As I wrote months back, Victoria’s “Dictator Dan” Andrews has an unexpected comedic streak. Because it surely couldn’t have been with a straight face when he said that Victoria had “higher standards” in its hotel quarantine scheme than the rest of Australia. Not just higher standards — a gold standard!
(In case you’re not up with the joke, Victoria’s hotel quarantine scheme resulted directly in more deaths than the rest of Australia combined during the second wave of Covid.)
But Laugh-a-Minute Dan isn’t finished with the wacky japes, just yet. Now, he’s lecturing other people on “safety”!
Daniel Andrews says it is not safe to use Victoria’s purpose built Covid-19 quarantine centre to treat patients who can’t find a hospital bed, undercutting the state opposition’s plan to re-purpose the near empty facility in a bid to fix the healthcare crisis.
That’s right: Dan, who promised more than a billion dollars to open 4,000 new ICU beds, instead spent half a billion building a quarantine centre that’s gathering dust. Meanwhile, octagenarian stroke patients are waiting all night in a tent in a carpark, and teenage cancer patients are spending 27 hours on a couch in a hallway.
Cos that’s “safe”?
Leader of the opposition Matthew Guy announced on Sunday the coalition will push to use the $580M quarantine facility built in Mickleham, 50km north of Melbourne’s CBD, as a temporary treatment centre for patients who are not acute and need medication or hygiene support if they win government in November.
“Our initiative to re-prioritise as many as 250 beds in the thousand bed Mickleham quarantine facility is another way we will look at dealing with low-care patients … who could potentially come out of our hospital network into this facility to take pressure off hospitals,” he said.
“That frees up beds. That saves lives.
Finally the Victorian opposition is actually beginning to sound like an opposition, with just months left until the next election. Instead of prattling nonsense like “net zero”, the Liberals are starting to hammer Andrews on Labor’s traditional strength, healthcare.
In one of his first major policy announcements ahead of the November poll, Mr Guy announced last week he would shelve plans to build the first stage of Labor’s suburban rail loop and use the $35bn in savings to help fix the state’s ailing health system, which has seen elective surgery wait lists blow out to more than five years and regular ambulance ramping.
Oh, but Dan has “expert advice”.
“The answer back from the experts that the doctors, the clinical experts, is that it‘s not clinically safe to do that,” he said.
The Australian
Would those, perchance, be the same experts who advised him on hotel quarantine, or the world’s longest lockdown? Or that it was safe to have BLM rallies, but not anti-lockdown protests?
And if the centre isn’t safe to treat normal patients, just how safe is it really for potential Covid patients?
