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IMPORTANT // Please look after your loved ones, yourself and be kind to others. If you are feeling that the world is too hard to handle there is always help - I implore you not to hesitate in contacting one of these wonderful organisations Lifeline and Beyond Blue ... and I'm sure reaching out to our PRE community we will find a way to help. T.
Talking Politics
- Thread starter Legends of 2017
- Start date
It is a Public Health issue.
I stepped away from this yesterday because I am too close to many of the people who have been working tirelessly for 21 months now to do the best they can in a situation where there was no rule book and no precedent and had to make decisions under enormous pressure with little information.
People made mistakes and our health system is flawed in many ways but it is demoralising for many who have gone above and beyond during this time to see criticism as if they are in some way negligent. Flawed yes ( like we all are) but not negligent.
COVID has been a situation with little precedent and certainly no precedent in the world we live in now. Although the post WWI flu is somewhat of a precedent the world is a very different place now. Mistakes were always going to be made and plenty were.
The one thing which I have the most problem with is Hotel Quarantine. Hotels have shared ventilation, not good for a respiratory virus and totally the wrong place for quarantining people. As a short term fix you do what you can but there should have been much quicker action on finding more appropriate ways to quarantine people a lot earlier in the pandemic. I blame the Feds for not getting on with this, I blame the States for persisting with quarantine in facilities not suited to quarantine. I also blame governments of all levels for closing the old quarantine stations decades ago. It is a miracle Hotel Quarantine worked as well as it did, but it still had a lot of issues.
The next pandemic is likely to be a lot less than 100 years in the future, but even if it is a long way off, we need facilities suited to quarantine. We can find another use for them in between times and we need some ongoing quarantine stations anyway.
DS
The one thing which I have the most problem with is Hotel Quarantine. Hotels have shared ventilation, not good for a respiratory virus and totally the wrong place for quarantining people. As a short term fix you do what you can but there should have been much quicker action on finding more appropriate ways to quarantine people a lot earlier in the pandemic. I blame the Feds for not getting on with this, I blame the States for persisting with quarantine in facilities not suited to quarantine. I also blame governments of all levels for closing the old quarantine stations decades ago. It is a miracle Hotel Quarantine worked as well as it did, but it still had a lot of issues.
The next pandemic is likely to be a lot less than 100 years in the future, but even if it is a long way off, we need facilities suited to quarantine. We can find another use for them in between times and we need some ongoing quarantine stations anyway.
DS
yep, have no problem with a nation-wide royal commission or even state by state.
Again you side-step the issue of the federal administration of the aged care system in Victoria which is where most of the deaths occured.
Yes, people will be arguing about what was the right strategy for the next 20 years. In the greater scheme of things Australia has come out of this pretty well, so far at least.
This is a real sore point for me, the elderly deserve much better treatment in their twilight years. John Howard's 1997 Aged Care Act, allowed for the privatisation of Aged Care, and removed the requirement of a Nurse to be on duty.................................
I really cant quite figure out if the Libs and Nats are so dumb they dont see how bad appointments like this look, or if they are so arrogant they dont care. or both.
www.crikey.com.au
A Murdoch consigliere to run the ACCC? How very Australian — and very wrong
Gina Cass-Gottlieb is more than just a mate of the Murdochs. She's a director of the family trust. It's highly improper for her to head up the competition regulator.
www.crikey.com.au
Not to mention Federal responsibility for quarantine. I know the states agreed to take this on but ultimately the Feds are responsible. At the time I thought they were letting the Federal government off the hook and really wondered why, or whether they were given no choice but to take it on since the Feds were most likely to do nothing.
DS
You can sheet home a lot of what has gone wrong in and with Australia in the last quarter-century to the election of the Dessicated Coconut.
Bigger issue is how n why the virus got out of the quarantine system so badly in only Victoria, and how poorly it was traced n managed once out thereby allowing the virus to run rampant in the most vulnerable communities.
The entire privatisation of the aged care system was wrong from the start and has been poorly run and overseen since day dot, just another way for people to make big shekels off the govt from a lot of cost cutting exercises. Crazy situation where most of the staff in these places work part time / casual at various aged care centers n obviously private managers / owners were never going to pay out for proper PPE or training for bits n pieces workers.
It's going to be interesting finding out what reports the coroners inquest brings down, but even he's hamstrung by the owners of St Basils refusing to co-operate.
No that's not the biggest issue at all and most people have well and truly moved on. There have been a litany of hotel quarantine outbreaks right across the country which shows us that hotels were never fit for quarantine in the first place, and hence Victoria's outbreak in June 2020 was an inevitable occurrence that could have easily happened in any other state program. Once again, the fault lies primarily with the Feds who refused to act on border control and dedicated quarantine facilities.
"Prime Minister Scott Morrison has pushed back against the idea of more COVID-19 lockdowns and government mask mandates, urging Australians to take "personal responsibility"
Morrison is also saying......."Australia has to move "past the heavy hand of government" and stop shutting down people's lives"
I might stop wearing a seat belt, it will be my personal choice, Morrison be ok with that.
www.abc.net.au
Morrison is also saying......."Australia has to move "past the heavy hand of government" and stop shutting down people's lives"
I might stop wearing a seat belt, it will be my personal choice, Morrison be ok with that.
'We're not going back to lockdowns': PM says time for 'heavy hand' on COVID is over — as it happened
Scott Morrison says Australia has to move "past the heavy hand of government" and stop shutting down people's lives.
www.abc.net.au
That's just ScoMo speak for "I don't hold a hose", he just wants to avoid doing anything he might be held responsible for so he pushes everything back on to individuals. This is a public health issue and we need to act as a community, he ain't helping . . . then again, he is no help anyway so good if he gets out of the way.
Lots of talk of late about the independents running and the prospect of a hung parliament, so I thought this was a good video to post:
Plus, I live in one of the seats which is getting attention: Goldstein. What does get me though is all this talk of how the independents are supposedly targeting "moderate" Liberals. We can all debate whether any member of the Liberal Party could be called moderate when they are more than willing to vote against a corruption watchdog or any action on climate change. But in Goldstein we don't have a moderate Liberal, we have Tim Wilson, who cut his teeth working for the RWNJ outfit the IPA. Hardly a moderate, and also, what is the point of the local member's personal beliefs when the likes of Tim Wilson goes along with opposing the legalisation of gay marriage until Abbott got his plebiscite to placate the homophobes? If his vote in parliament is determined by his party, or the party his party is in coalition with, rather than his own beliefs, then his own beliefs and whether he is moderate or extreme, are irrelevant.
DS
Lots of talk of late about the independents running and the prospect of a hung parliament, so I thought this was a good video to post:
Plus, I live in one of the seats which is getting attention: Goldstein. What does get me though is all this talk of how the independents are supposedly targeting "moderate" Liberals. We can all debate whether any member of the Liberal Party could be called moderate when they are more than willing to vote against a corruption watchdog or any action on climate change. But in Goldstein we don't have a moderate Liberal, we have Tim Wilson, who cut his teeth working for the RWNJ outfit the IPA. Hardly a moderate, and also, what is the point of the local member's personal beliefs when the likes of Tim Wilson goes along with opposing the legalisation of gay marriage until Abbott got his plebiscite to placate the homophobes? If his vote in parliament is determined by his party, or the party his party is in coalition with, rather than his own beliefs, then his own beliefs and whether he is moderate or extreme, are irrelevant.
DS
There are some "moderates" in the current government. I am not sure Tim Wilson is one of them.
it would be better to have more "moderates" in the Liberal (and National) party, in place of the likes of Dutton, Canavan etc., but that wont happen.
but those who proclaim to be "moderates" (and I guess are compared to many in the current government) are targetted because they are in seats when voters are historically liberal/national voters but dont like where this government is taking Australia.
Fair point, probably works a bit both ways as they would be electorates where the voters may be conservative on many issues but more socially progressive. One argument against this though is that the major political parties now have such woefully low membership that pre-selection wouldn't require many people to support you in the local electorate. Makes it easier to branch stack I suppose.
DS
PRE should pick a marginal, traditional swing seat, and stack the branch on both sides of the parties. When we get a member elected, the return in rorts, grants and subsidies will pay back our initial investment many many times over
