A masterclass in situation management
 

Finished early today, a nice afternoon here in God’s country at the beginnings of a long weekend. Thought I'd tune in to the Victorian Hotel Quarantine Inquiry to watch young Daniel get probed, then neatly skewered on a queens counsel shish-kebab.
Surely I thought, it was on the cards, could be good viewing. A safe bet that he'd be under immense pressure, lose his rag, blame everyone else, then have to fall on his sword in a fit of reluctant accountability.
After all, >700 people are deceased as a result of the decisions his administration has taken. And he is the captain-coach, it's his gig.
The buck stops here, as he’s particularly fond of saying.

Rather, I saw a masterclass in denial and manipulation of the facts, a genuine solid-gold performance in how to demonstrate authority and command, yet without accepting responsibility for what has occurred under his supervision.
Yes I agree your holiness, it's unacceptable that most of the people I appointed failed miserably, that's why I appointed you to try to find out what happened. I'm not here to pre-empt your findings your grace, my commentary on what has occurred is not relevant.

No matter what he was asked, he deftly mitigated the thrust of the inquiry, with an almost genuflecting but at the same time, authoritative remorse.
No wonder the punters keep backing him in.

Yes, I agree Mr. A, it isn't good enough, not by a long shot. What I witnessed today was a soft touch-up, in a state that has gone soft.
The closing stages (after all it was post five o'clock for goodness sake!!!), where his counsel begged her majesty leave for to him speak, in apology for the (others) sins, left me speechless.

The cheek of the man. And the culpability/impotency of the Victorian media.
The emperor, I’m afraid, has no clothes.

Welcome to the 'World Of Professional SPIN'...... Doctor.....

NO CHEERS 'ERE....NOPE...NONE AT ALL!!!!!

Surveys (for what they’re worth) say upwards of 60% of Victorians approve of the Marxist fools handling of coronavirus so not much chance of anything happening there.


https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....473b03b93.jpeg

Wouldn't trust that *%#@wit with a chook raffle (or my kids)

Actually 67%, including almost half of LNP voters.

Oh no, they’re just “sheeple”, brainwashed by the “lame stream media” to support the “Marxist dictator”....

Or they’ve looked at the situation and support the government actions to get through this situation as quick as possible without having moronic anti mask/anti lockdown idiots disrupt it.

I think what we’re seeing is a classic example of the “silent majority”, as opposed to the “noisy minority”. Except whilst most of the time the political right claims they have the backing of the “silent majority” this time they’re evidently in the “noisy minority”.

Why no mention of the security companies failing their duties in Security, I mean it’s their Business right .
The private security companies have managed to avoid any punishment.
The first thing I would do is remove them from all Australian Airports.

In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is King...... or Stockholm syndrome! I can’t work out which one is most likely. Perhaps a bit of both.

There has to be a document in the hands of the security companies, telling them to go and do the hotels stuff. They don't do it off their own bat, or just off a phone call. So, somebody's name has to be at the bottom of that email.

The rule is never commission an investigation or Royal Commission unless you have carefully crafted the Terms of Reference to give you the outcome you want and then hand-pick the Commissioner and adjust the timing to suit. Wait for the recommendations, say you'll accept them all and then be selective and throw the others out....Voila a politician!

There's some commentary doing the rounds that the executive may be exposed to the WorkSafe industrial manslaughter legislation they implemented late least year.
Perhaps explaining the plethora of memory failures and claims of ignorance. Interesting to see how it plays out. The irony of it all.

Someone had to sign off the procurement spend. There will be documents and names up a tree. From the bottom to the top.

I think that once again you’re being a bit cavalier with the facts there doc. What the article you linked ACTUALLY said was

“....a sizeable minority of 43% of L-NP supporters also approve of his handling of the job.”

Yeah 43%. Almost 50%. Which is almost half. The way the hate is being expressed for Dan A from RW circles I would expect at least 90% disapproval from LNP supporters but if he's still gaining 43% approval from LNP supporters then I think it's fair to say he has "almost half" of the LNP voters approving of his handling of the situation.

Craft a question to manufacture a response that "everyone loves Chairman Dan" - and one wonders why so many people view polls and such as crap.

ANYONE leading Victoria would have had to implement a similar regime due the severity of the situation, bugger all other options really.

Ask people if they think the actions are appropriate - reckon you'd get 95% saying (grudgingly and unhappily) yes.
Ask people what they personally think of Chairman Dan - now that'd be interesting.

Maybe you and ChariDan should retire to PRC and have a few beers whilst inspecting the tits of the local ladies, from a previous thread a major consideration as you judge a countries ethos and ethics. ;)
Not saying a bad starting point - but lacking depth perhaps.

Also a good vantage point to see PRC making Taiwan as happy as they've made Hong Kong to be part of the PRC "Family". Lucky Taiwan.
Cheers

I have constantly been thinking the same thing.

But...

Private security companies are not answerable to the People of Victoria. Only the Government is. The only thing at stake for them is their reputation, and maybe WHS breaches.

At the end of the day, they were employed by someone in Government to do a job. With 48 hrs notice.

Did they have suitably trained staff just sitting around on standby to do the job? Of course not. So they had to rapidly employ or sub-contract unsuitable staff to do it.

As a result, they failed. Should the “someone” in Government have known that? Yes, they should. Would they have been likely to know that? No, they wouldn’t. Why not? Because we have a governmental system in place whereby politicians are given portfolios over industries they know nothing about. That’s the system. That’s exactly why Turnbull fckd up the NBN when he was Communications Minister. He even admitted that he didn’t even know how to turn on a computer. But he was put in charge of the project.

That doesn’t seem to be the focus of the inquiry, which is strange, because that was the real problem.

The other part of the problem was that once Scomo realised that his international passenger arrival policy of “please stay home for 14 days” wasn’t working, he just lumped it on the State governments to implement forced international arrival hotel quarantine, with 48 hrs notice. Which is NOT a State government responsibility. International quarantine is a Federal responsibility.

If I had been a State Premier, I would have said to Scomo “Sorry, but no. Not my job. You sort it out, I’m busy. Oh, and BTW, no more international arrivals into my State until you do. “

At least that would have given Scomo something to do while all the State Premiers are working their arses off while he snipes from the sidelines when he’s not watching footy or planning his next family holiday in Hawaii.

Another rumour has it that the private security companies were selected to meet a "diversity in procurement" target within the particular department concerned.

:rolleyes:

YOU sum up precisely what is wrong with the sheep who are entitled to vote in this country.

Labor, Liberal, Greens or Fishing Party supporter, somehow we focus on the “popular” media spin that doesn’t matter and completely miss the bigger picture.

“Let’s focus on the PM who took a holiday with his family, almost a year ago, but we will just sweep aside the Victorian Premier who lies through his teeth on a daily basis who has led the biggest f&$k up in Australian history.”

If he happened to be a Liberal Premier I would also be scathing. This is a sham of the highest level and I don’t know why people like you insist on defending him. If the majority think like you the future of this nation is in complete jeopardy.

Gotta remember that Australia is a 3rd world country with a 1st world facade! Corruption at all levels especially political & judicial runs rampant here! We just go from one cluster fcku to the next, Ops normal!

You have to laugh at those who think that they have all the information and that everyone else are sheep. They are the people that are able to claim that there is corruption at all levels and that the rest of the population is taken in by media spin. Never do they provide specific evidence or acknowledge which side of the media spin cycle that they reside in. After all the media in this country are biased. The Guardian being biased to the left and the Murdoch press being biased to the right. If you really want to see a 3rd world country dressed up as a 1st world example look no further than the US. Of course to quote that most incorruptible of politicains "If you don't love it,LEAVE!!!"

not sure why you are rolling your eyes, 1000 people out of 7 million gives a margin of error of 3 percent. at a 95% confidence level which is the usual target

When the hotel quarantine began I did read somewhere that the proposition was put by someone that farming the guard duty to the security industry, rather than the ADF, was seen as a plus plus by Labor, giving employment to some of the populous who were already under the gun, and currying favour with the union responsible for the security industry, who it was said was "powerful". Think it was in "The Australian". The fact that Comrade Dan keeps lying about the offer of ADF not being made is incredulous. Interesting to see the results of the next Vic election, and if the Feds pick up any of the tab for Labors shots to both feet.

Megan, if he is still there at the next election and given the absence of a credible opposition, they will back him in again. They've done it twice before, seemingly won over by his "tough' approach.
Agree he is lying through his teeth about the ADF offer, in the face of what seems almost incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. No one seems to call this out. It's curious.

If they Poll people outside the Liberal Party HQ, they'll get a different result. Still 95% confidence I guess. There's only ever one Poll that counts and everything else is just background noise.

The Victorian DHS, now DHHS, has for many decades been a lefty organisation full of militant lesbians and strong union membership which has sadly become the primary criterion for getting onto their payroll - the Teflon suit performance during the enquiry was quite an indication of that.

During a time of crisis when the DHHS heads needed to shine and start kick serious goals on dealing with the pandemic, they instead, as the enquiry has shown, feigned memory loss and assumed others would be doing their job.

The DHHS seniority have become utterly useless and never had the ability to manage this crisis because they have not been leaders or innovators for decades while they endeavoured to preserve their impenetrable status quo. The ham fisted approach to Victorian lockdown is proof of this as they could not formulate any plan with enough fidelity to keep some more businesses ticking over.

Andrew's only fault here is that he didn't have the guts to kick these idiots out of their job earlier.

The whole lot of these DHHS senior staffers need to be taken out of the way, until then we shall continue to suffer these fools.

Polls have proven to be very accurate in the last few years....

Remove militant lesbians from their jobs? Good luck with that. Many companies are so scared of backlash they'll do anything to retain female leaders let alone executive Karen.

As one pessimist stated; true equality will be achieved when there are just as many incompetent female leaders as male ones.

The last two major loss of life events in Victoria - black Saturday and now the second wave of covid have been presided over by incompetent female ‘’leaders”.

‘’There are suggestions right now that some in DHHS could face prosecution and jail under Victoria’s. labor enacted, industrial manslaughter laws. Talk about a funny twist.

Any valid points you guys have to make are lost when you drone on with childish rubbish about how much you dislike gays or women. Actually not even childish rubbish because even children these days wouldn’t hold such nonsense views that the last few posters are harping on about. No wonder there’s such a push from corporations for diversity and inclusion these days, despite how some want to believe it’s all in the past.

Whatever happened to the “professional” bit of “PPrune”?

Lost your job - who hasn’t?

Having a hissy fit? Thought so.

A 1 in 100 year pandemic that no one in the Southern Hemisphere has ever had to deal with.

Mistakes have been made - no one is denying that. The federal government is responsible for aged care. Haven’t heard them take it on the chin.

Even with mistakes we are a shining beacon of success in dealing with this to the rest of the world.

Harden up. We get to sit on our butts and ride it out with Netflix, pizza and beer. Think of what older generations had to do to sacrifice for the greater good.


The rebound out of all this will be slow but robust. In a few years there will be a scramble like always. The bigger the down the greater the up and at the moment companies are just keeping their ink dry to weather the storm.

Some pilots will never fly again and it’s devastating but if you think DA is responsible for that... well... try putting down the crack pipe.

He’s talking about Christine Nixon during Black Saturday

It was a poorly constructed sentence by me but thats exactly what I meant - you can add a depression a recession and a range of other health crisis over the last 100 years - our generation hasn’t had to deal with anything of note. Until now.

Well stated.

Okay, didn't quite follow so thread drift deleted.:ok:

To reprise, and to quote J Albrechtsen in the Oz today, "What if 768 people died due to the actions of a business? We are allowing politicians to run a protection racket, exempting themselves from basic accountability standards they impose on businesses."
It's not a blue team/red team issue, it's what we've slept-walked into. There must be rational and proportionate levels of accountability.

That’s a completely irrational conclusion and it is one of the reasons why that is not my preferred news source.

Why?

Because 768 people didn’t die due to the actions of politicians.

768 people died because they caught a virus during a pandemic.

The politicians are in charge of managing public health policies to minimise the impact of a pandemic.

The government has done a lot to interfere with society to minimise pandemic deaths. That is completely different from the government implementing policies that cause deaths.

We can always look back on how well they did, and say that if they did better, the death count would have been lower.

We can also look back and say that if they didn’t do xxx then the death count would have been much higher, as it has turned out in most other countries.

It’s absurd to suggest that our government exists to keep us safe from disease.

What do you think is the role of government with respect to a sudden pandemic?

Correct,get rid of this lib or lab mentality,vote on the current performance,the facts are clear & show 99% of the cases & deaths have come from the hotel security disaster.
If his strategy had worked in employing these fly by night security companies we now wouldnt be hearing every day how his current strategy is working(which thankfully it is thanks to us,not him)
If he represented the libs it would be interested to see how many of the current I STAND WITH DAN social media posters would be posting.

You get the government you deserve.

Other than that, I have nothing to add on Victoria or Victorians.

Derfred,
You ask what I think the role of the government is with respect to an urgent pandemic?
A few criteria come to mind, here’s the first ten.

1. To execute decision making in a timely, clear and transparent manner.
2. To provide leadership, direction and motivation to the general citizenry to collectively work together, united in a common, urgent cause.
3. To manage and coordinate the overall effort in a coherent, measured manner.
4. To ensure that messaging, advice, information and data is provided to citizens in a timely manner, is consistent and broadcast to all, regardless of spoken language.
5. To enforce rational, reasonable constraints on the citizenry, commensurate with the minimum required to manage the risk involved.
6. To ensure that enforcement measures are applied consistently and fairly across all sections of society.
7. To continue to govern for the citizens in an open and democratic manner, subject to the normal rules of Westminster parliamentary convention.
8. To manage the spend associated with the pandemic in a transparent, open and accountable manner.
9. To ensure that adequate resources are made available to response personnel in a timely manner, according to perceived priorities.
10. To remain accountable and accept responsibility for oversight and management of the response effort.

I wonder, which of the above do you agree/disagree with, and to which would you award a pass mark to the Victorian administration?

Employees belonging to powerful unions generally get six figure salaries and have a secure job that lasts their whole working life. Think mining, construction or port workers.

Security guards that are involved in this fiasco are casual workers who earn barely above minimum pay and don't know whether they have work (or pay) tomorrow. Kind of like the lowly paid casual nursing home staff that need to work at multiple sites to make ends meet. If there were any financial impropriety, it would be to transfer government money to the coffers of fat cat business owners squeezing every cent out of their staff. (in a less cynical tone, the original spread of Covid was mostly through rich people travelling the world, the current spread worldwide is generally through poor people who are forced to work in multiple sites or have no pay if they do not work)

Right, "The Australian", that explains it.