I rise to oppose this appalling extension to the state of emergency, this grotesque invasion against individual liberties in Victoria over the next 10 months. This is an outrageous incursion into the normalcy of Victorian life—a 10-month extension to the state of emergency. For what reason? We are told by the Premier, ‘Oh, we have to manage hotel quarantine’, but at the same time he is telling us that, Victoria is not taking any return travellers for quite some time and will not be requiring those rules because we will not be putting anyone in hotels for the foreseeable future, we are told. In fact we are told that the Premier is going to be looking at options out at Avalon—and I will be talking about that later in my contribution.
Some facts—not quibbles, Labor’s member for Mount Waverley, facts. The facts are stark. New South Wales is taking 3000 travellers a week. Victoria are now taking none; they were taking 1100. New South Wales has processed 125 000 returned Australians; Victoria, 35 000. New South Wales has had 4900 COVID cases; Victoria, 20 456. Victoria, tragically, has had 820 deaths; New South Wales, 56. Yet the Premier tells us that Victoria’s hotel quarantine system is the envy of the nation, that it is the envy of other states, that it should be copied—should be copied. The gold standard, no less, he said last Tuesday, and yet by Friday the state was locked down again because of the incompetence at hotel quarantine.
We have had dozens of epidemiologists, of experts in this field, saying that there have been multiple infection control breaches at hotel quarantine in Victoria. Yet we were promised last year by the Premier that all these issues that resulted in the second wave of coronavirus—801 deaths, 250 000 job losses, a mental health crisis—had been solved. The Coate inquiry had recommended 10 different recommendations to improve hotel quarantine, to improve infection control, and everything was now to be fixed and our hotel quarantine system was to be the envy of the nation. Well, what utter rubbish, what utter excrement. I was almost about to swear then, because it is so infuriating for so many businesses around Victoria who were closed down arbitrarily on Friday, not because of their own fault but because of the fault of the Premier and the Andrews Labor government. It is totally unacceptable to punish Victorians because of your own incompetence.
For those in the Labor Party who do not understand the confidence-destroying nature of a state of emergency for the next 10 months, until December 2021, this is going to be a total disincentive for investment in Victoria—for jobs growth, for investment and for our economy to get back on its feet. I do not think anyone understands the sort of difficulties Victorian businesses are facing still: 40 per cent of JobKeeper recipients are Victorian; some 626 000 Victorian employees are currently a recipient of the JobKeeper program, compared with 490 000 in New South Wales.
My message to the Premier is very simple: pick up the phone, call Gladys Berejiklian—call the Premier of New South Wales—ask her to send some officials to Victoria to explain to our officials how to run hotel quarantine properly, safely, effectively. Send them down, because clearly we cannot do it right down here. We are not taking any return travellers at the moment. In fact the Premier has said there will not be any return travellers for quite some time. Equally, send the New South Wales contact-tracing team down to Victoria and explain to our people how to do it properly because there would have been no need for a five-day lockdown if the Andrews government had confidence in the contact tracers.
It should never have happened. For 22 cases you locked down the entire state? Have you any idea the mayhem you have caused so many families and businesses? There were 3000 calls to Lifeline on Saturday because of your incompetence. Do you understand that? Do you understand the mayhem your government has caused for the best part of a year?
I mean, the ‘I stand with Dan’ crowd will go nuts tonight, I am sure. But the Andrews Labor government caused the second wave. The Andrews Labor government cost the lives of 801 Victorians; 250 000 jobs lost, kids schooled from home for months. You caused this, and there is this false equivalent where you try and say, ‘Oh, look over here. Look at the United Kingdom. Look at Europe. Look at the United States’. What a load of rubbish. Look north. Look to New South Wales. That is the gold standard, you perpetual liars. Look at them. Look at New South Wales—an outbreak before Christmas. They locked down two local government areas, and yet by the end of January the place was virtually back to normal, not like here, where we had a four-month long lockdown last year, a rubbish inquiry by a former judge that at the very least had 10 recommendations on how to fix the thing, which you completely ignored—completely ignored. You have not learned a thing, for God’s sake. So of course we are now back—
The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Dimopoulos): The member for Kew on multiple occasions: stop reflecting on the Chair.
Mr T SMITH: I am now being interrupted by a Labor Acting Speaker in pointing out the manifest and obvious failures in hotel quarantine contact tracing and indeed the entire response to COVID in Victoria. I would like to read this quote from the Premier from last Tuesday into Hansard, speaking about Victoria’s hotel quarantine system. He said it is:
… worthy of being copied by others, and it is, and if it was anything other than leading, this is not about boasting—
It is not about boasting, he says—
this is just a fact, if it was anything other than one of the best systems ... if it was anything other than a good system, then I doubt very much that other first ministers across the country would have agreed to copy it.
Agreed to copy it? Professor Lindsay Grayson on 3AW Breakfast yesterday morning said that Victoria’s failures are not bad luck, they are a failing of government process and they are a failure of government implementation. For whatever reason, the people at the top just do not get it. They do not understand, for example, that having the idea of a hot hotel and a cold hotel is ridiculous—that everyone should be regarded as infectious until they leave their 14 days of isolation and should be treated as such. I mean, this is not rocket science. And all of a sudden now we have got this distraction. We have got to go down to Avalon to help out old mate Lindsay Fox. Let us not forget about that relationship. Lindsay Fox was the only business leader in October last year to come out and defend the Premier as Victoria’s economy was being smashed to pieces during the second wave—the only business leader. So before there is no tender process to send the purpose-built quarantine station down to Avalon, let everyone realise that relationship.
It is all about distractions with this government—never taking responsibility, constant lies. Last Tuesday the Premier said it is the best hotel quarantine system in the country. By Friday the place was locked down. I mean, the lies from this government: blaming the bloke with the nebuliser in hotel quarantine, saying, ‘No, no, he was told he wasn’t allowed to use a nebuliser’. Then the guy, from ICU back to hotel quarantine, has to go and do a couple of media interviews to clear his name, to say, ‘No, I was told twice by Victorian officials I could use a nebuliser in a quarantine hotel’. This is just ridiculous. Haven’t you learned anything from last year?
Then we get told that the contact-tracing system is terrific—top shelf, working like a dream. Compare that to New South Wales, where, with a significant outbreak in December, the place was back to normal by February, unlike Victoria. We had four months of disasters last year, and we had to have a snap lockdown this year.
And then there is my favourite: asserting that the UK strain has somehow grown horns, a pulse, can walk around corners, can walk on water perhaps and do cartwheels. Yes, it is a variant of the original Wuhan strain. Yes, it is more infectious, but if you have legitimate and decent and sensible infection control measures in place at hotels, at hotel quarantine, the virus will not jump out the window and infect the rest of the community. They seem to have managed 25 cases of the UK variant in Sydney just fine. It has not grown legs and walked out the front door of hotels in New South Wales. It is not about the hotels, it is not about where quarantine is taking place, it is about the fools that are managing this system in Victoria—the total negligence of the fools that are running this system in Victoria.
The mayhem that these breaches have caused over the last five days—I mean, $100 million lost from the hospitality sector alone. And I hear quibbling from the member for Mount Waverley and some nonsense from over here about, ‘Oh, it’s a global pandemic’. Yes, it is a global pandemic. The only way the pandemic gets into Australia is if you let it in, and the only clowns that have let it in are the Andrews Labor government—that is the fact. We closed the borders—the national borders were closed last March. If you fix hotel quarantine, no virus will get into our country. Fix it up. Premier, resign.