In her two decades in Victoria's Parliament, Jenny Mikakos has never seen a crisis anywhere near this costly.
The human toll is devastating and the economic cost is seismic, and now the minister herself has paid the ultimate professional price.
But the 51-year-old found herself fending off calls for her resignation well before the quarantine fiasco that, in the end, made her position untenable.
She cemented deep unpopularity with health workers in the early days of the crisis, when she publicly criticised a doctor who unknowingly saw patients while he had COVID-19.
"I am flabbergasted that a doctor that has flu-like symptoms has presented to work," she told a press conference in March.
As it turned out, that doctor — the state's eleventh coronavirus case — did not even meet her Government's criteria for a coronavirus test at the time.
He made this clear, and disputed her version of events, in a widely shared Facebook post.
The outrage among the medical fraternity was palpable. Many wanted her to resign or be sacked.
Since then, controversies over issues like PPE and healthcare worker infections have put those in the sector further offside. That relationship hit a low point this week when the Health Workers Union called Ms Mikakos "breathtakingly incompetent", and called for her immediate resignation.
Those who have long wanted the minister gone ultimately got their wish. But not before a second wave of the virus devastated the state under her tenure.
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An early political start as a suburban councillor
Ms Mikakos grew up in the northern Melbourne suburb of Northcote, in a working-class migrant family. She holds law and arts degrees from the University of Melbourne, and began her political career as the youngest councillor ever elected to the now defunct Northcote Council.
She also worked as a tax lawyer before being elected to the Upper House in 1999.
She represented the Jika Jika province until 2006, when it was abolished, and she became an MLC for the Northern Metropolitan region.
She served as a parliamentary secretary under premiers Steve Bracks and John Brumby, in the planning and justice portfolios, before Ted Baillieu's Coalition government was elected in 2010.
In opposition, she moved into the shadow ministry, and held portfolios including community services, youth justice, children, young adults and seniors and ageing.
She is part of Labor's Left faction, which also includes Daniel Andrews, but she hasn't always fallen on the typically progressive side of a vote.
In a conscience vote in 2007, she opposed her government's proposal to allow scientists to clone human embryos for medical research. It put her at odds with the then-premier, Mr Bracks, and his treasurer, Mr Brumby.
Ms Mikakos, who has Greek heritage, also upset some party colleagues the year before, when she stood up in Parliament and criticised Turkey over what is known as the Greek or Pontian genocide.
"Unlike Germany, which has taken responsibility for the Jewish holocaust, Turkey has never apologised to its victims," she said during a speech that prompted Labor colleagues John Eren and Adem Somyurek, who have Turkish backgrounds, to heckle her to sit down.
Human rights breach among first big controversies
After Mr Andrews took down the Coalition government at the next election in 2014, he appointed Ms Mikakos minister for youth affairs, families and children.
In 2016, she was hit with one of her first big controversies — over the imprisonment of about a dozen teenagers in Barwon Prison, near Geelong.
The teenagers were moved to the adult prison after a riot at the Parkville youth justice centre, but the Supreme Court found that was illegal.
The court found the move neglected the children's human rights and Ms Mikakos was forced to reverse her decision.
Two years later, the state's ombudsman found Ms Mikakos to be among a group of Labor MPs who breached guidelines for parliamentary funds during the "red shirts rorts" affair.
Her report found 21 MPs breached the guidelines by certifying payments to electorate officers, who were actually used for campaign purposes.
But the ombudsman found the MPs involved believed the scheme was legitimate.
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Growing tensions with healthcare workers lead to union calls for her scalp
Ms Mikakos's ill-fated tenure as health minister began in 2018, when she took the reins from Jill Hennessy as part of a cabinet reshuffle.
As the coronavirus crisis descended on Victoria, her responsibilities grew.
She became the Deputy Leader of the Government in the Upper House in March this year, and the following month was given the title of Minister for the Coordination of Health and Human Services: COVID-19.
Alongside Mr Andrews and Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, she was one of the Government's most prominent faces of the pandemic fight.
It clearly took a personal toll: she came close to breaking down during a press conference in July, when she talked about the devastating COVID-19 outbreak at the St Basil's nursing home in Fawkner.
But some healthcare workers continued to be upset by some of her public statements. In August, she told a parliamentary committee that data suggested only 10 to 15 per cent of healthcare worker COVID-19 infections were contracted in the workplace.
The Government later conceded that figure was closer to 70 or 80 per cent.
The tensions between the minister and healthcare workers came to a head this week, when the Health Workers Union called for immediate resignation in a blistering letter to the Premier, accusing her of repeated mismanagement and not being across the basics of the brief.
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, though, has a different view, describing her as a passionate, quiet achiever and a determined, steadfast leader.
After her resignation, Victorian secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick praised her dedication to protecting healthcare workers from infection, as well as her work to champion nurse to patient ratios in public health services.
She also credited her with stopping the Federal Government from retrospectively cutting more than $300 million from the state's health system.
'A very, very hardworking person'
Ms Mikakos's colleagues widely regard her as having a strong work ethic, and the Premier paid tribute to her as "a very, very hardworking person" following her resignation.
But for all her hard work and achievements, it's the botched hotel quarantine scheme that many will remember her for.
Ms Mikakos has continued to distance herself from the quarantine program by stating a lack of reporting to her office meant she was unaware of the program's raft of errors, including poor infection control and the controversial use of private security firms to police hotel guests.
Although she was at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services, Ms Mikakos told the COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry she found out about the use of security guards in the hotels in May.
That was two months after she stood metres away from Jobs Minister Martin Pakula when he told a press conference security guards would be in the hotels.
The political death knell was heard when the Premier told the inquiry that accountability of the quarantine program lay on Ms Mikakos's shoulders.
Resignation announcement made by tweet
It's perhaps no surprise she chose Twitter to announce her political demise, and to fire her parting shot at a Premier she said she could no longer serve.
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A prolific tweeter, she was an early adopter of the social platform while shadow minister for youth affairs, hoping it would help her reach a younger audience.
"It's important people see the human side of a politician," she told a newspaper in 2014.
In a late-night thread of tweets in August, she showed that human side with an emotional defence of how she had been handling the pandemic.
She acknowledged then that "mistakes were made along the way, because humans are flawed yet contagious viruses are unforgiving". And she said she was "deeply sorry" if her efforts, which had cost her "every ounce of energy", had not been enough.
"Let the independent judge do her job, let the cards fall where they may," she wrote at the time. "I believe there is nothing to fear in seeking the truth. The truth will set you free."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiZ2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTA5LTI2L2hlYWx0aC1taW5pc3Rlci1qZW5ueS1taWtha29zLXBvbGl0aWNhbC1jYXJlZXItY292aWQtMTkvMTI3MDcwMDbSASdodHRwczovL2FtcC5hYmMubmV0LmF1L2FydGljbGUvMTI3MDcwMDY?oc=5
2020-09-26 06:56:00Z
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