ON MARCH 19 this year the operators of the Ruby Princess were given the go ahead to discharge 2700 passengers without health checks for COVID-19, in circumstances where there should have been strict scrutiny.
The announcement by the NSW Government of a criminal enquiry by the homicide squad of the NSW Police had me scratching my head.
There is no criminal offence in the statute books that could in any way prohibit any action or inaction of the NSW Government or more particularly, the Department of Health.
CLEVER
Consequently the whole focus will be on the cruise ship operators who, unlike the Government, have the capacity to commit prescribed criminal offences.
In the short term, the enquiry is in fact a very clever strategy to get the Government off the hook.
In the long term, it is unlikely the issue will have dissipated by the end of the scheduled 18 month enquiry. Regardless of the result of the criminal enquiry, I see the matter continuing to simmer and cause embarrassment to the Government, until it can be put to rest by a full and open enquiry.
STUFFED UP
As a Liberal with a vested interest in the coalition winning the next election, I would be happier if Premier Berejiklian instead of ducking the issue, had said “Yes, we stuffed up, in very difficult circumstances, but we are determined to lift our game and lead NSW out of the Coronavirus crisis as quickly as humanly possible”.
Despite the example set by Peter Beatty in winning the un-winnable election in Queensland in 2004, by confessing to stuffing it up, politicians never seem to learn that honesty wins more votes than obfuscation and buck passing.PC
JurisDiction
What a lovely pair these two make: the one looking for all the world like a 1950’s Soviet Union apparatchik, and the other doing a more than passable job of channelling Gollum.
Brad looks to be in the sourest of moods – check out the extent to which edges of his mouth are turned down: he looks like he’s spent a month doing nothing but sucking lemons. This is no surprise, of course; this individual was the architect of legislation that allows unborn babies to be murdered right up until the moment of birth, and it was inevitable that the darkness in his soul would eventually become apparent in his visage. I wonder if he has the faintest inkling that, in the not-too-distant future, he will face his maker for judgement, and that there will be nowhere at all for him to hide…
I thoroughly agree