"Let's not pretend that people are doing the right thing. People are knowingly doing the wrong thing and pretending they don't understand."
- Gladys Berejiklian, Premier of NSW, 11:24am 13th Aug 2021.
I do not think that the Premier understands irony. As the days roll into weeks since I last went to work, I have made it a daily mission to watch Gladys O'Clock, where the NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian attempts to convince the good and fair people of New South Wales that her Government still has some semblance upon the nature of reality.
The date of August 28 now looks more like a serving suggestion than any kind of meaningful date, as the rest of the Government is playing with more bananas than Donkey Kong at the Coffs Harbour Banana Festival. It's really really bananas.
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard has refused to publicly release documents detailing the COVID-19 advice chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant provided about locking down Greater Sydney.
Dr Chant said the formal advice to lock down the region was provided in writing to the NSW crisis cabinet on June 25, the same day stay-at-home orders were announced.
But when asked to publicly provide the documents the Health Minister strongly shut down the request.
Chant said the formal advice to lock down the region was provided in writing to the NSW crisis cabinet on June 25, the same day stay-at-home orders were announced.
"I'll answer that because obviously those issues go to crisis cabinet, which is a subcommittee of cabinet. But Dr Chant is under oath, and she's giving you the evidence, which is quite clear, so she won't be providing any documents," Mr Hazzard said.
- ABC News, 10th Aug 2021
I last went to work on the 26th of July which was the Monday after Blacktown City Council was placed into the "areas of concern" on the Sunday night before. My going to work may have been illegal but such is the completely arbitrary and plenary nature of the power which the NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard currently wields under the Public Health Act 2010, who honestly knows? Blacktown City Council became the 8th "area of concern", which at the time included 6 local government areas but has now been increased from 6 to 12½.
That Sunday night was also the first night which Blacktown was also included in the nightly surveillance operation, where the NSW Police Force flies PolAir helicopters over the western suburbs and sometimes in concert with the Army and RAAF. Yesterday evening, we had a new addition to our surveillance/compliance missions with an F/A-18A Hornet. I don't exactly how a fighter jet helps with the mission of combatting an unseen and submicroscopic enemy but there we go.
The fact that Brad Hazzard doesn't want Dr Kerry Chant to provide any details about the decisions to go ahead or not go ahead with stay-at-home orders is telling, as it sort of suggests that the government has something to hide. Whether or not the decision not to lockdown areas of Sydney's Eastern Suburbs was political in nature or the decision to lockdown the Western Suburbs was, now can not be seen by the general public. The Minister with his arbitrary and plenary power, has outright refused to let the chief medical officer of the state, tell any kind of truth.
Not that I am surprised though. Any reading of history will tell you that consistently across the centuries (pandemic aside) is that the effects of wars tend to visit the less fortunate than those people who control money and power. Especially during the First World War, bullets and bombs tended to fall upon poorer people who were out on the front lines, than the officer class who were in tents well back from the front or perhaps tucked up in bed at home, where they could read about it in the newspapers.
Right up until the invention of universal health care, which is an incredibly modern invention and very late in time, health care was dispensed upon the basis of those who could most afford it.
The rollout of vaccination across NSW, with specific charismatic cases to do with private schools in the eastern suburbs, skews very much according postcode. Partly that is because the first people who were eligible to be vaccinated were quite rightly, elderly people who are at most risk of dying from the virus. There is a general correlation between age wealth. I am not sure if there is a deliberate bias towards wealthier areas (though a good case can be made) but there certainly is no obvious strategy to increase vaccination rates in less affluent areas and achieve and equitable result. The biggest mass vaccination hub is at Olympic Park; which happens to be within the boundaries of exactly zero areas of concern.
Also, the idea that you can just walk in and be vaccinated, across great swathes of Western Sydney is mostly a nonsense. NSW Health still runs a booking system and while some individual pharmacies are doing vaccinations, they might also require a booking.
It is going to be an interesting set of optics if the Premier decides to continue with plans to ease restrictions for local government areas where there higher rates of vaccination on August 28. As it stands, that would mean that the relaxation of restrictions would still follow lines of economics. Relatively wealthy suburbs on the North Shore (where she lives), the Northern Beaches, and the Eastern Suburbs (where the current outbreak of the Delta variant was allowed to get out) would go free; while less the less well off are in Western Sydney and South West Sydney would remain locked down and presumably like me, locked out of going to work.
I can stay here like a good compliant citizen because I understand that my individual rights and freedoms are less important than the obligations that we have to other people's welfare and lives but at some point, there will be a lot of people who are going to be in real financial trouble because they've been bearing the costs of this war against the unseen enemy, while the people who have access to money and power conduct affairs with no regards for them.
That attitude comes into sharper focus when you see this kind of thing going on:
https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/nsw-s-risky-10b-bet-on-markets-20210805-p58g0r
The NSW government will borrow more than $10 billion to inject money into a fund buying stocks and other global financial market assets, in an under-the-radar budget strategy that public finance and credit analysts warn will put taxpayer money at risk.
- Australian Financial Review, 9th Aug 2021.
This wouldn't be after Dominic Perrottet made a hash of the NSW iCare Workers' Compensation Scheme, would it? Playing games with financial markets while the state has other serious issues, seems a bit reckless to me. I wonder if he's in contact with the former Premier Mike Baird who quit the Premiership after finding a golden parachute into a seat at the NAB.
We ask how much I need truth, must we explain?
We need some answer, like roses need rain.
We ask how much we need truth; I'll tell you true:
Until the Twelfth of Never and that's a long, long time.
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