Thread by @Voice4Victoria

Pandemic Bill update 🧵

Today we heard the govt & crossbenchers were having a 'meeting'. Turns out this was just advisors from Foley & the Premier's office allocating 30mins for a meeting on a Friday afternoon with 11 crossbenchers & many of their staff. Seems like it's going to be productive, right?

Needless to say the most productive thing achieved was the govt can now tick a box saying they'd 'spoken to the crossbenchers'. Problem is all they spoke about was the original version of the bill & the govts own amendments - nobody elses.

While some questions did get answered, as usual most didn't, including some important ones. In the midst of bleating about how 'transparent' they suddenly plan to be, the govt retains that this apparently shouldn't apply to any past advice that's resulted in the current mandates.

Speaking of, here's some tidbits: the govt intentionally wrote the bill in a way that they can rely on verbal advice, it doesn't have to be written & they're selectively seeking advice from those that they know predominantly already agree with their policy decisions so far.

Despite the selectivity, it seems there are still excessive internal cases of amnesia & confusion when it comes to providing straight answers about exactly what experts gave advice on specific & more contraversial mandates, like those segregating children.

The govt have promised crossbenchers, many of whom are actual empathetic human beings concerned about the disastrous impact these are having on a number of kids, another meeting to discuss the mandates. They've just failed to say a date or time when that'll happen. Funny that.

In the interim, all their nasty little lackys (read: Patten, the Greens etc) have gone full tilt on social media today posting chicken little panic garbage of 'if this bill doesn't get through, we're all going to die!' / 'won't somebody please think of the children' etc etc.

Maybe should've thought of that before you were a pack of dogs & tried to ram this trash through without proper process, happily spitting in the face of other crossbenchers when you thought you could & when challenged on it just straight up lied to the public. Karma's a bitch.

In short the govt trotting out their obedient lacky types, including the unions who have clearly done nothing effective to stop this govt neglecting healthcare for years but now suddenly care so much about the staff - just screams that they're in full blown panic mode now.

The bill is optimistically scheduled for debate on Tuesday, although with no deal currently in place expect the panic porn 'iF tHiS dOeSn'T pAsS' in the media to kick up to 11 over the weekend. It'll no doubt get debated at some point next week & wow is it going to be a dogfight.