Approval for families of Port Adelaide players to enter South Australia from Victoria a ‘mistake’
The Victoria-based families of several AFL stars were allowed to enter South Australia despite strict border restrictions after a bureaucrat approved the “inappropriate” exemption. And it was a former footy club staffer who connected the relatives with SA Health.
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An external review will be launched to determine how 11 relatives of Port Adelaide players were mistakenly given permission by a member of SA’s exemption committee to travel from Victoria to South Australia.
Port Adelaide football manager Chris Davies confirmed Darcy Byrne-Jones’ family, Travis Boak’s mother and Tom Rockliff’s parents had made it into SA but could not say who else applied for or received exemptions.
Hitaf Rasheed, executive director of Events South Australia, told News Corp she helped initially to connect a representative of the families to SA Health.
But Ms Rasheed, a former media and welfare staffer for the Power, said she then left the decision-making process to the relevant health officials to work through.
“SATC (South Australian Tourism Commission) doesn’t have any say in how SA Health view applications or approvals,” she said.
Premier Steven Marshall has apologised for the “error of judgment” by the SA Health exemption committee member that led to the family members being incorrectly allowed into the state.
Meanwhile, the boss of the high-ranking SA public servant who provided the family members with a contact at SA Health said she did not act inappropriately.
“There has been no personal gain from this, it was an administrative error among thousands of applications,’’ Mr Marshall said this morning.
“It is hugely disappointing. We are taking action. I think there would be a problem if there was undue process but there is no suggestion of that.”
After labelling the decision “absolutely a mistake”, SA’s chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier told ABC Radio on Thursday morning that she was “very keen to have this looked at”.
“We’re very keen to review this and in fact our (chief executive) has spoken to the Department of Premier and Cabinet and we’re looking forward to having an external person come in and just go through all of our processes to make sure that they’re really tight,” she said.
“We’re quite keen to have somebody with external eyes come in because sometimes when you get close to things you don’t see everything and it is always good to review processes.”
Prof Spurrier said the reviewer would be someone who “understands bureaucracy and administrative processes”.
On Wednesday, Prof Spurrier said the “inappropriate” exemption given to the AFL family members was decided by one person and not the whole panel.
She did not say which players the 11 people were related to, but Fox Sports reported they included Travis Boak, Ollie Wines, Robbie Gray, Tom Clurey, Tom Rockliff and Darcy Byrne-Jones.
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by any of them, their families or the club.
Port Adelaide has 12 players from Victoria who either played in the Power’s game against Collingwood on Monday night or are in contention for the qualifying final against Geelong.
The family members involved are understood to mainly consist of parents of Power players.
Prof Spurrier said she cancelled the exemptions when she heard about them late on Wednesday afternoon but five people had already had travelled to SA and are in hotel quarantine at their own cost.
“One individual made a decision on their own accord, and moving forward we will not let that happen again,” she said
“I know that person well and they did not have any vested interest in this decision.”
She said that person had been counselled already by the SA Health CEO and she would also counsel them.
“I’m disappointed about this because we do have a vigorous exemption process and people know we have a hard border with Victoria at the moment and our health exemptions should be for people with compelling and compassionate reasons,” she said.
“It’s very important we’re consistent when granting exemptions and I want to ensure that’s the case going forward.”
Prof Spurrier said she sits on a panel that hears appeals when a request to travel to SA is denied, but said she would now also sit on the original panel that determines exemptions to enter into SA, including on compassionate grounds.
She said she would now review other exemptions to make sure they were appropriate.
“It was absolutely a mistake. This should not have happened and it should have gone to the full exemption panel where a rigorous discussion takes place,” she said.
Health Minister Stephen Wade said the exemptions were “a failure of the system” and denied elite sports people had been given special treatment.
“From day one, SA Health and Nicola Spurrier and her team have indicated there will be no preference to sports people in terms of the administration of public health is SA,” he said.
“In some ways that may have been detrimental to our relationship with the AFL but the health and safety of South Australians is our paramount consideration.”
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Originally published as Approval for families of Port Adelaide players to enter South Australia from Victoria a ‘mistake’