Mr T SMITH (Kew) (11:15): I rise to oppose this obscene bill, this massive and gross overreach, which has come about because of the greatest public administration failure in our country’s history—the greatest public administration failure in our country’s history undertaken by the crooks on the other side of the chamber. They should be charged with criminal negligence, with industrial manslaughter. Your sins against the Victorian people have killed 572 of them. Do you realise that—that your negligence, your behaviour, your lies have killed people? That is the gravity of the sins that you have committed against the people of Victoria, and you have blamed them. How dare you. How dare you blame the people of Victoria.
The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Dimopoulos): Order! The member will direct his comments through the Chair. He has been here long enough to know that.
Mr T SMITH: How dare the Labor Party blame the people of Victoria for their own malfeasance in public office that has killed literally hundreds of people. The Premier has constantly lied about the offer of Australian Defence Force personnel to assist with hotel quarantine. On 28 March the Premier said this—
The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Dimopoulos): Order! The member is out of order, and he knows that.
Mr T SMITH: ‘and the Australian Defence Force’—before you turned my microphone off. The Australian Defence Force. He said it. The Prime Minister offered the use of the Australian Defence Force. The Premier said that on 28 March out there in the garden. He said it under the Federation oak tree out there in the garden—that the Prime Minister offered the use of the Australian Defence Force to manage hotel quarantine—and he continuously lies about it. He continuously lies to the people of Victoria, continuously lies to himself and then sends out elves, like Crisp, to peddle his lies again at various parliamentary committee hearings. Well, Crisp has lied—I know he has lied. The Premier continues to lie—he lies to the media, he lies to the public. Well, I am not going to fall for it, and I am going to continue to call it out because that lie and that decision has cost hundreds of people their lives, cost hundreds of thousands of people their livelihoods and made thousands of people sick.
Ninety-nine per cent of the cases of the second wave were caused by the hotel quarantine foul-up. That is a fact. As the second president, John Adams, said, ‘Facts are stubborn things’—and you will not live this down. Ninety-nine per cent of all cases in the second wave came from Labor’s hotel quarantine stuff-ups. That is true. It is proven. Evidence provided by the Doherty Institute to the Coate inquiry proved it. Yet more lies—’Not our fault. It’s the Victorian people. They had barbecues. They caught up with one another. They met in large family groups’, the Premier said. What rubbish. What absolute rubbish. This was caused by the Premier’s decision not to use the Australian Defence Force in hotel quarantine.
To make matters worse, we have the worst contact tracing team in Australia if not the western world. Apparently they use sticky notes on whiteboards. As my friend the member for Brighton says, it is a Third World regime that has resulted in us being locked down like criminals, locked in our houses, only allowed to do an hour of exercise every day.
Criminals have more opportunity to do exercise than the good people of Victoria at the moment; that is a fact. The fact is that this man continues to blame us, who have done the right thing, who have adhered to these rules. The vast majority of us have adhered to these rules, frankly, to a detail that I could never expect us to have done, yet he blames us.
So we are locked in our houses with a curfew at 8.00 pm. They have trashed the economy. Why—because your contact tracing team is so abysmal. You could not stop the virus like they have done in New South Wales by building a fence around each and every new case. I have heard this many times. In New South Wales if someone has had any contact with an active case, they get a phone call within hours. In 4 hours, I heard, one lady got a phone call from the New South Wales Department of Health. Down here it takes weeks—weeks. Apparently the chief health officer now is some sort of sex symbol or minor celebrity. Heavens above. I think those in the Department of Health and Human Services have been an abysmal failure, frankly. That is why the Minister for Health should have resigned. I mean, 572 people have died on her watch in the second wave.
I draw the house’s attention to these facts. Only 19 people had passed away of this awful disease until 1 June—only 19 people in Victoria; since 1 June, 572. That puts into perspective the catastrophe that is your fault—that is the Labor Party’s fault, that is the Premier’s fault. There can be no hiding from this responsibility. I call on the Premier to resign, I call on the Minister for the Coordination of Jobs, Precincts and Regions: COVID-19 to resign, I call on the health minister to resign and I call on the Minister for Police and Emergency Services to resign. Those ministers have blood on their hands, because their failings have caused death, destruction and economic catastrophe to this great state and indeed to our nation.
We are now in a recession, a recession that we were always going to have when the economy was closed down in March. But I tell you what, it is a thousand times worse because of the Premier’s contribution to it: 25 per cent of the nation’s population, 25 per cent of the nation’s economy or thereabouts are locked up, and now we hear they are going to be locked up for months more. They are getting a six-month power grab here today—a state of emergency for another six months, yet we read in the Herald Sun yesterday leaked documents out of the government. I think there are some panicked public servants, staffers or politicians in the Andrews Labor government at the moment because they see what is coming to them. A leaked document shows no real plan out for business, no plan for mums and dads who are doing their very best to school their kids at home. I cannot imagine how difficult that must be when you are trying to do someone else’s job whilst keeping your own job, with your kids at home. I know from friends how difficult this has been.
I know how hard it has been for people who have lost their job, who cannot work, and then they switch the television on and they see this bloke standing there—he has never worked a day in his life in the private sector—saying, ‘Oh, it’s your fault. You met in big groups and the second wave started and all these people died. But it’s not my fault’. Take responsibility and resign, you grub. Take some responsibility and resign. Do the right thing for once in this whole debacle, this embarrassing debacle that is once again going to make our proud state the rust bucket of the nation. It is going to make our proud state the embarrassment of the nation. We are looked upon by the rest of the country, and indeed the world, as an oddity.
A member interjected.
Mr T SMITH: Indeed—as an oddity. Why? Seven out of eight jurisdictions could manage this virus quite fine. Even Queensland managed to do it. Heavens above, with that numbskull of a Premier up there, even they managed to do it. Do you know why? They took the advice of the federal government, brought in the ADF to manage hotel quarantine and actually listened to people who might have known something more about pandemic management than a mere politician.
But the Premier, no, he was the health minister. He is a genius on matters regarding health! He knows everything! I mean, ‘I stand with Dan’, ‘Dan’s a hero’, ‘Dan’s a legend’. No, Dan is a bloody crook. Dan has wrecked the joint. It is a smouldering wreck because of his malfeasance, his failures, his negligence. He has wrecked the joint. He is a crook. He ought to be locked up for what he has done to the people of Victoria. It is criminal. It is absolutely bloody criminal what he has done, and I hope over the next two years the people of Victoria will have time to reflect on the utter negligence that this man has inflicted upon them—the loss of jobs, the loss of lives and the loss of prestige to our great state. Shame on him. May he go now.