Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison and his office were quick with the excuses and blame for others when found out, but a man already notorious for being chronically workshy has just reinforced his reputation.
There was a reason most of the jobs he held between leaving university and entering the Australian Parliament lasted no more than two years' duration and, unfortunately the drought, then the bushfires and now the pandemic are showing us that reason.
News.com.au,
18 September 2020:
Scott
Morrison was warned that COVID-19 contact tracers urgently needed
airlines to keep more data on travellers in January but failed to
secure agreement on the mandated collection of information for
travellers until today’s national cabinet.
Correspondence
obtained by news.com.au confirms that Queensland Premier Annastacia
Palaszczuk wrote to the Prime Minister on January 31, just days after
the first confirmed case in Australia on the “matter of national
importance”.
As
the states dealt with the influx of international passengers, they
were shocked to learn that incoming travellers’ passenger cards
were essentially thrown in the bin or unable to be accessed on
privacy grounds.
In
the letter, the Queensland Premier warned the Prime Minister that the
states’ ability to respond to the emerging public health crisis
would be greatly assisted “if your government, as the primary
recipient of information concerning people entering Australia, could
undertake to contact anyone considered at-risk”.
“It
is important that in times such as these we work together to respond
quickly and effectively to minimise the potential risk this emerging
public health issue poses to our community,” she wrote.
The
correspondence also asked the Morrison Government to share
information with the states about arrivals from Wuhan, the epicentre
of the outbreak.
“Only
the Federal Government has the details on their incoming boarding
card of who they are, where they are staying and their mobile phone
contact numbers.
“We
need to contact those people. I don’t know at the moment in
Queensland where people from the Hubei province currently are because
the Federal Government has that information.”
Ultimately,
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said the full Tigerair manifest,
including emails, contact numbers and other known details of all the
passengers was given to the Queensland Government.
But
despite the pleas of state leaders since January, the mandatory
collection of data on domestic flight has taken more than six months
to finalise.
Privacy
laws have proved a minefield for public servants to navigate, with
the Morrison Government forced to find “work arounds” to provide
contact details on international travellers while the collection of
information on domestic flights was even worse.
The
Prime Minister confirmed the new arrangements today for the mandatory
data collection on domestic flights to assist states and territories
when it comes to contact tracing.
“From
1 October, part of the mandatory manifest information will be name,
email address, a mobile contact number, and a state of residence,’’
Mr Morrison said.
“There’s
still some work to be done there. That will be arranged with the
major airlines, with the Department of Infrastructure, and those
arrangements are being put in place now.
“Now,
that is just simply to help our state and territory agencies in the
contact tracing that they may be required to do, when it comes to
tracking when people are moving from state to state, and that
information will, of course, be treated sensitively by the states and
territories in the same way that public health information is always
treated.” [my yellow highlighting]
Flights
with confirmed cases of COVID-19 are published by state health
authorities.
Health
authorities list the rows considered to be "close contacts"
of the confirmed case.
Those
who have been in close contact with a confirmed case are required to
self-isolate for 14 days.
* CREDIT: Image of Scott Morrison from The Monthly.
