The hypocrisy of ScottyFromMarketing’s hairy-chested approach to an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 and China’s response was highlighted this week when Border Force Tsar Michael Pezzullo refused to guarantee that his empire would co-operate with the investigation into the Ruby Princess debacle.
When Commissioner Bret Walker led the South Australian Murray Darling Basin royal commission, the commonwealth went to the high court to resist subpoenas to call federal public servants.
When asked about co-operating with subpoenas in the coronavirus investigation, Pezzullo said he expected the commonwealth’s position “wouldn’t change from issue to issue” as there were long-standing points of principle and jurisdiction.
Righto. So we expect China to be open and transparent but not our fearless men in black. If our own Border Force won’t co-operate then why should another country, particularly considering the accusations being made and broadcast by the Murdoch muckrakers like Sharri Markson who now seems to have become the letter box for US propaganda.
What a joke.
And where is the call for an investigation into the handling of the outbreak in the US and the UK and our failure to stop them importing the virus into Australia?
This is par for the course with our current government who have the same approach to transparency and accountability as the Catholic Church.
The government has waged an expensive legal battle for the last seven months to stop an Auditor General’s report into a $1.3 billion arms deal from being released.
They have also invoked the National Security Information Act to keep the civil defamation case by their favourite war “hero”, Ben Roberts-Smith, secret. This is the same Act they used to charge, try and imprison Witness J in such secrecy that the ACT justice minister knew nothing about it.
Hell, they can’t even get their own Minister to tell where he got a forged document from or why he sent it to that other Murdoch miscreant, Simon Benson.
If you want others to co-operate in a fact-finding mission so we can learn from it, accusations are not the best way to garner support. Particularly when you are absolutely adverse to any scrutiny of your own actions.
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If you live in a world that never ever existed, based on lies, superstitions, rumours, myths, fantasies, legends, dreams and wishful abuses of mentality, you can make your own effing way, rules, laws, standards. Of course, a midget mussolino like, say, a Barilaro or Pezzullo will not listen as they have their own variation on absudity to live up to. You cannot tell who is lying, coercing, enforcing, exaggerating, demanding, with any reason or certainty. It’s a highly competitive liar’s world. We have no chance, the real people…
Aspen Medical were employed by our always out-sourcing LNP Govt. to do the health checks on the Ruby Princess and a few days later they turned up at Anglicare Newmarch House Retirement village.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/06/private-medical-staff-who-worked-on-ruby-princess-were-sent-into-newmarch-house
The AFP does only what the government – especially this government and more particularly Dutton – asks it to do. And there is no way that would happen with the Ruby Princess.
We are all free to firm our own opinions as to why this floating disease incubator was allowed to jettison its passengers when it did; the passenger inventory would be interesting.
As has been said before, the US, UK and Australian government showed little interest in the virus because it was knocking over the unproductive members of the herd. Their tubes changed when Trump’s daughter, Boris Johnson and Thumper Dutton were infected.
A great piece, Kaye,
The hypocrisy of “So we expect China to be open and transparent but not our fearless men in black.” is lost in the belief that we are open but transparent depends on Red from the ACT.
I wonder what the result of Pell’s royal commission’s meeting with Red Act?
One scene by Margaret Johnson when she was asked how she knew the secret and her answer was she held it up to the light.
The principle is the same, Red ACT, uses the petty ploy of ‘security’ to conceal evidence and protect the guilty
The bastards even lied through their teeth when they refused to answer as to Morrisons whereabouts during the greatest bushfire crisis we faced. My greatest fear though is that the church of his mentor Brian Houston must be suffering an enormous decline in attendance and collection. I sincerely trust these privations are not impinging on the dear mans lifestyle. Still I am sure if things got to the point where he and his family would be forced to live as many of us mere mortals do, he could always send a clapathon to his mate Scummo for public assistance.
Should have commented here first, given the nature of Sen Patrick’s comments on the Covid app and the parallel issue of censorship by fiat concerning yet another bodgy defence procurement.
Can you imagine the hell for any whistleblower able to produce the redacted material on the defence procurement gone wrong if tracking through the Covid app revealed who the whistleblower was?
How are people so stupid as to not to understand the true nature of such issues, particularly when money for say, women’s shelters locally is consequently so short?
And How defence procurement always seem to go so “wrong” in such costly ways?
What happened to open and accountable government?
Aortic
Hopefully they have all injected bleach. Not Woolies or Coles bleach – top quality bleach.
Transparency at home – You must be joking! Our Federal bureaucrats and politicians are f#cking with us again. These effing Australian creeps make China look saintly.
So over Morrsion, Dutton, Pezzullo, the whole effing lot of them!
I often wonder what the real ADF personnel think about these jumped-up blackshirts with their chests full of toffee wrappers. I should add that I feel for those hard working public servants who used to be called customs officers etc.I was in the APS for 30 something years.
There’s a little bit of Trump in this government: lie with impunity, refuse to answer questions, cover ups, corruption, rorts, get public officers to blow your whistle etc etc etc.
I’m afraid that it will only a little bit of Trump for a short while. In another two years we may as well have Trump as our PM.
There will not be anything left to govern soon.
When I read whatever’s posting at 10.23am, my spontaneous reaction was a wide-eyed “WOW!
What? One company, Aspen Medical, is supposedly responsible for the health security of the two organizations that are responsible for, probably, half of the total deaths in Australia?
Talk about Royal Commission material. It’s got to be either incompetence or political patronage and/or interference. Why this “coincidence” hasn’t been widely canvassed by the media is baffling.
Aspen Medical are big donors to the LNP.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/ebola-treatment-centre–company-aspen-medical-donated-15000-to-liberal-party-20150203-13506x.html
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-01/political-donations-down-almost-100m/7128866
ABF Commissioner Michael Outram gave an extensive interview to SKY – what is it with this government and SKY ? – on 23 March 2020 where he said this :
No wonder Pezzullo doesn’t want his people giving evidence to the enquiry over the handling of the Ruby Princess : Australian Border Force are the weak link !
Re Aspen and Ebola….
In 2014, the Government awarded Aspen Medical a $20-million contract to manage and run a 100-bed field hospital in Sierra Leone.
Based on government tender documents, Labor calculated the cost of treatment averaged to over $84,600 for each patient admitted to the field hospital managed by Aspen Medical whereas Medicins Sans Frontieres, on average, spent $10,730 per patient.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-10/labor-calls-for-inquiry-into-australian-response-to-ebola-crisis/6533872
If we are| looking for someone to blame, how about the 500 solitary souls who managed to increase their wealth by a couple of Trillion over the last few months. Asia has had swine flu for the last 18 months and pig meat is an important protein hit for the poor. Its absence has forced people onto ‘Bush Tucker’. Perhaps if the 0.01% of the planet where not so greedy for money then Chinese peasants might get a square meal.
This is getting weirder and weirder.
Meanwhile, Australia has evidently
said the US is lying about the virus emanating from the Wuhan labs. The US!! Lying??
Who’d a thought it!???
Well, the Spanish Flu came from Kansas, but you can’t blame Uncle Sam.
Okay, they used Agent Orange. But..
Well okay, Napalm too, but…
Alright, I’ll give you Anthrax.
And they placed their own troops downwind of the Bikini Atoll tests ‘to see what they would do…’
But Australia biting Uncle Sam?
As Victor Meldrew would say- ‘I DON’T BELIEVE IT!’
Thank you Kaye.
Peter Dutton and, at the very least, his departmental secretary Mike Pezzullo carry the burden of responsibility.
The Ruby Princess catastrophe has led to countless deaths. Dutton and Pezzullo have failed their primary responsibility and must be held accountable.
The various Narratives of the LNP Govt and enablers are of greater importance than pesky details like Democracy or even Law & Order.
The Abbott Turdbull MorriSCUM IPA led LNP, masquerade as Politicians while acting as a criminal cartel avoiding all scrutiny.
How good is an LNP narrative from the Liar from the Shire, via Australia’s crappy, hopelessly compromised mainstream media and politicised public service and AFP.
A pox on all the LNP houses.
Exactly, Kaye. Why has this blatant hypocrisy been overlooked in the mainstream media?
On costs, Kaye, Aboriginal projects often attracted 75% on costs. In one project $800k resulted in jobs for 3 men paid a base level clerk wage and access to a pool car.
What has happened, o the reef money?
“Head of Great Barrier Reef Foundation tells Senate inquiry money was offered at meeting with Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg.”
Sorry such largesse is par for the course.
Has Labor mentioned Aspen Medical in any of its penetrating questions this year?
They probably don’t read “The Guardian” or even have a watching brief on AIM Network.
However, I concede it might be the sort of scandal, on which they might decide to keep their powder dry until the next election.
It still seems a wasted opportunity.
Labor gave Aspen a $500 million contract in 2012 as well.
“A Canberra health provider has won a $500 million contract to provide health care for Defence bases across Australia.
The biggest contract yet for the fast-growing Aspen Medical, the four-year deal will involve providing about 1000 special medical staff at bases in Queensland, the Northern Territory, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and many other locations.”
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6168566/act-health-provider-wins-500m-contract-at-defence/
Actually, I think that Aspen provide a crucial service and have a pretty good reputation at doing it well. But like all outsourcing, it costs a motza.
The NSW Health Minister should remove a Z from his name.
Yes outsourcing costs lots of dollars but it also allows Ministers, indeed governments as a whole, to also outsource responsibility when things go wrong. This outsourcing of responsibility can also be witnessed in the resurrection of the subsidiarity principle. – (in politics) the principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level
Devolving responsibility to lower levels can result in blame shifting. It’s a realisation that comes to some local administrators when it’s too late. While they initially thirst for power to make the decisions, they are slow to recognise the downside.
Thanks for the heads up on Aspen, Kaye. I’m sure it would be impossible to replace Aspen with a government run organization. The doctors would be rejects from the private sector – or at least not as competent as those in the private sector – and, of course, the administrators would be the same old dreary public service types with one eye on the clock rather than the bottom line as they are in Aspen, which also conveniently serves like tonsils to the body politic: they take the blame for any cock-up that would normally reflect badly on the Minister; declare themselves bankrupt; pay creditors 10 cents in the dollar; buy a new shelf company with a name as far away from Aspen as possible, say, Nirvana Health then put their hand up for $1500 a fortnight for each of their erstwhile “consultants” but now employees.
But this is the sin of cynicism.