Gladys Liu (Chisholm, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, has been having a bad few weeks, and his stress is starting to show. Two weeks ago, after our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, suggested that it was time for Victoria to open up and allow businesses room to breathe, following Sydney's prudent and successful example, Daniel Andrews said the Prime Minister was just playing politics. Last week, when our federal health minister, Greg Hunt, celebrated the great news that Victorian cases were now low enough to allow for some hospitality reopenings and family reunions, Daniel Andrews claimed, again, that the Liberal Party was playing politics and that they weren't for Victorians. It was only a few days back that our federal Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, asked Daniel Andrews to consider the struggling businesses in Victoria and lend a helping hand by allowing them to reopen in a COVID-safe manner. Instead, Daniel Andrews threw it back into the Treasurer's face, declaring that he was playing politics, and accused the federal Treasurer, a proud Victorian member, of not being for Victoria. This is despite the fact that it is the Treasurer's innovative policies, like JobKeeper, that are the only thing keeping Victoria's sagging economy and deprived workforce above water during this crisis. Talk about ingratitude! And what did the Premier call the federal Treasurer of this great country in this time of crisis? A Liberal Party hack. I think you will find that small businesses would tend to disagree with the Victorian Premier. It is they who are struggling under the weight of Daniel Andrews's decisions and it is the support from the Treasurer of Australia that is keeping their businesses afloat.

What else has Daniel Andrews done for Victoria? He has refused the offer of federal assistance and the use of the Australian Defence Force to safely manage hotel quarantine. His government played fast and loose with the procurement process in hiring private security guards instead. His government failed to make sure that private security guards had been properly trained for the job. And the result? Over 800 people died, roughly 10 times the rest of Australia combined. We've also seen crippled businesses, mass unemployment and crushing mental health problems for Victorians, locked up and without hope.

The inquiry into Victoria's hotel quarantine program was given expert testimony that nearly all of Victoria's COVID cases could be linked back to returned travellers. Indeed, Professor Ben Howden, a director at the Doherty Institute, stated that genomic sequencing data demonstrated that more than 99 per cent of Victorian cases at the end of July could be traced back to three transmission networks. It doesn't matter though, because Daniel Andrews has a new, centrally-planned road map and he's sticking to it, yet he refuses to release the advice that is supposed to inform this road map. I don't know where Minister Pakula's plan to see up to 500 people meet at the races this weekend fell into the road map. However, there is no doubt it would have been as successful as Daniel Andrews's hotel quarantine. Victorians can rest assured, though, because the Labor Party were quick to celebrate a great milestone in their administration when Daniel Andrews gave his 100th press conference in this time of crisis. But 100 press conferences is not an achievement; that is not a KPI. When we review the real key performance indicators, we must conclude that Daniel Andrews has failed Victoria.

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