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Nearly six months after Victoria’s quarantine program was suspended, the COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry report was finally tabled to parliament.
It didn’t contain any real surprises. Rather, the report merely served as confirmation of the muddled decision-making process that characterised Victoria’s hotel quarantine program from the start.
As Mirko Bagaric writes, the most compelling theme of the report is the incompetence of the Andrews government to put in place coherent protocols to deal with such an enormous public health threat.
But the findings ultimately may not gain much traction, he writes. Andrews shrewdly deferred analysis of these missteps until after the virus was suppressed — making the report largely academic and historical.
As such, the political fallout may be minimal. Public attention is now focused on the current outbreak in NSW — and who is to blame for this latest quarantine failure.
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James Ross/AAP
Mirko Bagaric, Swinburne University of Technology
The clever strategy by Premier Daniel Andrews to defer analysis of the failed hotel quarantine program until the virus had been suppressed makes the findings largely academic and historical.
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LUCY HUGHES JONES/AAP
Alison Holland, Macquarie University
At a time when history is so contested, the gift of the Uluru Statement is that it provides a basis for redefining — and retelling the stories of — the nation.
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Troy Potter, University of Melbourne
2020 has been a tumultuous year. Here are some books your kids can lose themselves in this summer.
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MNStudio/Shutterstock
Julia Talbot-Jones, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington; Sophie O'Brien, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research; Suzie Greenhalgh, Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research
Given long-term forecasts for growing urban populations and an increasingly variable climate, local authorities will have to think about how best to encourage people to conserve water.
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IMDB
Amy Boyle, University of Wollongong
While other superheroes draw on past trauma for strength, super-detective Jessica Jones wryly bares her wounds and questions the whole hero gig.
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NASA / ESA / AURA / Caltech
Ray Norris, Western Sydney University
Cultures around the world call the Pleiades constellation 'seven sisters', even though we can only see six stars today. But things looked quite different 100,000 years ago
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