What does an apology even mean?
While the New Zealand Public service took a pay cut of 20%, in Victoria, MPs and Public servants got a pay rise of 2%. Dan Andrews will take home an extra $46,000 per annum despite presiding over the most costly public policy failure in Australian history. The private sector pays for the mistakes, while the public sector earns even more.
Dan Andrews asks so much, but gives so little. And it is a scandal that so many cheap, well known treatments and preventions are not being tested in large trials — Vitamin D, HCQ, Ivermectin, and all the other potential anti-virals like Interferon, Bromhexine, Melatonin, steroids, asthma drugs etc etc.
Voters slam ‘unfair’ public sector pay rise
Adam Creighton, The Australian
Private sector wages in Victoria dropped by $1.9bn in the June quarter, while wages in the public sector increased by $88m, according to the IPA’s analysis…
The poll, of just over 1000 Victorians, found only 7 per cent supported the 2 per cent pay rise that MPs and public servants received in July…
In the last five years, the Victorian population grew 12% but the bill for public servants wages grew by 40%.
Robert Gottliebsen wonders if “the state and its bureaucracy simply don’t have the skills to manage a crisis of this magnitude”. Look at the legal charges someone may face:
The unwillingness of anyone to take responsibility is multiplied by the fact that, if there is an occupational health and safety conviction, the minister and senior bureaucrats in the department involved are in danger of being charged with industrial manslaughter which carries a maximum $16.5 million fine and 25 years in jail.
Robert Gottleibsen lists the mistakes: There is Big-Government incompetence in every level
1. The well known hotel quarantine union and diversity hire failures. Emblematic of how inept it was: security staff got one hour of diversity training but no time in infection control.
2. People who tested positive were not notified quickly enough. What was the point of mass testing if the results were not used to stop infections spreading? This failure neutralized the success of mass testing
3. Not enough contact tracing. Test positivity in Victoria is ten times higher than NSW. Per infection, NSW is doing more testing.
What to do with Victoria and the virus is a wicked problem and Sophie’s choice.
More soon on the ugly complexities of melding the mess of virology, business and democratic wishes.