History = science + economics + governance

It is important to incorporate political and economic histories as well as it is they who have destroyed the world: our economic damage was caused by collapsed cash flows and too-late grants and subsidies.

The National COVID-19 Coordination Commission will have to move forward – with the PM’s support! However, it smacks of the Gaetjens secret report on the rorts – it is advisory to the team that made the errors and even includes Gaetjens to whom it reports as a unit of Prime Minister’s and Cabinet. It is a misnomer: it is a committee, not a commission. It has no statutory abilities or independence. In the four Acts of Parliament available on legislation.gov.au, there is no Appropriation for it.

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics is chaired by Tim Wilson MP but looks outwards to banks and insurance companies and not inwards as do US Committees. A Hearing or similar might have clarified issues well before the deadly 26 days of delay to admit early mistakes were made (due to lack of expertise), and even acted as a part-safeguard. Mr Wilson has declined to comment.

The NCCC was created in late March, to provide advice on PPPs and other recovery implementation mechanisms. The economic assessment and planning side of the crisis has been poorly mapped due to the Bubble’s babble, unlike in the US Congress where President Trump’s reluctance and evasions were countered by both Democrats and Republicans in open exchanges. There is no such debate in the Australian Parliament. The Commission will not have useful backup from Infrastructure Australia or iNSW.

Peter Hartcher (SMH)

Here is a telling quote:

George W. Bush, the US president often derided for his supposed stupidity, made a formal proposal in 2005 for $US7 billion in funding to prepare for the inevitable epidemic. He specifically cited the danger posed by another coronavirus, H5N1 or "bird flu". Bush said it was possible that virus could develop the ability to pass from person to person: "If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare." He recommended stockpiling ventilators, masks and funding for vaccine research. His recommendation to Congress was not taken seriously

Morrison is facing DOOM

The PM and Government, and the National (War) Cabinet are facing a challenge where there is

no plan,
no SWOT,
no targets or PIs,
the sloppiest of Budgets (in limbo and meaningless),
no democratic engagement, and
craziness with fused pollies and Tin Soldiers who are lurching and jerking with each blow.

The stakeholders are rejecting wiser voices and refusing to repair their blunders, they are societal criminals worthy of Dante's 8th Circle.

These words come the man who most changed the post-1918 world, Hayek's friend, whom Nugget Coombs persuaded PM Menzies was the way to go:

The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind. Very few of us realize with conviction the intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature of the economic organization by which Western Europe has lived for the last half century. We assume some of the most peculiar and temporary of our late advantages as natural, permanent, and to be depended on, and we lay our plans accordingly.
On this sandy and false foundation we scheme for social improvement and dress our political platforms, pursue our animosities and particular ambitions, and feel ourselves with enough margin in hand to foster, not assuage, civil conflict in the European family. Moved by insane delusion and reckless self-regard, the German people overturned the foundations on which we all lived and built.

But the spokesmen of the French and British peoples have run the risk of completing the ruin, which Germany began, by a Peace which, if it is carried into effect, must impair yet further, when it might have restored, the delicate, complicated organisation, already shaken and broken by war, through which alone the European peoples can employ themselves and live.

The Rorts culture re-manifests

The Aus should have put a knife through this

Journalists tend to pick'n'choose what to cover and then eschew expert work outside their home patch. The consequences include unprofessional "churnalism", errors and the misleading of communities.

That culture led to massive waste and damage in Sydney's infrastructure via Turnbull/Morrison's gifting and Kennedy idiocy over the WS City Deal - and no one acknowledges the obvious defect associated with the rejection of "Budget repair".

Here is an American parallel - the WashPost's Editorial Board:

There is a desperate need for adequate nationwide diagnostic testing and contact tracing so that offices and factories can cautiously begin to resume work without triggering more sickness.

That, too, has been left to the scattered and uneven leadership of states and localities, which are unable to deliver at the scale needed.

Their challenge is compounded by serial failures in the federal bureaucracy driven by Mr. Trump’s incompetent appointees.

We now learn from the whistleblower complaint filed by a senior Health and Human Services official, Rick Bright, that when he warned a group of senior officials known as the Disaster Leadership Group on Feb. 7 about a shortfall of protective masks, other officials responded “there was no indication of a supply chain shortage or of issues with masks, and therefore there was no need to take immediate action.”

Such missteps have been endemic.