You can picture the brains trust in the Prime Minister’s entourage sitting around yesterday afternoon contemplating the fallout from his trainwreck media conference just an hour earlier.
The one in which he belligerently held firm that there was nothing wrong with his decision to proactively call the CEO of Qantas on no less than 22 occasions to ‘request’ personal flight upgrades to business, including while he was the minister in charge of aviation.
They desperately needed the news cycle to move on, and fast.
Next week’s US Presidential election is too far away. What news can they drop on the public right now to help get Albo past this latest crisis?
Enter Albo’s factional ally and health minister, Mark Butler. He’d been sitting on a report into the Covid pandemic, and waiting for a good time to release it to maximise political advantage.
Yesterday arvo had to be that moment. Albo needed the distraction, and this report was significant enough to help.
The COVID 19 report was more scathing of state governments’ than expected, which is one reason why Labor was sitting on it why contemplating how to make best use of it. They had expected it to be most critical of the Morrison administration, but that wasn’t the case.
There was plenty of scorn to go around all the same. Either way, it didn’t matter. Albo needed saving so he was happy to release it right away, even if it would pour a bucket of you-know-what on some of his state Labor colleagues.
Anthony Albanese had his friend Mark Butler release the Covid 19 report in a bid to distract everyone from his Qantas freebies debacle, says Peter van Onselen
An independent panel of three – one health professional, one economist and one former bureaucrat – found that the federal and state governments were too heavy handed in their responses to the pandemic.
There were deep policy inconsistencies, they found, and too much money blown. And the fallout from going too far during the pandemic means that next time such a crisis hits it will be harder to convince voters to follow the rules.
Anthony Albanese had hoped to be part of the media conference unleashing the damming assessments about his predecessor Scott Morrison. He would hvae especially relished to chance to crow about concerns in the report that the federal government spent too much money.
The report even included a swipe at the Reserve Bank for cutting rates too quickly, contributing to the jump in house prices that followed, before inflation subsequently got out of control.
But sadly for Albo he had to be hidden from view when the report was released, leaving it to Treasurer Jim Chalmers to join the PM’s buddy Butler to make the announcement.
Chalmers – the alternative some within Labor are quietly mulling over just in case they need to cut Albo loose – thus took his chance to take aim at his predecessor, former treasurer Josh Frydenberg for ‘some poor policy choices during the pandemic’.
Whatever mistakes were made, the simple fact is that Labor always wanted to go harder and spend more during the pandemic, the very actions the report criticised, even in the more moderate form delivered by the then incumbent Coalition government.
But in politics facts rarely get in the way of spin, and that is doubly the case most times Chalmers has something to say.
The Treasurer had the stage, his boss was forced into hiding, and Frydenberg is no longer in the parliament.
So it mattered not that Chalmers as shadow treasurer wanted the then Coalition to spend even more than it did on JobKeeper, to offer wider ranging taxpayer assistance, and the Labor Party also pushed for even tougher restrictions than Morrison allowed for.
As Frydenberg said yesterday, Labor ‘even wanted to buy an airline’.
I’m sure there is a joke in there somewhere that can bring us back to airbus Albo and his flight upgrades, but now isn’t the time.
The key recommendation from the COVID 19 report is to establish a $250million Centre for Disease Control (CDC) to better manage the next pandemic.
The Health Minister immediately committed to implant the recommendation. Whether Butler is capable of doing so in a way that ensures success is a genuine question we’ll have to wait to properly answer in the coming months and possibly years.
Dr Nick Coatsworth was one of the only senior health officials who questioned the rationale for some of the restrictions being imposed during the pandemic, writes Peter van Onselen
The person who clearly should be asked to head up a new CDC is self evidently former Deputy Chief Medical Officer from the pandemic, Dr Nick Coatsworth.
Not only is he a specialist in infectious diseases by training, but Coatsworth was one of the only senior health officials prepared to question the rationale for some of the restrictions being imposed during the pandemic.
Especially the ones yesterday’s report were more critical of.
In other words, the findings of this report have vindicated concerns Coatsworth had and expressed in real time, which is why yesterday he welcomed both the reports findings and recommendations.
Coatsworth should therefore be the natural choice to head up a new CDC: he has the right medical training and health management experience, plus it is the key recommendation in a report that vindicated his big calls during the pandemic.
But is the Albanese government capable of getting such an appointment right? Free from petty partisan thinking? I highly doubt it.
