As Victoria’s hotel quarantine inquiry winds up today after weeks of intense questioning, thousands of dollars in legal fees, and one ministerial scalp, perhaps the biggest question is still unresolved: who made the decision to use private security guards at hotels?
For weeks, the state’s most senior politicians, bureaucrats and police have awkwardly tried to avoid responsibility for that call. Their answers show a left hand that couldn’t talk to the right — a cluttered bureaucratic hivemind that failed its biggest test.
The cops
On March 27, in a text sent to Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw, Victoria’s then-police commissioner Graham Ashton asked why the feds weren’t guarding people at hotels. Then, 10 minutes later, Ashton sent a follow up text confirming Victoria would use private security contractors.
“OK, that’s new,” Kershaw said.
Ashton said: “I think that’s the deal set up by our DPC [Department of Premier and Cabinet].”
Last week, Ashton told the inquiry he couldn’t remember where he got this new information about Victoria’s plan from.
But at a meeting on the afternoon of March 27, Ashton’s deputy Mick Grainger said using private security was “absolutely” Victoria Police’s preference. And at the inquiry last week, emergency management commissioner Andrew Crisp said that he’d gone into the March 27 meeting believing the arrangements had been made by the public servants.
“I believed that the DJPR [Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions] had been tasked by the Department of Premier and Cabinet with this operation and had already made those arrangements,” he said.
The bureaucrats
If not the cops, then who? Not DPC secretary Chris Eccles, who in a statement to the inquiry said no decision was made by him or anyone in the department to use private security. He was “not aware” how such a decision was reached, he said.
Perhaps, given Andrew Crisp’s reference to the DJPR, secretary Simon Phemister could shed some light? Unlikely. In his statement, Phemister said “DJPR went into the first SCC [State Control Centre] meeting [on the afternoon of March 27] not knowing whether, and to what extent, private security would be required at hotels.”
Kym Peake, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said she had no involvement in the decision to use private security guards, and insisted her department wasn’t solely responsible for hotel quarantine decisions, claiming instead that it had been a “joint operation” across government.
“I’m not sure that there actually is a point where someone made a conscious decision,” Peake said.
Chief health officer Brett Sutton was also sidelined, telling the inquiry nobody had asked him
“In retrospect, there are a number of vulnerabilities with respect to transmission risk because of that workforce.”
The ministers
When it was Andrews’ cabinet’s turn to give evidence, the excuses continued. Police Minister Lisa Neville only found out about private security guards when Crisp mentioned it at the meeting.
“I took that as a decision had been made,” Neville told the inquiry.
Jobs Minister Martin Pakula also didn’t know.
“I don’t recall specifically how I became aware of that [private security],” Pakula said.
“It may have been from media reportage, it may have been from a conversation, but I don’t have a specific recollection of how I became aware of that.”
Former health minister Jenny Mikakos said she didn’t become aware of private security being used until May, even though she’d been at a press conference in March when Pakula had announced the use of private security.
Like Peake, Mikakos maintained the whole hotel quarantine was a joint operation.
The premier
For months, Dan Andrews has been telling Victorians that “the buck stops with me”.
On Friday, he said the buck stopped with Mikakos, who he said was “accountable for the program”. On Saturday, Mikakos resigned.
But Andrews could not answer the big question of who was responsible for private security. Instead, he characterised what happened on March 27 as “a series of assumptions”.
“We are left with a situation where no one owns the decision for the purposes of following up, if it was the right one, and if it wasn’t the right one, making necessary changes.”
Why the obsession with who decided on private security guards? No-one criticised it at the time; only later with the benefit with hindsight. It was all done within 36 hours. As former ABC presenter Terry Laidler has pointed out, knowing who made the decision would not explain the quarantine failure itself. He wrote: The questions that need answers are therefore:
1. What testing was done to identify who had the virus and who did not, to ensure the clinically competent isolation of positive cases and hence to protect not only the community but also all staff and fellow quarantinees?
2. What level of training, PPE and other resources were needed and provided to all staff to prevent infection – hotel workers, clinical staff, and security/enforcement staff alike?
3. What were the supervision arrangements and were there clear chains of command at each quarantine facility?
4. What measures were in place to identify staff who predictably might become infected, to care for them, and isolate them to prevent further spread?
These are questions about an effective quarantine system and are very similar to those that have had to be asked and answered in other health settings. They apply regardless of what security staff were used in any settings.
I agree with you Rob – these sort of situations happen daily in gov’t and business, an assumption was made and everyone worked from there. Most of the time it just doesn’t have these deadly consequences.
It’s not an excuse but it’s a reason. What happened next just shows that because this policy came to life this way, the implementation was poor as it wasn’t fully thought out on all required aspects, particularly the risks and no one felt fully responsible.
Now that’s established – it’s not really relevant anymore to look for who made (or didn’t make) the decision – it comes down to the relevant dept (I think DHHS) which didn’t take responsibility – aka the relevant minister really dropped the ball by not identifying and remedying this. From there on was a cascade of ill thought out actions, combined with some bad luck and here’s the disaster.
Had there been a better sense of ownership/accountability in the first place, perhaps quicker action would have been taken to reduce the risk of spreading.
I think it is important as the decision to use Private Security was a disastrous decision given what is well known about that industry’s culture and integrity. No matter the training etc…they aren’t “fit for purpose” in these sorts of roles.
The industry is regulated by a department within Victoria Police but, of course, that area was not consulted regarding their use in the hotel quarantine process…..that would have meant senior cops asking someone else for an opinion.
Who made the decision? Who signed the contracts? Not so hard to find that out as all contracts over a certain amount have to be published to the public.
All this talk of evasion of responsibility for a decision and so on presumes that the use of private security could only have resulted from a specific decision. It looks much more probable that the Victorian government just followed its routine procedure, or custom and practice, for all such work, without any conscious consideration or debate of any other option. This isn’t great, but it’s far from being so sinister or mysterious as so many commentators make out.
In the matter of the Victorian CoVid pandemic, Crikey continues to display the journalistic integrity of The Australian and other Murdoch publications.
For the removal of doubt, that comparison was not meant as a compliment.
Is it a given both Pandemic and need to Quarantine essentially seen as a health management issue. Yes?
Certainly State Health Minister would have priority interest in all aspects of Pandemic management. Yes?
Given even public awareness understood aged persons susceptibility to Covid-19, then surely State Health Minister knew of and closely monitored all aspects of Quarantine procedure. Yes?
Given PM, Federal Aged Care Minister and Chief Medical Officer also knew aged care implications related to Quarantine. Yes?
Accountability, Transparency. Nah!
I’m pretty sure that the Crimes Act would cover an offence to deal with persons subject to the federal public health regulations failing to comply.
Federal law overrides state law and public health has always been a quarantine matter, especially when the persons affected had come form overseas.
It should have been left to ABF to deal with considering how well they handled the Ruby Princess matter in NSW.
Blodeuwedd is correct in my view.
International Arrivals fall within the remit of the Feds for both quarantine and security. That’s AQIS and Border Force. We should not have seven different procedures for quarantine of International Arrivals, one for each state.
Sure, AQIS/BF could delegate some authority to the states or engage private security, but hopefully not as disastrously as they did with Ruby Princess.
Finally, here in NSW we also had Hotel Quarantine failures, but unlike Vic it did not take hold in Aged Care.
Regardless of what happens in the community with the spread of Covid19, it should not affect those in aged care since we know they are vulnerable.
Well, at last count Victoria had 787 deaths, and 560 were in Aged Care.
Aged Care has provided an ongoing “pool of infection” in Vic and is much more worthy of our attention than the fact that hotel quarantine let some through to kick it off.
We know that Aged Care workers were not well trained, lacked PPE, worked at multiple facilities and thus when infectious the impact was disastrous.
Aged Care is a Federal responsibility and the failure in Victorian aged care facilities has contributed massively to the 787 deaths.
Why is it assumed that the Poliece or Military would have done a better job?
They have no more Covid training than the security people, unless the medical branches of the ADF were going to be used.
It’s not just about training or even medical know how, it’s more about having a chain of command, a code of ethics and being, hopefully, incorruptible. The police and the military should be all of these things and so you can trust them to do the job they are given to do, hopefully.