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Here is my take. I am not an expert, but during my reporting of public housing lockdown in July, both observed the DHHS at work and developed good contacts throughout bureaucracy. https://twitter.com/LizAgnes/status/1303461371594469376
The DHHS has been in trouble for years, and the cracks are now very evident. Work (such as cleaning of public housing towers, but also other public health work) was outsourced and the department became a manager of contracts, while losing the contact with community ...
... that would allow it to know whether or not work being done in its name was being properly performed. Just one example: It had no idea who actually lived in those towers! Entirely lost contact with its tenants. Cleaning contractors underpeforming without being held to account.
Meanwhile a fairly toxic internal culture developed. Upward managers at senior levels (meaning the ministers did not necessarily have a handle on problems) and good ppl
..in middle management running for the doors. And resources repeatedly cut. Meanwhile ppl with experience in managing crises and emergencies were sidelined through being scapegoats internally for hotel quarantine problems, probably unfair. We will find out from inquiry.
We've all worked in organisations like that, right? So the Andrews Government cannot escape responsibility for this. It has been in power long enough, and should be held accountable. So too previous governments. These are long term problems.
Ministers should be alert for problems they are not told about by upward managers. But while voters might want to keep it in mind, and journos should also, it tells us nothing about how to address the situation we are now in for the short and medium term.
And, while I am no expert, the article I linked to, which IS by an expert, seems to me to be a useful take that addresses the issue of contact tracing without the political point scoring.
Meanwhile, journalists should ask the Victorian Opposition for their alternative plan. And I imagine, as @normanswan said on #coronacast today, the NSW health ppl are v nervous at the PM boosting them so much.
What will he and they say if they have a surge? The experts know this is entirely possible with a bit of bad luck. Andrews seems to be addressing the immediate problems with DHHS and there are signs that what one MP for the public housing area described to me as
"institutional somnambulence" has come to an end. Heaps of good people there working very hard, supported by quality public health NGOs and others who know the problems very well indeed, and now getting the resources they need.
There will be lessons here for government in the long term. But that doesn't mean the short term response, and conservative opening up, is necessarily wrong.
