In the late 19th century, Melbourne was dubbed “Marvellous Melbourne” due to its extraordinary, gold-rush-driven expansion from a frontier village to a sprawling Victorian metropolis in just a few decades. But that expansion came at a cost: Melbourne was also “the City of Dreadful Stinks”. It wasn’t until the 1890s that a massive sewerage program finally put an end to the chronic filth (and accompanying cholera epidemics).
But, just over a century later, Melbourne is once again the City of Dreadful Stinks. All of them emanating from the office of Premier Daniel Andrews. Victorians have shown a remarkable propensity to continue to grovel to “Dictator Dan” for stenches that would have sunk any normal leader.
Will they be able to keep on holding their noses and blaming the dog, much longer?
Thirty-three Victorians died from emergencies that were linked to triple-zero delays or lengthy ambulance waits, a report into the state’s emergency call system has found.
The Age
Predictably, Andrews has tried to blame the catastrophic failure of the ambulance system on Covid, but the report is absolutely clear that the fault lies completely at the Premier’s feet.
Victoria’s Inspector-General for Emergency Management says that despite having accurately predicted the impact of the Covid pandemic, the state’s emergency call-taking service was unable to hire sufficient staff to cope with the expected surge due to its funding model.
As for any idea that Covid simply caught them by surprise.
In his report, [IGEM Tony Pearce] found the Andrews government had been aware of ESTA’s “precarious financial position” as early as 2015, via the findings of an Auditor-General’s report, and that despite work having begun “more than 10 years ago” to address the inadequate funding structure, it is “yet to be completed”.
The Australian
It gets worse.
There was no money for new call centre recruits, but there was pleny of money to splash around on the really important stuff…
Ambulance Victoria has spent more than $760,000 hiring a swath of “diversity and inclusion” officers on six-figure salaries at a time when Victorians have been dying waiting for ambulances […]
In recent weeks, the organisation has advertised six new roles through recruitment firm Jo Fisher Executive, including “Director, Diversity & Inclusion”, with a salary of $169,000+, “Senior Lead, Diversity & Inclusion” for $147,000+, “Program Lead, Equality & Workplace Reform Division” for $122,000+, “Executive Assistant to Executive Director, Equality & Workplace Reform Division” for $79,000+, “Senior Program Manager, Implementation” for $122,000+, and “Program Lead, Multicultural” for $122,000+.
The advertised minimum salaries total $761,000, and compare with an average first-year salary for an Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority ambulance call taker of $71,500, and salaries for Ambulance Victoria paramedics which range from $75,000 to $113,335.
The Australian
Andrews gutlessly held back the release of the report until a Saturday in the middle of the AFL football finals season, and then went into hiding for three days, with no public appearances.
That’s far from the grubbiest thing he’s done to try and cover up the scandal.
The former chairman of Victoria’s triple-zero service was pressured to resign after asking the state government for a long-term solution to a funding method he said was fundamentally flawed […]
“Every time we met [the government] we told them we were short of funds and something had to be done on a short and long-term basis,” Roger Leeming said.
Instead of stumping up the money that might have saved over 30 Victorian lives, Andrews sacked the messenger and stacked the board with Labor cronies.
Four of the nine ESTA directors handed in resignation letters in January 2016, the same month Leeming did. Two other directors had left the board a few months earlier.
Subsequent appointees included two former Labor staffers, former senior policeman Stephen Leane (the brother of state Labor minister Shaun Leane), and chair Flavia Gobbo, a prominent director who is married to influential Labor-aligned public administrator James Mackenzie.
The Age
You can smell the stench of Victoria clear across the Tasman.
