planning transparency and even recently the contrivance with Tennis Australia to get Novak Djokovic an Australian Open exemption.

I previously wrote a piece on how if Victoria was a foreign place it would be all-too recognisable. 

However, if you are looking for a "normal" functioning and relatively transparent Westminster government held accountable by independent watchdogs than what is happening in Victoria is completely unrecognisable. 

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