COVID-19: who’s going full doomsday prep on this?

Daniel Hale said:
i see some middle aged guy is leading a class action against security company(s) in vic, stating his father died in the 2nd wave as a direct result of their negligence, bloody ridiculous - i hope judge throws it straight out
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Thought the same thing originally, but I know someone working on the class action who explaned it. I still think it’s bs btw.. Basically he only has to prove some negligence on the part of the security company. The hotel “inquiry” has already shown security fked up.. So now the judge, or most likely laywers in a settlement, will negotiate how much that is worth.
I thought it was a long bow, but for law firms there is enough coin in it to make it worthwhile for them to chase a settlement.. It’s complete BS, but it’s about money for the law firm and a bit about some sort of justice for the dead man’s family... A lot of these class action law firms are Labor aligned so instead of going after who really is responsible, they go after the low hanging fruit.
 
ozzybmx said:
Construction here... probably different in Vic, is through the roof. Even to the extent that the house building bonuses have stretched builders to offering people to cancel contracts that were to be built soon, to rewrite the contract with the new bonus built in, saving the customer cash and build date sometime further away that when it was originally signed for, as the builders were flat out.
This is rumour and grapevine stuff, i've heard it from 2 sources that were building first time and the other, investment property.
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No dice here, SRO confirmed penalties would be served to those who had lodged official documents prior to June 4th who cancelled then had an additional application. Fine for the builders were huge too..
 
Sethius said:
My local beach has been pumping. 80% of attendees with no mask, group gatherings, sun baking etc. Within 5km live about 200 people, so majority were breaking the laws.
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That sucks. Where I live in Melbourne is 99% self-righteous hipsters who are all doing the right thing, but I noticed on my rides over the weekend the number of walkers wearing masks on the YTs is plummeting.
 
Kerplunk said:
It’s not that hard, labor aligned law firms don’t go after their own, same with the lib aligned firms with lib govs. My partner worked at one of the big labor firms for years.. The bigs ones are very open about their affiliations and their donations..
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perhaps I should have also underlined the who is really responsible part of that... never mind, im sick of that bullshit newscorp crap.
 
Haakon said:
perhaps I should have also underlined the who is really responsible part of that... never mind, im sick of that bullshit newscorp crap.
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Agree politics of the newscorpse blame game is toxic. Although there appears to be consensus across the media of all flavours that in the end the buck stops with the gov and assoc depts since the inquiry started..
The reason this civil class action is aimed at the security companies is because genomic testing proved 98-99% of all cases come from hotel quarantine.. We know the guards ballsed it up, so the security companies that hired them have a portion of liability. But in turn, so do the people that hired security firms that weren’t fit for purpose..
 
Kerplunk said:
But in turn, so do the people that hired security firms that weren’t fit for purpose..
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Thing is you can't draw a causal link between the decision to hire security guards and people contracting and dying from COVID-19. Private contracting of services is standard practice across all levels of government in Australia (for better or worse) - the decision to use private security firms wasn't negligent and it didn't cause the widespread transmission that followed. Clearly in hindsight there were significant issues with the decision itself and also how it was enacted (allowing subcontracting etc) but the consequences of those to government and individual decision-makers will be political not legal.
 
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leitch said:
Thing is you can't draw a causal link between the decision to hire security guards and people contracting and dying from COVID-19. Private contracting of services is standard practice across all levels of government in Australia (for better or worse) - the decision to use private security firms wasn't negligent and it didn't cause the widespread transmission that followed. Clearly in hindsight there were significant issues with the decision itself and also how it was enacted (allowing subcontracting etc) but the consequences of those to government and individual decision-makers will be political not legal.
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Bingo. This is what shits me with the people blaming government at the moment

The gov. hired a security company to perform a task (from a list of federally approved companies I believe? I can't remember where I read that though so might not be correct). The security company was paid, probably handsomely. The security company then subcontracted the work out and it was completely ballsed up.

To me, this seems like a pretty clearcut issue with the subcontractor. Maybe there should have been clauses put in the contract outlining training requirements? Maybe the gov. should have used the adf as offered? Either way NSW seems to be coping fine with using private security for the same purpose so the difference seems to me that we're either unlucky or have more idiots than NSW.

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I thought you only hired security firms for night clubs/parties and to control intoxicated people. Is this what the government had in mind for quarantine all along :p Does explain how it got out of hand.
 
At the end of the day if the gov/depts were a company, there would be heads rolling.
You can’t fuck something like this up and blame the sub contractor 100% when you were aware from day 1 that you had hired the wrong skillset for the job and did nothing about it..
The gov might well use security normally, but things are far from normal when your using commercial hotels to quarantine the infected in a 1 in 100 year pandemic..
 
Plankosaurus said:
Bingo. This is what shits me with the people blaming government at the moment
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Yeah look I'm not giving the government a free pass entirely, I just don't think that @Kerplunk's suggestion that the contractors are "low hanging fruit" and the consequential implication that the class action should be aimed at the government/decision makers instead holds water.

One of the reasons governments like contracting services and functions to private sector is de-risking - if/when it goes tits up then they can point to the contract and say it was the fault of the contractor. In this case yes there's clearly truth in that, but there are also undoubtedly questions to answer about the suitability of the contracts used (permitting sub-contracting), the companies chosen, and the oversight/management/implementation mechanisms.

The recent showing in the inquiry of a procession of ministers fronting up and saying "I don't remember whose decision it was" and variously pointing the finger at one another rather than laying out the decision making process for public interrogation is absolutely farcical.
 
Nambra said:
Totally agree with your last paragraph @leitch, it’s like watching Yes Minister.
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From a ch7 reporter who has watched all the hearings..
 
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