27 March 2020
The Commonwealth Coordinator-General Drought & Flood North Queensland Shane Stone interviewed on SKY by Darwin correspondent Matt Cunningham. Topics included salary sacrifice by SES in the Federal, State and Territory Governments in support of the virus effort as a record number of business operations fail and unemployment skyrockets. Also comments on the suspension of 'bush' deliveries to remote cattle stations, a critical evolving situation. Further comments not included in the SKY interview related to the armchair experts. Writing in the NT News on 28 March 2020 Matt Cunningham in a comment piece 'Gunner a real revelation', wrote ''Thankfully, Morrison, Gunner and the National Cabinet have largely stuck to the advice of these experts. That hasn’t stopped the armchair experts going into overdrive. They’re too many to mention by name, but they’ve been everywhere — politicians, journalists, activists and more who’ve suddenly become experts in epidemiology — offering opinions on everything from school closures to social distancing. Those who continue to think they know best might want to consider the words of former Chief Minister Shane Stone, now the Drought Recovery Co-ordinator General. He said this to me yesterday: “I smile to myself when I observe some of these people on radio and television telling Scott Morrison what he should be doing, telling the premiers and chief ministers how they could do it better, and the one thing those people have in common is they’ve never been in charge of anything, nothing, so, step back, let our leaders do their job. I think they’re doing a pretty good job from what I can see, so just get off their case folks because you’ve never been in charge of anything, and if you have, you have a history of failure.”