Failure truly is an orphan in “Dandrewstan”, otherwise known as the Australian state of Victoria. After months of hearings and millions of dollars, the Coate inquiry has finally identified just who was responsible for the farcical hotel quarantine regime that ultimately led to 800 deaths in that state – and a multi-billion dollar blow to the Australian economy.
No one.
I guess that settles that, then.
The Andrews government’s decision to use security guards in hotel quarantine was not made by any single person, but was the product of the police commissioner Graham Ashton’s preference, retired judge Jennifer Coate has found.
Justice Coate’s 543 page final report has been tabled in state parliament on Monday morning, with Premier Daniel Andrews expected to respond to her findings later on Monday.
The report also found security guards were the wrong choice to guard Victoria’s returned travellers in the hotel quarantine scheme, and police would have been a better cohort than private guards.
“Consideration was not given to the appropriateness or implications of using a largely casualised workforce in an environment where staff had a high likelihood of being exposed to the highly infectious COVID-19,” Justice Coate found.
“This, of course, had flow on impacts in terms of the spread of the virus.”
Well, thank you, Captain Obvious.
“No person or agency claimed any responsibility for the decision to use private security as the first tier of security. All vigorously disputed the possibility they could have played a part in ‘the decision’,” Justice Coate found.
“The evidence was that the use of private security did not raise any particular concerns during the weekend set up of the (hotel quarantine) program or produce any considered discussion about how the enforcement model should work.
“No doubt, in the wake of the evidence that has emerged as to the links between infected security guards and the second wave of COVID-19, and problems more generally with the use of that workforce, positions have hardened as to any ‘ownership’ of the decision to use private security.
In other words, when the ship went tits-up, the rats scurried for cover.
“However, the fact remains that not one of the more than 70,000 documents produced to the Inquiry demonstrated a contemporaneous rationale for the decision to use private security as the first tier of enforcement, or an approval of that rationale in the upper levels of government,” she found.
“Such a finding is likely to shock the public.”
Or not.
The #IStandWithDan crowd will continue to tweet furious agreement with anything their Dear Leader says, no matter what. Everyone knew from the start that the whole thing was a monumental cock-up.
Meanwhile, the list of senior governmental figures who swear they knew nuzzink is quite impressive, in its mendacious way.
She noted that Premier Daniel Andrews and then health minister Jenny Mikakos “said they played no part in the decision”.
“(Police) Minister (Lisa) Neville was aware of the proposal but not responsible for it and (then jobs) Minister (Martin) Pakula appears not to have been told until after private security had been engaged,” Justice Coate found[…]
Justice Coate has found the Victoria’s departments of Health and Human Services and Jobs Precincts and Regions could not even agree on which of them was responsible for the state’s hotel quarantine program.
The Australian
Did anyone in the Victorian government have any idea of how the most critical program in the state at that time was being managed?
There’s only two glaringly obvious conclusions that can be made from this entire farce:
Either literally no one in the Victorian government, public service or health bureaucracy knew how its hotel quarantine program was being managed; or everyone is lying through their teeth about it.
Neither possibility should inspire confidence.
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