Thread by @BiancaMinnie4

Laura Tingle spot on as usual.
Media release from #ScottyTheAnnouncer on Friday:
"Government chartered repatriation flights to the Centre for National Resilience at Howard Springs for Australians returning from India will resume on May 15," 1/
abc.net.au/news/2021-05-0…

2/ What is the "Centre for National Resilience"?
Answer: a quarantine centre (Howard Springs)

Yep, the Minister for Announcements &🐂💩, #ScottyFromMarketing, had a "jazzy name" for it. Always the most important thing in a pandemic & you've stuffed up.

3/ @latingle writes, it shows the depressing priorities of this government. The starting point for communicating policies is not to tell taxpayers what they need to know is approached "through the prism of a political opportunity, or political badging".
#auspol

4/ Particularly horrifying when you consider India's COVID-19 pandemic has "reached catastrophic levels. COVID in India looks like our worst pandemic nightmares".

5/ Greg Hunt has invoked Section 477 of the Biosecurity Act eight times (e.g. banning cruise ships, stopping Australians going overseas, visiting remote Indigenous communities). But the "going to jail" thing hasn't been stressed before.

6/ #ScottyFromDamageControl "tried to defend the government's shambolic handling of information about its actions" by blaming the media. It was the media's fault for emphasising the jail terms, but clearly the purpose of the biosecurity determination seemed to be...

7/ ...to deter people from trying to sneak back into the country via a different travel hub. Jail or a large fine might be used to good effect as a deterrent & Greg Hunt included the possible consequences in his midnight announcement. #auspol

8/ @latingle writes that following this, the information flow from the govt "has appeared as chaotic as the government's handling of the issue".
- There was no information on what govt was doing to fix things during the pause.
So the pause was it? 😳
#auspol

9/ - No info about what was being done to help people stranded in India.
- No info on what would be put in place to facilitate their arrival after the pause
- What about increasing quarantine capacity?
#ScottyTheAnnouncer was silent.

10/ Unsurprisingly, outrage & questions about the move, & accusations of racism ensued.
Where was Scotty?
The PM was not to be seen. Ministers who appeared seemed flummoxed by questions. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️
Were they expecting applause????? #auspol

11/ The High Commissioner to India Barry O'Farrell also didn't appear for several days. 😳
Tingle suggests it only seemed to become a "real emergency when the Coalition media cheer squad and the govt backbencher started to say it was in fact a really, really bad idea. 😳

@latingle also reports that despite this, govt sources were still "briefing out" that the move was running hotly in the government's favour among voters.
Okay so although Australians in India were not allowed to return to their home & the severity of the crisis there...

13/ ...meant the risk of illness or even death was very, very real, Morrison govt sources (& one assumes, Morrison himself) were more focused on what their base might think than the wellbeing of Australians.
I shouldn't be surprised in the slightest but I'm still appalled. 😡

14/ So as Tingle says, focusing on putting out a positive message about your base "is a thing when you are trying to shape a policy to deal with a pandemic". #auspol #ScottyFromMarketing

15/ By Friday, govt was announcing repat flights would start at the end of the pause.
BUT the PM was also saying that "people testing positive for COVID would be left in India".
Govt protested that this has always been the policy and is standard practice around the world. 😳

16/ @latingle argues that the scale of the problem in India & the apparent abandonment of Indian Australians highlight big & real questions about the capacity of the Morrison govt to run key responses to the pandemic.
Quarantine & vaccines.
#auspol

17/ Govt has apparently sat on its hands about expanding quarantine capacity, despite advice that this was necessary.
"It shunted quarantine to the states but in the last week seems to have stuffed it up anyway. And four million of us were not vaccinated by the end of March".

18/ So how good's marketing? How good are Facebook videos to Australians of Indian descent? Should we expect the inevitable Mother's Day video from #ScottyFromLookOverHere, as @RonniSalt predicted?

19/19 Or should we expect much more from a fed govt than the Morrison govt seems capable of?
For all Australians.
#auspol

@threadreaderapp unroll. 😊