Despite the findings of the Coate Report, a major question remains: why was the state of Victoria unprepared for the Covid pandemic?

The magnitude and aftereffects of Covid could not be entirely predicted, however, earlier epidemics like Sars and Bird Flu meant that the Department of Health and Human Safety (DHHS) should have been prepared with tested policies and plans. Instead, Victorians saw it as a spate of contradictory information, failed systems, and general confusion.

Even the best plans fail, but the confusion within decision-making and management roles was highlighted when no one could determine (or remember) who had decided what!

To understand the failings in Victoria, I went back to the annual Department of Health and Human Services Report for the period relating to 2018-19 only to find that there was no mention of epidemic preparation despite there being an entire team devoted to it.

Instead, the department appeared to be preoccupied with questions of class, gender, and minority relations – throwing taxpayer dollars at various consultants while spending millions pursuing selective social justice causes whilst the rest of Victoria was left in peril.

Starting with Department Secretary Kym Peake’s forward, Peake tells us that one role for DHHS is ‘advancing Aboriginal self-determination’. I’m not sure why, ‘Aboriginal self-determination’ is of concern to DHHS. We have federal and state bodies dealing with Indigenous issues.

There is also enormous expenditure on ‘safety cultures’ and ‘safe hubs’. However, these expensive ideas of ‘safety cultures’ and ‘safe hubs’ didn’t exist when it came to Covid. Victorians, particularly the elderly, were left vulnerable. Unlike the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, there were no epidemic emergency exercises ever undertaken to test the capacity of the department and the government to deal with Covid or similar epidemics.

And so, the wise and enlightened Department Secretary makes us feel warm as she begins by saying, ‘Supporting consumers to be partners in their own care.’

Oh, so we have to look after ourselves?

Designing ‘diversity frameworks’ and ‘culturally safe, inclusive, and accessible’ entities is the order for the day for DHHS.

Sorry, Department Secretary, but we have been a multicultural society for over 70 years delivering health and human services to each and every migrant group that arrived. Each ‘culturally diverse’ group was treated equally and humanely without the creation of artificially created hubs and frameworks. It is you, and your department, that seeks to identify, distinguish, and separate us into distinct groups.

With the combination of universal and private care, Australian health services are provided to everyone. As a reminder, there are also disadvantaged white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who need your services. Please ensure you don’t forget them in your next budget. Spend less on consultants and more for those in need. Look carefully, you will find them on our streets, caravan parks, and in housing commission flats.

Poverty and its consequential lack of access to health and social services affect all, not only minority groups. The consultant’s money could have been better spent on giving our aged, disability, and frontline healthcare workers additional pay increases or in the delivery of frontline services. The expenditure and the nonsense thinking behind the expenditure shows that the department and its leadership were nothing more than lazy, finding it easier to outsource the decision-making process, where anywhere else, especially in private industry, such decisions would be made by a competent board.

Again, at pains, DHHS tells us its objectives include that ‘Victorians are connected to culture and community’ or that ‘Victorians are socially engaged and live in inclusive communities’ and ‘Victorians can safely identify and connect with their culture and identity, with their health and wellbeing advanced through self-determination’.

It goes on: ‘Victorian health and human services are person-centered and sustainable. Services are inclusive and respond to choice, culture, identity, circumstances, and goals.’

Department Secretary, you missed the point, Covid did not choose its victims based on sex, colour, or creed. It attacked, the most vulnerable in our community, the elderly. It was not a federal matter, the day-to-day protection was left in your hands. You failed them. Sadly, many of the elderly were our proud culturally, diverse migrants, who gave everything to this beautiful nation, paid their taxes, and simply asked that they be taken care of in their last days. They were never provided with a ‘safe hub’.

It’s not until page 105 that DHHS even tell us that they are concerned with epidemics or similar emergencies. Finally, Melissa Skilbeck, Deputy Secretary – Regulation, Health Protection and Emergency Management, is entrusted with the sacred role. What does the team do?

‘The Regulation, Health Protection and Emergency Management division combines professional, technological and epidemiological expertise to protect the Victorian public from avoidable harm.

‘The division advances public health, including monitoring use of medicines, environmental health, and communicable disease through the identification of risks and the use of social regulation. It supports continuous improvement in health and human services regulatory practice and leads the ministry’s relationship with our commissioners.’

I assume this includes Emergency Victoria and the Chief Health Officer. Interesting role description… The section is supposed to ‘build community resilience and support social recovery in disaster-impacted communities, and coordinates business continuity planning for the department’. Well, the consultants survived, but many small businesses did not, thanks to the failures of the culturally sensitive department.

Limitation in this article prevents a full summary, but the message is clear, the department was advancing an agenda commensurate with the vague social justice narrative. Why  did it have to outsource so many of its plans to consultants and could not undertake its own investigations with such well-educated VP 5 / 6 level bureaucrats, or indeed request the Department of Infrastructure to assess the viability of planning hospitals, health centres, or other health and social services?

Here is a sample of where Victorian taxpayer’s money was spent:

And the clincher, the department spent $184,373 to develop risk-based audit approach and training, ironically unable to see how they were wasting the taxpayer’s dollar. So, until the next lockdown, I pray for all Victorians.