Morrison’s plague outpaces his lies

By in Australian Politics

| 47 comments

The RATs debacle is now caught in Morrison’s usual web of lies:

Rapid antigen test vendors are telling their customers that kits bound for personal and workplace use are being diverted to the national stockpile, contradicting the Prime Minister’s vehement denial this is happening.

Retailers such as Werko, Star Hygiene and HiCraft have blamed federal government requisition of saliva RATs upon their arrival in Australia for delays in filling customer orders, as Scott Morrison faces mounting pressure over his failure to acquire sufficient supplies of the at-home tests.

…Emails sent to multiple customers who had their orders delayed, and seen by The Australian Financial Review, said delays to saliva test deliveries were partly because of the federal government requisitioning orders.

…“The saliva tests were prioritised to the government’s national stockpile and were pulled from under our nose – without prior notice – causing major delays,” Werko wrote in an email to customers whose orders were held up.

“As a result, all those who have placed an order for these kits will have their orders dispatched on the week of Jan 22nd.”

Another lie:

“We accept our share of the responsibility when it comes to providing the tests that we are responsible to provide,” he said. This was important. Even so, he argued that tests were mostly up to the states and territories. He also blamed the states for setting rules that required employers to use rapid antigen tests every day, using up supplies. His sweeping claim was backed by some employer groups but disputed by states and repudiated by the ACTU.

It was also classic blame-shifting, something voters have seen time and again in this pandemic.

The truth is that business leaders were telling the government last August to make rapid antigen tests widely available.

Wasn’t there a national cabinet?

Another lie:

The government claims the rollout of booster shots is “ahead of schedule” and will be completed by the end of the month.

Its solution for staffing shortages while Omicron tears through the community was announced on January 7 — the isolation rules for workers identified as close contacts were amended for large groups of workers, including aged care staff. If asymptomatic, they could keep working provided they undertook a rapid antigen test every day for seven days. Most states have ratified that.

Plainly that assumes availability of rapid antigen tests, which were initially not available. Providers sought to access the federal government’s stockpile but “they weren’t getting them at all, or not promptly”, says Paul Sadler, CEO of the non-profit sector peak body Aged & Community Services Australia.

Another lie:

Scott Morrison has denied misleading Australians about whether his government is detaining refugees at a Melbourne hotel, insisting he “answered to the best of my knowledge at that time”.

The prime minister on Wednesday acknowledged people recognised as refugees were among those held at the Park hotel – where tennis star Novak Djokovic was also briefly detained – but insisted he had never suggested there were no refugees there.

On Monday he told a radio host: “It’s not clear that to my information that someone in that case is actually a refugee.”

Another lie:

The US is advising its citizens not to travel to Australia because of COVID-19.

The US has slapped a “Do Not Travel” Level 4 advisory on the country “due to COVID-19-related travel restrictions” — even though tourists are not yet allowed in.

…Australia is calling on backpackers and students, including from the USA, to now come to Australia to help fill jobs, by returning their visa fee.

Finally, there’s the big lie:

A high-ranking doctor from one of Sydney’s biggest hospitals has lashed the “politically driven” management of the pandemic, as thousands of health staff remain on COVID-19 leave and the number of hospitals treating coronavirus patients has grown to nearly 100.

In a video briefing to junior staff, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital executive clinical director Professor Paul Torzillo told doctors that directives from state and federal health departments were being filtered by the hospital to determine what was appropriate for staff and patients.

“Increasingly, the pronouncements coming from government are completely politically driven and … not health-based,” he said in a recording viewed by the Herald.

There are now 95 hospitals managing coronavirus patients across NSW – up from 73 last week. About 5300 staff are on leave due to COVID-19 exposure, placing huge strain on the system.

The video from last week featuring Professor Torzillo is a rare insight into the unvarnished views of senior health staff and how the health system is caught between the pressures of shortening isolation for health workers and the need to keep the infection out of hospitals.

Professor Torzillo’s declined to comment on the clip, but told the Herald that “opening up in the weeks before Christmas was inappropriate”.

Zero planning, all ideology and heaven help you if you get sick or work in healthcare.

Houses and Holes
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Comments

  3. happy valleyMEMBER

    HnH – is your use of a photo of Goebbels as the backdrop benchmark to the photo of Morrison now becoming a bit unfair to Goebbels?

  4. LukeMEMBER

    If you read news.com.au or The Age you would think everything is all good LOL.

    Australia is an utter failure and a joke. How we have let our selves come to this level is beyond me. We are a third world country.

    • bolstroodMEMBER

      We did choose the Third Way some years back.
      Eventually we got here.

      I am concerned that the 200,000 temp Visor holders will be competing for jobs that the tens of thousands of Australians whose businesses and jobs have been destroyed by Morrison and Perrottet , desperately need.

      • LukeMEMBER

        All Labour need to do is come out and say that under 10 years of Liberal government we have become a third world country.

        1: They failed us during the pandemic and let the virus in
        2: They dolled out cash to their corporate mates via job keeper
        3: stuffed up the vaccine roll out
        4: Didnt get us the RATS
        5: gave us three recessions
        6: Took care of their property developer mates and the big end of town and drove up over development
        7: Dont give one iota to any of the workers and want to flood the country with cheap workers and stop wage growth
        8: havent given us a national ICAC
        9: Killed off the Koalas to extinction
        10: endorsed a rape racquet in Canberra

        But all I hear is crickets.

      • drsmithyMEMBER

        Chifley was a w0kester ! Just read this:

        I try to think of the Labor movement, not as putting an extra sixpence into somebody’s pocket, or making somebody Prime Minister or Premier, but as a movement bringing something better to the people, better standards of living, greater happiness to the mass of the people. We have a great objective – the light on the hill – which we aim to reach by working the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand. If it were not for that, the Labor movement would not be worth fighting for.

  5. ChinajimMEMBER

    That’s exactly what you get when you have a bunch of twenty-something, focus-group driven, economics graduate, Young Liberal, Ayn Rand fan-boy, rapist desk-top wanker staffers running the fckn nation.

  6. The Claw

    The video from last week featuring Professor Torzillo is a rare insight into the unvarnished views of senior health staff and how the health system is caught between the pressures of shortening isolation for health workers and the need to keep the infection out of hospitals.

    Now is the time to find the rare medical experts who have not been captured by elite money, and ask them to design a public medical system that will remain robust during a pandemic.

    Once the design is available, the govt should properly fund the construction of all elements of the plan. eg physical hospitals, quarantine, training of staff, wages, etc.

    The idealised Labor party of the past would be a good choice to implement this. Of course it does not exist anymore, if it ever did.

  7. myne

    Did you all see this hilarious proposal?

    > Scott Morrison will ask the states to allow children to drive forklifts at today’s national cabinet meeting as part of measures to ease the staff shortages crippling supply chains, Guardian Australia has learned.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2022/jan/20/australia-news-live-updates-national-cabinet-covid-schools-shortages-coronavirus-cases-rapid-antigen-tests-perrottet-vaccine-booster-scott-morrison-nsw-vic-qld-case-numbers?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with:block-61e881fb8f086ca513c4c93b#bloc

  8. NelsonMuntzMEMBER

    Quick word of advice: if you, your family or friends test covid positive make sure you collect plenty of nose swabs and saliva samples and store them labelled in the freezer. So that in the future when you fancy 7 days sick leave from work, you defrost a positive sample, pop a government/employer supplied RAT, and hey presto you get a stay away from work order.

  10. nyleta

    So, this is how you make it look better than it is, the US will no longer mandate hospitals reporting daily on a raft of figures ( especially Covid deaths ) from 2nd February…….this will make the Florida system of obfuscation nation wide

    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/01/15/hhhs-j15.html

    What you end up with is like the South African’s where the deaths etc. come out after you can show the peak is past

    https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1483867731296501761

    This helps normalise the ongoing pandemic by desensitisation…….how long until we follow suit ?

  12. Know IdeaMEMBER

    Well at least his behaviour is consistent, and bordering on predictable. And as if that is not difficult enough to realise in practice, he also presents as being rather persistent. Now those are two potentially admirable characteristics. Ok, maybe he needs to work on the content, but it is not all shadow and darkness.

  13. Nemesis

    Ha ha it’s shit on purpose! Morrison doesn’t want to be re-elected, but Aussies are so dumb these days they’ll vote him in!