THREAD: I don’t agree Mikakos was thrown under a bus. She was the minister in charge of DHHS. On 11/6, two days before @theage ran the first story on hotel quarantine failings, DHHS’s top spinner rang to say we were off track, publishing would be a mistake #springst

She got the head of Unified Security to tell us the same. How spectacularly wrong was she! It was all lies. Should taxpayers fund media advisors to obstruct truth? Why was time and effort dedicated to this instead of fixing the problem BEFORE the Stamford outbreak?

Mikakos’ statement reads like she was a victim. “In good conscience, I do not believe that my actions led to them.” Our first article was published 13/6. She didn’t see there was a problem until 30/6! It was her INACTION that was the problem.

People usually come to media after their complaints are ignored. This is what happened here. If we knew there was a problem in early June, why didn’t they? Why wasn’t swift action taken? We were continually obstructed on a whole range of questions.

After the Stamford outbreak, they refused for days to answer whether the positive staff were guards. When we asked if the hotel outbreaks could be linked to the 2nd wave, I was rung and given a long explanation as to why this likely off track ...

... told and that irresponsible members of the public were more likely to have passed it on to guards who took it into the hotel. This is despite multiple hotel workers already saying there were major infection control problems in all the hotels.

I agree Andrews is ultimately responsible and should have acted too. He faces the media almost everyday but he didn’t on 13/6. They hoped it would all go away and for almost two weeks it did in the media, only we are in a pandemic, so meanwhile the virus spread throughout Melb.

A 2nd outbreak occurred, the hotel quarantine debacle blew up in the media and an inquiry was called. But still problems existed on the ground. Whether she knew about private security is beside the point. Staff complaints about infection control should have been taken seriously

And acted upon immediately. Maybe if more effort was spent listening to staff on the ground instead of trying to save face, we wouldn’t still be stuck in our houses and hundreds of people wouldn’t have died. Take responsibility. Own it. Drop the spin. It’s infuriating.

(Do I feel sorry for Mikakos? Yes. I genuinely think both her and Andrews seem like good people. I think our political system has become all about optics and they didn’t invent this. But it still needs to be called out.)