The deficit of truth surrounding Quarantine and the Morrison Government.

​Introduction.
As Australians we are all aware of the Morrison spin about Borders and how sovereign they are, about Operation Sovereign borders and how he “stopped the boats”
How Morrison made on-water matters secret and kept the truth from Australian voters, how the Asylum seekers were locked up in two tropical islands Manus in PNG and Nauru and how many of those Asylum seekers have either died from government neglect of been driven slowly insane by a complete lack of hope for their futures.
This secret playbook has been revealed again and again in the dealings of the Morrison government. Every scandal is swept under the carpet or sent off to an internal inquiry to be sanitised from the public mind.
During all of the scandals plaguing this government there is a similar response. Shut down the information and blame someone else.
To name a few.
Sports rorts. An illegal scheme to reward give money and largesse to Coalition electorates.
Community Development grants. Billions of dollars shovelled into Coalition electorates before the Sports rorts top up.
A series of Regional development Grant schemes. More Largesse for the coalition and cross bench electorates.
Female facilities and Water Safety Stream grants. Another set of millions of dollars for Coalition electorates. With no guidelines and a four year budget, all spent in year one. Again advantaging Coalition Electorates.
Car Park Congestion fund. Yet another slush fund to advantage coalition electorates.
Two of these grants streams have been audited by the Auditor General and that office has found them to be deficient in transparency and administration. The Sports infrastructure grants the Auditor general questioned the Legality of the scheme. Yet that hasn’t been written about much or followed up by a largely Coalition compliant press.

​Quarantine.
And so we come to Quarantine and the Federal Coalition Government.
When approaching this subject in Australia it is important to look at the history of Quarantine and who is responsible.
For that information we go to Australia’s founding document, the Constitution where Section 51 says.
 51. Legislative powers of the Parliament.
The parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the commonwealth with respect to:
Here follows a list of which:-
(ix) quarantine;
There it is in my Pocket edition of Australia’s Constitution which I picked up from my local federal member’s office in 2019.
And just for completeness I have scanned the front, rear and Section 51 (part) to prove that what I am saying is not Bullshit.

​Hotel Quarantine in Australia.
Sometime in 2020 Scott Morrison, as is his practice, changed the name of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to the National Cabinet. He also claims that the papers and proceedings of that body are covered by cabinet confidentiality, so we may not know what goes on there. (Does that seem somewhat familiar? Keeping secrets from Australians?)
In the National Cabinet deliberations on 27th March 2020, following many breaches of home Quarantine around Australia, this Cabinet decided to impose 14 day Quarantine on everyone returning to Australia in order to contain the spread of Covid 19. This period was to be served in Tourist Hotels in the capital cities of Australia.
It followed the debacle of the Ruby Princess return to Sydney on 19th March 2020, where the NSW Government as agents of the Commonwealth under the biosecurity Act, allowed hundreds of people to disembark and return to their homes all over Australia, without testing or screening of any substantial sort.
Hotel Quarantine was supposed to be set up by midnight on 28th March 2020, just 24 hours after the decision had been taken by National Cabinet.
Imagine the Scenario, The big boys at the table (who are responsible under the Constitution and the Biosecurity Act for Quarantine in Australia), and who had no substantive plan or facilities for the containment and arrest of any biological agent entering Australia, managed to abrogate their responsibility for Quarantine to the States and then imposed on them a 24 hour period in which to be up and running.
Is it any wonder that under such circumstances that the Little Boys and girls at the table in National Cabinet, were on a hiding to nothing? Is it any wonder that mistakes were made?
What is most amazing is that the Morrison government aided and abetted by a compliant press has got away with their complete abrogation of responsibility.
It also leaves them with a convenient scapegoat to blame when things go wrong.
And they use that blame at every opportunity.

​A discussion of where we are today.
Some issues.
At this juncture of this discussion, it is imperative to know what we are dealing with in Covid 19.
We are dealing with a Novel Corona Virus. Novel in the Cambridge English dictionary is described thus.
"medical   specialized
used to refer to a new strain (= type) of a virus that has not been seen before:
The COVID-19 pathogen is a novel coronavirus."
 
Because it has not been seen before there is no vaccine and one had to be developed. Several were developed in Quick time and are now available and being administered.
During the time they were being developed, Australia and indeed the rest of the world had the opportunity to “bet” on successful outcomes and to pre order doses for their respective populations. This is a process known as planning.
Basically what happened was Australia put all of their eggs in the “AstraZenica” basket, with a side order of Pfizer. This has led to an outcome where a complication has occurred in extremely rare cases of blood clotting with AZ and so the health advice has been to limit the population receiving that Vaccine to over 60’s.
Because only a small amount of Pfizer was ordered, supply is limited and so the vaccination of Australians under 60 is now slowed considerably by supply constraints.
The only way to beat this virus is for the majority of the population to be vaccinated.
This is only one major issue. I discuss the others below.

​Lockdown.
To lockdown or not to lockdown.
No one likes to be made to stay at home and much has been made of the economic impact of the virus. Yet because of its transmissibility, which has become worse as it mutates, infection rates in normal society are very likely to be high. As with all Viruses, they affect people differently. Some are naturally immune but are still carriers, some are mildly ill and some are acutely ill with long lasting effects (Long Covid), whilst others die. So far this virus has claimed 182 million cases with 3.95 million deaths. (2.17%)
Lockdown in Australia has contained the virus, but has had very bad economic effects. However letting the virus run its course has also had disastrous economic immediate effects, with the ongoing effects of death and long lasting illness.
This poses the ethical question of what were are, an economy or a community? 

​A subset of lockdown.
In April 2020 the statistics show that Australia effectively closed its borders and locked down. (Remember that hotel Quarantine was implemented on 27th March 2020).
The statistics which show the Arrivals into Australia during the Pandemic can be found at 

​This data goes back to September 2016, so it has been published for nearly 5 years.
When Queensland Premier Anastacia Palaszczuk questioned the numbers of Australians arriving in these figures this week (week ending 02/07/2021) she was met with an attack by Simon Birmingham and also by the home Affairs minister Karen Andrews.
Karen Andrews said the following.

​As you can see I reminded her of the commonwealth’s responsibility for Quarantine.
Surely the Quarantine failure has been the Commonwealth Government?
But let’s also look at the figures and what they tell us.
In May 2021, the statistics tell us that 115,620 persons arrived into Australia.
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/tourism-and-transport/overseas-travel-statistics-provisional/latest-release
The page also tells us that they consisted of 44,600 Australian citizens arrivals (39%), 9,900 permanent visa holders (9%), 52,300 New Zealand citizens (45%) and 10,100 temporary visa holders (9%). Curious because this adds up to 116,900 a difference of 1280 people.
I wonder where those people are. I thought we had secure borders?
Now Karen Andrews tells us that 80% are Australian citizens, PR’s or immediate family.
Lets unpack that. Well 115,620 is the stated number and we know that 52,300 are new Zealand Citizens and they are in the Australia new Zealand bubble, so don’t need to isolate, The Stats also tell us that 44570 Australian citizens arrived in May 2021 and that 3160 were permanent family Visas. We just can’t tell who the Permanent residents are because the Stats are defined by country of citizenship.
So 80% of the arrivals into Australia (according to Karen Andrews) are 115,620 minus 52,300 NZ citizens from the bubble equals 63,320. 80% of that is 50,656. Leaving 12664 citizens of other countries who have come into Australia in May 2021.
All of those 63,320 should have gone into hotel Quarantine. So let us examine that.
In an article in the ABC website on 5th Feb 2021, they reported the changes (as from 15th Feb 2021) per week of the Hotel Quarantine per State.
 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-05/scott-morrison-national-cabinet-press-conference/13125888
Inside that article was a table of new Quotas per state per week.

​Assuming that there are 4 weeks in most months, which would give a total Hotel Quarantine capacity per month as 6,362 x 4 = 25,448 capacity per month.
Please note this does not include Howard Springs. But the data in the bureau of Stats series quoted above does include Howard Springs. In the month of May 2021, the NT accepted 2,140 persons. So let us assume that the total available Quarantine is 25,448 in Hotels and 2,140 in a dedicated Howard Springs facility. A total of 27,588.    Lets now compare this figure against arrivals.
May 2021 Arrivals were 115,620 minus 52,280 from the NZ bubble (not required to Quarantine). Makes 63,340 
Take away Quarantine availability 27,588
Leaves 35,752.
Couple of Questions.
Who are these people? And where are they doing their Quarantine?
So Karen Andrews said 80% of those arrivals were Australians or Family or PR and that figure was 50,656 which in and of itself is 23,068 above the Quarantine availability.
The statistics also go into arrivals by state. And these figures don’t add up either. (They are well above the capacity agreed to in 5 Feb National Cabinet).

​Other anomalies that the data shows up.
That persons from China were barred from coming to Australia in early 2020.

​As you can see from the chart China showed a decline in persons arriving in Australia from Apr 2020, by then so did every other country in the world. Since then the totals have been growing. Australia didn’t ban the Chinese, they banned everyone but dog whistled about the Chinese.
That persons from India were barred from coming to Australia because it was a hotspot.

​Between 3rd and 15th May 2021 a travel ban was in force with India, because it was a Covid red zone (hotspot), yet the data shows hardly a blip in arrivals from that country. Was this just another dog whistle?

The whole nine millimetres (Not yards with this mob). 
Lets face it, this Covid 19 business has exposed the Liberals and Scott Morrison as classic incompetents and duck shovers as well as blamers extraordinaire.
Planning is the art of utilising the expertise of the Public service to make contingencies for circumstances such as those we face at the moment. With the advent of Mers and Sars (Two other novel Corona Viruses), the experts warned that we should plan for the future, yet no planning was done.
This Liberal Government has failed in the following areas,
1/ Quarantine failure to accept responsibility. Failure to have adequate plans in place to fight bio security hazards generally.
2/ Planning for a Pandemic event
3/ Planning and implementing a Pharmaceutical manufacturing strategy in the light of the novel Corona virus threat.
4/ Planning and implementing a manufacturing capability to produce medical equipment (respirators) and Personal Protective equipment (Masks)
5/ being slow to implement measures to protect Australians from loss of economic well being.
6/ A huge failure in the Aged care system where hundreds died because of their lack of care for the elderly, a Commonwealth responsibility.
7/ failure to plan adequately the purchase and procurement of suitable vaccine stocks.
8/ failure to actually accept responsibility for their job description under the constitution. 

​By their failure to order the requisite numbers of vaccines and by their failure to plan for proper quarantine facilities, in effect what the Morrison government is doing is importing Covid- 19 into Australia from any country where those wishing to travel have been given an exemption Today (2 July 2021) the Premiers have made him reduce the numbers of arrivals due to their overburdened Hotel Quarantine and finally he has come up with another plan to make Australia safe. How many times can we trust this man?