Parliament Speech - No Confidence Motion

NO CONFIDENCE MOTION

Tuesday, 13 October 2020

Mr NEWBURY (Brighton): (19:19)

Daniel Andrews is the worst Premier that Victoria has ever had—the worst Premier that Victoria has ever had—and this No-Confidence Motion is an opportunity to fix that, to hold the Premier to account.

This Parliament must sack Dan.

They must give him the boot.

This Motion is a test of the character of every Member. Members who deny this motion will be green lighting the government’s open-door quarantine program. They will be accepting the Third World-grade contact-tracing regime, and they will be turning their backs on the families of the 800 Victorians who have tragically died in the second wave.

Victorians are demanding that the Premier be held accountable. They know who is at fault: Premier Andrews. Victorians are sick of the cover-ups. They have seen their Premier field questions at 100 consecutive press conferences but turn up at the open-door quarantine inquiry and recall nothing. In fact, when giving evidence he claimed to not recall almost 30 times. His evidence was shameful.

This inquiry is a $6 million public service whitewash.

We know the decision to use private security came from the top, just as we know the Premier’s strategy for managing the pandemic has failed. It has failed because the Premier is an ideological fanatic. He adopted a rogue strategy to manage the virus. His own former Health Minister admitted it, claiming that the Premier is chasing an elimination strategy. And his approach has been backed by his Chief Health Officer. Brett Sutton is a zealot. We have known that from day one.

In March, when the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee supported proportional, scalable, sustainable social distancing measures, the Victorian Chief Health Officer had a dissenting view.

Together Daniel Andrews and Brett Sutton have gone rogue.

Do not just take my word for it—

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! Government members will come to order! I just remind the member that a number of times he has referred to a member in this place by their first name and second name rather than their correct title.

Mr NEWBURY: Thank you, Speaker. Five hundred doctors petitioned the Premier, saying his response will cause more deaths and result in far more negative health effects than the virus itself.

This strategy has fallen apart, and their supposed road map has collapsed. We only need to look over the border to see it. Victorians are like convicts looking over the jail yard fence into New South Wales to see an open economy where there are more cases recorded there today than in our locked-down State.

Is it any wonder the former Minister for Health resigned? What an unprecedented resignation—a Health Minister walking out in the middle of a pandemic, and we know she is not the only one to turn her back on the Premier.

No-one should forget the Premier’s Parliamentary fixer, Gavin Jennings, who also walked out, or the Premier’s former public service enforcer, Chris Eccles, who pulled the pin, a man who will be remembered for his forgetfulness—what a dishonourable display—and as the Tsar known for stacking the politicised public service executive with his cronies.

The Premier has lost his health fixer, his Parliamentary fixer and now his public service fixer.

The Premier is an isolated man—an isolated man who is a danger to Victorians.

In the name of public health this government has caused a mental health crisis, which has swept over our community like a tidal wave and admitted today that their lockdown has led to one in five children being left behind.

It has swung a sledgehammer at Victorian businesses, jobs and livelihoods and turned Victoria into a police state, sneering at our rights and our freedoms.

Shame on this Parliament for passing the State of Emergency Bill, laws that allowed the Premier to require Victorians to wear face masks even if there are no active cases, locking people up within 5 kilometres of their homes and introducing unlawful nightly curfews that had no health basis.

Now the Parliament is considering the outrageous Omnibus Bill which will give public servants disturbing power.

This government strategy has failed, absolutely failed.

Every Member in this place must now stand up for our children, livelihoods and the economy but most of all for those who have wrongly and tragically died.

Premier Andrews is the worst Premier in Victoria’s history.

This Parliament must sack Dan.